nary; it is belligerent; it is a declaration of war or separate
independence. It looks beyond a repeal of the Tariff; for, whether the
Tariff be repealed or not, it asks to engraft the doctrine of
nullification as a permanent feature of the Constitution, applicable in
every case in which any State may deem any act of Congress
unconstitutional. Then each one of the States may take up the volumes
containing all the acts of Congress, and repeal them all by one sweeping
edict of nullification; for there is no limitation to the exercise of
the power but her own will. It is said no State will abuse the power;
but if a majority of the States, by their representatives in Congress,
may abuse delegated powers, is there no danger that one of these same
States, by their representatives at home, may mistake the nature of
their powers, and endanger the Union by a usurpation of power? Or do the
same people, and voting at the same period in any State, elect men to
Congress who will violate, and to the councils of the State, who will
uniformly preserve the Constitution? A State declared the last war
unconstitutional: must the war be nullified, or, by the new theory,
suspended, till, by a slow and tedious process, its constitutionality be
affirmed by three fourths of the States? But, in the mean time, all
hostile operations must cease, our army be disbanded, our navy recalled,
and no further supplies decreed of money, ammunition, or men. And when
one State thus nullifies any act of Congress, she is not required to be
sustained by the vote of any other State: the one fourth are only
required to refuse to act--to remain neutral--if they consider the act
of Congress inexpedient, although they believe it constitutional.
Suppose the New-England States, after the war was pronounced
unconstitutional by a single State, had refused to call a convention to
amend the Constitution, or, if called, to grant the disputed power; then
the war must have been abandoned, the minority must govern, and our
country be disgraced, our seamen permitted to be pressed from the very
decks of our vessels into foreign service, and the maritime despotism of
Britain established without even a struggle in defence of our liberties.
Shall opposition to the Tariff betray us into the support of doctrines
so utterly subversive of the Constitution, and inconsistent with the
existence of any government of the Union?

Once this power was threatened to be assumed by Massachusetts,