in fact; for it would operate equally on all the States; but can
the same act of Congress be constitutional in one State, and
unconstitutional in another? South Carolina declares the Tariff
unconstitutional--Kentucky declares it valid; is it nullified or not? is
it void or valid? The South Carolina theory gives to each State, of
itself, the unlimited power to pronounce ultimate judgment against the
validity of any act of Congress. If so, the Tariff must be valid in
Kentucky, and void in South Carolina. Yet if the Carolina ordinance,
nullifying the Tariff, be valid in that State, it is valid in every
other State, and Carolina may introduce foreign imports, once landed in
her own State, into every other State, free of all duty; for, by the
Constitution, 'no tax or duty shall be laid on articles exported from
any State.' What then becomes of the ultimate judgment of Kentucky?
Nullified by a single State; and that is the nullification of South
Carolina, by which she can constitutionally, and as a member of the
Union, repeal any act of Congress she may deem invalid, and prescribe
her will for law throughout the limits of every other State. The
Constitution of the Union would then be this: _Be it enacted_, that the
American Congress shall possess such powers only as South Carolina
believes they may lawfully exercise; and the whole American people be
thus subjected to the government of the ordinances of a single State. Is
this democracy? The truth is, every act of Congress is intrinsically
void or valid, from its repugnance to or consonance with the provisions
of the American Constitution; nor can the judgment of a State render
void an act of Congress which is constitutional, or render valid an act
of Congress which is unconstitutional. Would the judgment of a single
State have rendered the alien and sedition law constitutional, or the
last war unconstitutional, or would the Supreme Court of the Union have
been compelled to render opposite judgment in a case brought before
them, declaring the citizen of Massachusetts bound to oppose, and of
Virginia to support either of these laws, as their respective States had
pronounced contradictory judgments upon them? Suppose Massachusetts had
not only declared the last war unconstitutional, but had passed an
ordinance requiring her citizens to resist the war, to prostrate and
oppose the armies of the Republic, and to aid a tyrant's myrmidons in
driving the steel deeper into the bosoms of