this controversy what issue they please. Admit then that there is risk of a serious conflict with the Federal government. We know no better way to avoid the chance of hostile measures in our opponents, than to evince a readiness to meet danger, come from what quarter it will. We should think that the American Revolution was indeed to little purpose, if a consideration of this kind were to deter our people from asserting their sovereign rights. That revolution it is well known, was not entered into by our Southern ancestors from any actual oppression, which the people suffered. It was a contest waged for PRINCIPLE, emphatically for principle. The calamities of revolution, strife and civil war, were fairly presented to the illustrious patriots of those times, which tried the souls of men. The alternative was either to remain dependent colonies in hopeless servitude, or to become free, sovereign and independent States. To attain such a distinguished rank among the nations of the earth, there was but one path, and that the path of glory-the crowning glory of being accounted worthy of all suffering, and of embracing all the calamities of a protracted war abroad, and of domestic evils at home, rather than to surrender their liberties. The result of their labors is known to the world, through the flood of light which that revolution has shed upon the science of government, and the rights of man-in the "LESSON it has taught the oppressor, and in the EXAMPLE it has afforded to the oppressed"-in the invigoration of the spirit of freedom every where, and in the amelioration it is producing in the social order of mankind.

Inestimable are the blessings of that well regulated freedom, which permits man to direct his labors and his enterprize to the pursuit or branch of industry to which he conceives nature has qualified him, unmolested by avarice enthroned in power. Such was the freedom for which South Carolina struggled when a dependant colony. Such is the freedom of which she once tasted as the first fruit of that revolutionary triumph which she assisted to achieve. Such is the freedom she reserved to herself on entering into the league. Such is the freedom of which she has been deprived, and to which she must be restored, if her commerce be worth preserving, or the spirit of her Laurens and her Gadsden has not fled forever from our bosoms. It is in vain to tell South Carolina that she can look to any administration of the federal government for the protection of her sovereign rights, or the redress of her sovereign wrongs. Where the fountain is so polluted, it is not to be expected that the stream will again be pure. The protection to which in all representative governments the people have been accustomed to look, to wit, the responsibility of the governors to the governed, has proved nerveless and illusory-under such a system, nothing but a radical reform in our political institutions can preserve this union. It is full time that we should know what rights we have under the federal constitution, and more especially ought we to know whether we are to live under a consolidated government, or a confederacy of States-whether the States be sovereign or their local Legislatures be mere corporations. A FRESH UNDER

STANDING OF THE BARGAIN we deem absolutely NECESSARY. No mode can be devised by which a dispute can be referred to the source of all power, but by some one State taking the lead in the great enterprize of reform. Till some one Southern State tenders to the federal government an issue, it will continue to have its "appetite increased by what it feeds on." History admonishes us that rulers never have the forecast to substitute in good time reform for revolution. They forget that it is always more desirable that the just claims of the governed should break in on them "through well contrived and well disposed windows, not through flaws and breaches, through the yawning chasms of their own ruin." One State must, under the awful prospects before us, throw herself into the breach in this great struggle for constitutional freedom.— There is no other mode of awakening the attention of the coStates to grievances which if suffered to accumulate must dismember the union. It has fallen to our lot fellow-citizens first to quit our trenches. Let us go on to the assault with cheerful hearts and undaunted minds.

Fellow-citizens, the die is now cast.

We have solemnly resolv

ed on the course which it becomes our beloved State to pursuewe have resolved that until these abuses shall be reformed, NO MORE TAXES SHALL BE PAID HERE. "Millions for defence, but not a cent for tribute." And now we call upon our citizens, native and adopted, to prepare for the crisis, and to meet it as becomes men and freemen. We call upon all classes and all parties to forget their former differences, and to unite in a solemn determination never to abandon this contest until such a change be effected in the councils of the nation, that all the citizens of this confederacy shall participate equally in the benefits and the burthens of the government. To this solemn duty we now invoke you in the name of all that is sacred and valuable to man. We invoke you in the name of that LIBERTY which has been acquired by you from an illustrious ancestry and which it is your duty to transmit unimpaired to the most distant generations. We invoke you in the name of that CONSTITUTION which you profess to venerate, and of that UNION which you are all desirous to perpetuate. By the reverence you bear to these your institutions-by all the love you bear to liberty-by the detestation you have for servitude-by all the abiding memorials of your past glories-by the proud association of your exalted and your common triumphs in the first and greatest of revolutions-by the force of all those sublime truths which that event has inculcated amongst the nations-by the noble flame of republican enthusiasm which warms your bosoms, we conjure you in this mighty struggle to give your hearts and souls and minds to your injured and oppressed state, and to support her cause publicly and privately, with your opinions, your prayers and your actions. If appeals such as these prove unavailing, we then COMMAND YOUR OBEDIENCE to the laws and the authorities of the State by a title which none can gainsay. We demand it by that allegiance, which is reciprocal, with the protection you have received from the State. We admit of no obedience to any

authority, which shall conflict with that primary allegiance, which every citizen owes to the State of his birth or his adoption. There is not, nor has there ever been "any direct or immediate allegiance between the citizens of South Carolina and the Federal Government. The relation between them is through the State." South Carolina having entered into the Constitutional compact, as a separate, independent, political community, as has already been stated, has the right to declare an unconstitutional act of Congress, null and void-after her sovereign declaration that the act shall not be enforced within her limits, "such a declaration is obligatory on her citizens. As far as its citizens are concerned, the clear right of the State is to declare the extent of the obligation." This declaration once made, the citizen has no course, but TO OBEY. If he refuses obedience, so as to bring himself under the displeasure of his only and lawful sovereign, and within the severe pains and penalties, which by her high sovereign power, the Legislature, will not fail to provide in her self-defence, the fault, and the folly must be his own.

And now, fellow-citizens, having discharged the solemn duty, to which we have been summoned, in a crisis, big with the most important results to the liberties, peace, safety, and happiness of this once harmonious but now distracted confederacy, we commend our cause to that great, disposer of events, who (if he has not already for some inscrutable purposes of his own, decreed otherwise) will smile on the efforts of truth and justice.. We know that "unless the Lord keepeth the city, the watchman waketh but in vain;" but relying, as we do, in this controversy, on the purity of our motives and the honor of our ends, we make this appeal with all the confidence, which in times of trial and difficulty, ought to inspire the breast of the patriot and the christian. Fellow-citizens, DO YOUR DUTY TO YOUR COUNTRY AND LEAVE THE CONSE QUENCES TO GOD,

ADDRESS

To the People of Massachusetts, Virginia, NewYork, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Maryland, Connecticut, Vermont, New-Hampshire, Maine, New-Jersey, Georgia, Delaware, Rhode Island, Kentucky, Tennessee, Ohio, Louisiana, Indiana, Mississippi, Illinois, Alabama and Missouri.

We, the people of South Carolina, assembled in Convention, have solemnly and deliberately declared, in our paramount sovereign capacity, that the act of Congress approved the 19th day of May, 1828, and the act approve the 14th July, 1832, altering and amending the several acts imposing duties on imports, are unconstitutional, and therefore, absolutely void, and of no binding force within the limits of this State; and for the purpose of carrying this declaration into full and complete effect, we have invested the Legislature with ample powers, and made it the duty of all the functionaries and all the citizens of the State, on their allegiance, to co-operate in enforcing the aforesaid declaration.

In resorting to this important measure, to which we have been impelled by the most sacred of all the duties which a free people owe either to the memory of their ancesters or to the claims of their posterity, we feel that it is due to the intimate political relation which exists between South Carolina and the other States of this confederacy, that we should present a clear and distinct exposition of the principles on which we have acted, and of the causes by which we have been reluctantly constrained to assume this attitude of sovereign resistance in relation to the usurpations of the Federal Government.

For this purpose it will be necessary to state briefly, what we conceive to be the relation created by the federal Constitution, between the States and the general government; and also what we conceive to be the true character and practical operation of the system of protecting duties, as it effects our rights, our interests and our liberties.

We hold, then, that on their separation from the Crown of Great Britain, the several Colonies became free and independent States, each enjoying the separate and independent right of self government; and that no authority can be exercised over them or within their limits, but by their consent, respectively given as States. It is equally true, that the Constitution of the United States is a compact formed between the several States, acting as sovereign communities; that the government created by it is a joint agency of the States, appointed to execute the powers enumerated and grant-. ed by that instrument; that all its acts not intentionally authorized, [A. No. 4.] 6

are of themselve essentially null and void, and that the States have the right, in the same sovereign capacity in which they adopted the federal Constitution, to pronounce, in the last resort, authoritative judgment on the usurpations of the federal government, and to adopt such measures as they may deem necessary and expedient to arrest the operation of the unconstitutional acts of that government, within their respective limits. Such we deem to be the inherent rights of the States-rights, in the very nature of things, absolutely inseparable from sovereignty. Nor is the duty of a State, to arrest an unconstitutional and oppressive act of the federal government less imperative, than the right is incontestible. Each State, by ratifying the federal Constitution, and becoming a member of the confederacy, contracted an obligation to "protect and defend" that instrument, as well by resisting the usurpations of the federal government, as by sustaining that government in the exercise of the powers actually conferred upon it. And the obligation of the oath which is imposed, under the Constitution, on every functionary of the States, to "preserve, protect, and defend" the federal Constitution, as clearly comprehends the duty of protecting and defending it against the usurpations of the federal government, as that of protecting and defending it against violation in any other form or from any other quarter.

It is true that in ratifying the federal Constitution, the States placed a large and important portion of the rights of their citizens under the joint protection of all the States, with a view to their more effectual security; but it is not less true that they reserved a portion still larger and not less important under their own immediate guardianship, and in relation to which their original obligation to protect their citizens, from whatever quarter assailed, remains unchanged and undiminished.

But clear and undoubted as we regard the right, and sacred as we regard the duty of the States to interpose their sovereign power for the purpose of protecting their citizens from the unconstitutional and oppressive acts of the Federal Government, yet we are as clearly of the opinion that nothing short of that high moral and political necessity, which results from acts of usurpation, subversive of the rights and liberties of the people, should induce a member of this confederacy to resort to this interposition. Such, however, is the melancholy and painful necessity under which we have declared the acts of Congress imposing protecting duties, null and void, within the limits of South Carolina. The spirit and the principles which animated your ancestors and ours in the councils and in the fields of their common glory, forbid us to submit any longer to a system of Legislation, now become the established policy of the Federal Government, by which we are reduced to a condition of colonial vassallage, in all its aspects more oppressive and intolerable than that from which our common ancestors relieved themselves by the war of the revolution. There is no right which enters more essentially into a just conception of liberty, than that of the free and unrestricted use of the productions of our industry. This clearly involves the right of carrying the productions of that