she thinks she may lawfully do in
the exercise of her reserved rights. She gives clearances for vessels,
for instance, to introduce all imports free of all duties. When once
introduced into Carolina, she has, or claims and exercises the right
under the Constitution of introducing these imports free of all duties
into every other State in the Union. Two thirds of the States have
passed an act of Congress imposing certain duties on foreign imports: as
separate States they can pass no such laws, having surrendered that
power in the Constitution of the Union. Can Carolina compel them to
receive all foreign imports free of all duties? Yet she says this is one
of her reserved rights, and she may forever constitutionally exercise
it, in defiance of an act of Congress passed by two thirds of the
States. Such a government would be an oligarchy of the most odious and
detestable character. The right of the people of any State, or of any
portion of them, to meet intolerable oppression by revolution is
certain; but, in Mr. Jefferson's rough draught of the Kentucky
resolutions (now attempted to be substituted for his deliberate
conclusions as contained in the resolutions themselves), does he
advocate nullification by a single State as a _constitutional_ remedy,
by a State remaining in the Union and submitting only to such laws as it
deemed valid. No; it was not as a _constitutional_, but as a 'NATURAL
right,' that Mr. Jefferson spoke of nullification by the people of a
State. I say the people, for Mr. Jefferson well knew that the '_natural_
right' of a State to nullify, as an artificial body politic, would be a
contradiction in terms. This '_natural_ right' is a _personal_, as
contradistinguished from a _State_ right; it is inalienable--it is
neither given nor reserved by constitutional compacts--it exists in
citizens of every State, the minority as well as the majority, and not
in the government of any one State. But the exercise of this right is
_revolution_--it is a declaration of independence--it is _war_, and
appeals to the sword as its umpire. Let no State, then, claim to stand
on the basis of the Constitution of the Union, while stripping it of its
vital powers, or setting up its will for law. No, the ordinance of
Carolina is not a peaceful, constitutional remedy: it is a nullification
of the Government itself, sweeping away its revenues, its courts, and
its officers; it is a repeal of the Union; it is despotic; it is
revolutio