REPORT. The select Committee to which was referred "so much of the Governor's Message as relates to the Resolutions from the States of Louisiana, Maine, New Hampshire, and Pennsylvania, with the accompanying documents," beg leave to report: That they have had them under consideration, and would recommend, in regard to the Resolution first named, the adoption of the following Resolutions: In relation to the Resolutions from the States of Maine, New Hampshire, and Pennsylvania, and that portion of the Message which points to their consideration, your Committee would express the belief that the sentiments of a majority of the people of this State, in regard to the subjects to which they relate, are in accordance with those expressed by the General Assembly in the year 1829, declaring the Tariff law of 1828, so far as it contemplated a system of protection, carried beyond the manufacture of such articles as are necessary to the national defence, to be "contrary to the spirit of the Constitution of the United States, impolitic and oppressive in its operation on the southern States, and should be resisted by all constitutional means." But fearful lest false inferences should be drawn from this expression of public opinion-inferences, calculated to induce a belief that this State is prepared to advocate and uphold the disorganizing doctrines, recently promulgated in South Carolina, your Committee deem it their duty to speak plainly, and to undeceive their sister States in this respect. We are opposed to Nullification. We regard it as a heresy, fatal to the existence of the Union. "It is resistance to law by force-it is disunion by force-it is civil war." Your Committee are constrained to express the opinion, that the State of South Carolina has acted with a reckless precipitancy, (originating, we would willingly believe, in delusion,) well calculated to detract from her former high character for wisdom in council, purity of patriotism, and a solicitous regard for the preservation of those fundamental principles, on which alone rest the peace, the prosperity and permanency of the Union. Your Committee deeply deplore the alarming crisis in our national affairs; they regret it the more as proceeding from the unwarrantable attitude assumed by a sister of the South, whose best interests are identified with our own. In the spirit of brethren of the same family, we would invoke them to pause-to hearken attentively to the paternal, yet ominous, warning of the Executive of the Union. We would conjure them to await patiently the gradual progress of public opinion; and to rely, with patriotic confidence, on the ultimate decision of the talented statesmen and pure patriots in the Congress of the United States. But they would also loudly proclaim, that this State owes a duty to the Union, above all minor considerations. That she prizes that Union less than liberty alone. That we heartily accord in the general political sentiments of the President of the United States, as expressed in his recent Proclamation; and that we stand firmly resolved, at whatever sacrifice of feeling, in all events, and at every hazard, to sustain him in enforcing the paramount laws of the land, and preserving the integrity of the Union-that Union, whose value we will never stop to calculate-holding it, as our fathers held it, precious above all price. Your Committee would therefore recommend the adoption of the following resolutions: |