may, undoubtedly, abuse this discretionary power, but the same may be said of others with which they are vested. Yet the discretion must exist somewhere. The Constitution has given it to the representatives of all the people, checked by the representatives of the States, and by the Executive Power. The South Carolina construction gives it to the Legislature or the Convention of a single State, where neither the people of the different States, nor the States in their separate capacity, nor the Chief Magistrate elected by the people, have any representation. Which is the most discreet disposition of the power?...

The ordinance, with the same knowledge of the future that characterizes a former objection, tells you that the proceeds of the tax will be unconstitutionally applied. If this could be ascertained with certainty, the objection would, with more propriety, be reserved for the law so applying the proceeds, but surely can not be urged against the laws levying the duty. . . .

On such expositions and reasonings, the ordinance grounds not only an assertion of the right to annul the laws of which it complains, but to enforce it by a threat of seceding from the Union if any attempt is made to execute them.

This right to secede is deduced from the nature of the Constitution, which, they say, is a compact between sovereign States, who have preserved their whole sovereignty, and, therefore, are subject to no superior; that, because they made the compact, they can break it when, in their opinion, it has been departed from by the other States.

The people of the United States formed the Constitution, acting through the State Legislatures in making the compact, to meet and discuss its provisions, and acting in separate Conventions when they ratified those provisions: but the terms used in its construction, show it to be a government in which the people of all the States collectively are represented. . .

...

The Constitution of the United States then forms a government, not a league; and whether it be formed by compact between the States, or in any other manner, its character is the same. It is a government in which all the people are represented, which operates directly on the people individually, not upon the States - they retained all the power they did not grant. But each State having expressly parted with so many powers as to constitute, jointly

with the other States, a single nation, cannot, from that period, possess any right to secede, because such secession does not break a league, but destroys the unity of a nation; and any injury to that unity is not only a breach which would result from the contravention of a compact, but it is an offence against the whole Union. To say that any State may at pleasure secede from the Union, is to say that the United States are not a nation, because it would be a solecism to contend that any part of a nation might dissolve its connexion with the other parts, to their injury or ruin, without committing any offence. Secession, like any other revolutionary act, may be morally justified by the extremity of oppression; but to call it a constitutional right, is confounding the meaning of terms; and can only be done through gross error, or to deceive those who are willing to assert a right, but would pause before they made a revolution, or incur the penalties consequent on a failure.

Because the Union was formed by compact, it is said the parties to that compact may, when they feel themselves aggrieved, depart from it: but it is precisely because it is a compact that they cannot. A compact is an agreement or binding obligation. It may by its terms have a sanction or penalty for its breach or it may not. If it contains no sanction, it may be broken with no other consequence than moral guilt: if it have a sanction, then the breach insures the designated or implied penalty. A league between independent nations, generally, has no sanction other than a moral one; or if it should contain a penalty, as there is no common superior, it cannot be enforced. A government, on the contrary, always has a sanction, express or implied; and, in our case, it is both necessarily implied and expressly given. An attempt, by force of arms, to destroy a government, is an offence by whatever means the constitutional compact may have been formed, and such government has the right, by the law of self-defence, to pass acts for punishing the offender, unless that right is modified, restrained, or resumed by the constitutional act. In our system, although it is modified in the case of treason, yet authority is expressly given to pass all laws necessary to carry its powers into effect, and, under this grant, provision has been made for punishing acts which obstruct the due administration of the laws.

...

No one, fellow citizens, has a higher reverence for the

reserved rights of the States than the magistrate who now addresses you. No one would make greater personal sacrifices, or official exertions, to defend them from violation; but equal care must be taken to prevent, on their part, an improper interference with, or resumption of, the rights they have vested in the nation. The line has not been so distinctly drawn as to avoid doubts in some cases of the exercise of power. Men of the best intentions and soundest views may differ in their construction of some parts of the Constitution; but there are others on which dispassionate reflection can leave no doubt. Of this nature appears to be the assumed right of secession. . .

...

These are the alternatives that are presented by the Convention: a repeal of all the acts for raising revenue, leaving the Government without the means of support, or an acquiescence in the dissolution of our Union by the secession of one of its members. When the first was proposed, it was known that it could not be listened to for a moment. It was known, if force was applied to oppose the execution of the laws that it must be repelled by force; that Congress could not, without involving itself in disgrace and the country in ruin, accede to the proposition: and yet if this is not done in a given day, or if any attempt is made to execute the laws, the State is, by the ordinance, declared to be out of the Union. The majority of a Convention assembled for the purpose, have dictated these terms, or rather this rejection of all terms, in the name of the people of South Carolina. It is true that the Governor of the State speaks of the submission of their grievances to a Convention of all the States, which, he says, they "sincerely and anxiously seek and desire." Yet this obvious and constitutional mode of obtaining the sense of the other States on the construction of the federal compact, and amending it, if necessary, has never been attempted by those who have urged the State on to this destructive measure. The State might have proposed the call for a General Convention to the other States; and Congress, if a sufficient number of them concurred, must have called it. But the first magistrate of South Carolina, when he expressed a hope that, "on a review by Congress and the functionaries of the General Government, of the merits of the controversy," such a Convention will be accorded to them, must have known that neither Congress, nor any functionary of the General

Government, has authority to call such a Convention, unless it be demanded by two-thirds of the States. This suggestion, then, is another instance of the reckless inattention to the provisions of the Constitution with which this crisis has been madly hurried on; or of the attempt to persuade the people that a constitutional remedy had been sought and refused. If the Legislature of South Carolina "anxiously desire" a General Convention to consider their complaints, why have they not made application for it in the way the Constitution points out? The assertion that they “earnestly seek it" is completely negatived by the omission.

This, then, is the position in which we stand. A small majority of the citizens of one State in the Union have elected delegates to a State Convention; that Convention has ordained that all the revenue laws of the United States must be repealed, or that they are no longer a member of the Union. The Governor of that State has recommended to the Legislature the raising of an army to carry the secession into effect, and that he may be empowered to give clearances to vessels in the name of the State. No act of violent opposition to the laws has yet been committed, but such a state of things is hourly apprehended; and it is the intent of this instrument to proclaim, not only that the duty imposed on me by the Constitution "to take care that the laws be faithfully executed," shall be performed to the extent of the powers already vested in me by law, or of such others as the wisdom of Congress shall devise and entrust to me for that purpose, but to warn the citizens of South Carolina who have been deluded into an opposition to the laws, of the danger they will incur by obedience to the illegal and disorganizing ordinance of the Convention; to exhort those who have refused to support it to persevere in their determination to uphold the Constitution and laws of their country; and to point out to all the perilous situation into which the good people of that State have been led, and that the course they are urged to pursue is one of ruin and disgrace to the very State whose rights they affect to support.

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No. 87. Act for Enforcing the Tariff

March 2, 1833

In his annual message of Dec. 4, 1832, Jackson suggested that "the policy of protection must be ultimately limited to those articles of domestic manufacture which are indispensable to our safety in time of war"; and the annual report of the Secretary of the Treasury recommended a reduction of duties to a revenue basis. December 27 Verplanck of New York reported from the House Committee of Ways and Means a bill to reduce the tariff. January 16, 1833, Jackson sent to Congress his message on nullification, reviewing the progress of events in South Carolina and asking for additional legislation to enforce the revenue laws. On the 21st a bill to enforce the collection of the revenue was reported in the Senate by Wilkins of Pennsylvania, from the Committee on the Judiciary. The tariff bill, sharply antagonized by protectionist members, was meantime making its way through the House. February 12 Clay introduced in the Senate a compromise tariff bill. On the 20th the Senate passed the "force bill" by a vote of 32 to 1, and on the following day took up Clay's bill. On the 25th the House recommitted its tariff bill, by a vote of 95 to 54, with instructions to report the compromise tariff in its place; on the 26th the latter passed the House, the vote being 119 to 85. The same day the Senate laid Clay's bill on the table, and March 1 passed the House bill, by a vote of 29 to 16. The "force bill" passed the House March 1, by a vote of 149 to 47. In the meantime, many State legislatures had passed resolutions against nullification. The South Carolina ordinance was to go into effect Feb. 1, but action was deferred pending congressional settlement of the tariff. The passage of the compromise tariff was regarded as a signal victory by the nullifiers. The convention was summoned to meet March 11; on the 18th it dissolved, after repealing the ordinance of nullification and adopting an ordinance nullifying the "force bill.”

REFERENCES. Text in U. S. Stat. at Large, IV., 632-635. For the proceedings, see the House and Senate Journals, 22d Cong., 2d Sess.; for the discussions, see the Cong. Debates, or Benton's Abridgment, XII. Niles's Register, XLIII., contains abstracts of debates and numerous documents. The message of Jan. 16 is in the Journals. The speeches of Webster and Calhoun on the "force bill" are in the Cong. Debates, and also Calhoun's Works (ed. 1853), II., 197–309, and Webster's Works (ed. 1857), III., 448505.

An Act further to provide for the collection of duties on imports.

Be it enacted . . ., That whenever, by reason of unlawful obstructions, combinations, or assemblages of persons, it shall become impracticable, in the judgment of the President, to execute the revenue laws, and collect the duties on imports in the ordinary way, in any collection district, it shall and may be lawful for the President to direct that the custom-house