ADDRESS

To the People of South Carolina, by their Delegates in Convention.

FELLOW CITIZENS, The situation in which you have been placed by the usurpations of the Federal Government, is one which you so peculiarly feel, as to render all reference to it at this moment unnecessary. For the last ten years the subject of your grievances has been presented to you. This subject you have well considered. You have viewed it in all its aspects, bearings and tendencies, and you seem more and more confirmed in the opinion, expressed by both branches of the Legislature, that the Tariff, in its operation, is not only "grossly unequal and unjust, but is such an abuse of power as is incompatible with the principles of a Free Government, and the great ends of civil society;" and that if persisted in, "the fate of this State would be poverty and utter desolation." Correspondent with this conviction, a disposition is manifested in every section of the country, to arrest, by some means or other, the progress of this intolerable evil. This disposition having arisen from no sudden excitement, but having been gradually formed by the free and temperate discussions of the Press, there is no reason to believe that it can ever subside by any means short of the removal of the urgent abuse; and it is under this general conviction, that we have been convened to take into consideration, not only the character and extent of your grievances, but also the mode and measure of redress.

This duty, fellow citizens, we have discharged to the best of our judgments, and the result of our deliberations will be found in the DECLARATION and ORDINANCE just passed by us, founded on the great and undeniable truth, that in all cases of a palpable, oppressive and dangerous infraction of the Federal compact, each State has a right to annul, and to render inoperative within its limits, all such unauthorized acts. After the luminous expositions which have been already furnished by so many great minds, that the exercise of this right is compatible with the first principles of our anomalous scheme of government, it would be superfluous here to state at length the reasons by which this mode of redress is to be sustained. A deference, however, for the opinions of those of our fellow citizens, who have hitherto dissented from us, demands that we should briefly state the principal ground upon which we place the right and the expediency of Nullification.

The Constitution of the United States, as is admitted by cotemporaneous writers, is a compact between Sovereign States.

Though the subject matter of that compact was a Government, the powers of which Government were to operate, to a certain extent, upon the People of those Sovereign States, aggregately, and not upon the State Authorities, as is usual in confederacies, still the Constitution is a Confederacy. First. It is a Confederacy, because in its FOUNDATIONS it possesses not one single feature of nationality. The people of the separate States, as distinct political communities, ratified the Constitution, each State acting for itself, and binding its own citizens, and not those of any other State. The act of ratification declares it "to be binding on the States so ratifying. The States are its authors-their power created it-their voice clothed it with authority-the Government it formed is in reality their Government, and the Union of which it is a bond is a Union of States, and not of individuals." Secondly. It is a Confederacy, because the EXTENT of the powers of the Government depends, not upon the People of the United States collectively, but npon the State legislatures, or on the people of the separate States, acting in their State Conventions, each State being represented by a single vote.

It must never be forgotten, that it is to the creating and to the controlling power, that we are to look for the true character of the Federal Government; for the present controversy is, not as to the SOURCES from which the ordinary powers of the Government are drawn; these are partly federal and partly national. Nor is it relevant to consider upon whom these powers operate. In this last view, the Government, for limited purposes, is entirely national. The true question is, who are the parties to the compact? Who created, and who can alter and destroy it? Is it the States or the People? This question has been already answered. The States,

as States, ratified the compact. The People of the United States, collectively, had no agency in its formation. There did not exist then, nor has there existed at any time since, such a political body as the People of the United States. There is not now, nor has there ever been such a relation existing, as that of a citizen of NewHampshire, and a citizen of South Carolina, bound together in the same Social Compact. It would be a waste of time to dwell longer on this part of our subject. We repeat, that as regards the FOUNDATION, and the EXTENT of its powers, the Government of the United States is, strictly, what its name implies, a FEDERAL GOVernment a league between several Sovereigns, and in these views, a more perfect Confederacy has never existed in ancient or modern times.

On looking into this Constitution, we find that the most impor tant sovereign powers are delegated to the central Goverment, and all other powers are reserved to the States. A foreign or an inattentive reader, unacquainted with the origin, progress and history of the Constitution, would be very apt, from the phraseology of the instrument, to regard the States as having divested themselves of their Sovereignty, and to have become great corporations subordinate to one Supreme Government. But this is an error. The States are as Sovereign now, as they were prior to

their entering into the compact. In common parlance, and to avoid circumlocution, it may be admissable enough to speak of delegated and reserved Sovereignty. But correctly speaking, Sovereignty is an unit. It is "one, indivisible and unalienable." It is therefore an absurdity to imagine, that the Sovereignty of the States is surrendered in part and retained in part. The Federal Constitution is a treaty, a confederation, an alliance by which so many Sovereign States agree to exercise their sovereign powers conjointly upon certain objects of external concern, in which they are equally interested, such as WAR, PEACE, COMMERCE, Foreign Negotiation, and Indian Trade; and upon all other subjects of civil government, they were to exercise their Sovereignty separately. This is the true nature of the compact.

For the convenient conjoint exercise of the Sovereignty of the States there must of necessity be some common agency or functionary. This agency is the Federal Government. It represents the confederated States, and executes their joint will, as expressed in the compact. The powers of this government are wholly derivative. It possesses no more inherent sovereignty, than an incorporated town, or any other great corporate body-it is a political corporation, and like all corporations, it looks for its powers to an exterior source. That source is the States. It wants that "irresistible, absolute, uncontrolled authority," without which, according to jurists, there can be no sovereignty. As the States conferred, so the States can take away its powers. All inherent sovereignty, is therefore in the States. It is the MORAL OBLIGATION alone, which each State has chosen to impose upon herself, and not the want of sovereignty, which restrains her from exercising all those powers, which (as we are accustomed to express ourselves) she has surrendered to the Federal Government. The present organization of our Government, as far as regards the terms in which the powers of Congress are delegated, in no wise differs from the old Confederation. The powers of the Old Congress were delegated rather in stronger language, than we find them written down in the new charter, and yet he would hazard a bold assertion, who would say, that the States of the Old Confederacy, were not as Sovereign as Great Britain, France and Russia, would be in an alliance offensive and defensive. It was not the reservation in express terms of the "Sovereignty, Freedom, and Independence of each State" which made them Sovereign. They would have been equally Sovereign, as is universally admitted, without such a reservation.

We have said thus much upon the subject of Sovereignty because the only foundation upon which we can safely erect the right of a State to protect its citizens, is, that South Carolina by the Declaration of Independence, became and has since continued a Free, Sovereign and Independent State. That as a Sovereign State, she has the inherent power, to do all those acts, which by the law of nations, any Prince or Potentate may of right do. That like all independent States, she neither has, nor ought she to suffer any other restraint upon her sovereign will and pleasure,

than those high moral obligations, under which all Princes and States are bound before God and man, to perform their solemn pledges. The inevitable conclusion from what has been said therefore is, that as in all cases of compact between Independent Sovereigns, where from the very nature of things, there can be no common judge or umpire, each sovereign has a right "to judge as. well of infractions, as of the mode and measure of redress," so in the present controversy, between South Carolina and the Federal Government, it belongs solely to her, by her delegates in solemn Convention assembled, to decide, whether the federal compact be violated, and what remedy the State ought to pursue. South Carolina therefore cannot, and will not yield to any department of the Federal Government, and still less to the Supreme Court of the United States, the creature of a Government, which itself is a creature of the States, a right which enters into the essence of all sovereignty, and without which, it would become a bauble and a

name.

It is fortunate for the view which we have just taken, that the history of the Constitution, as traced through the Journals of the Convention which framed that instrument, places the right contended for upon the same foundation. These journals furnish abundant proof, that "no line of jurisdiction between the States and Federal Government in doubtful cases," could be agreed on. It was conceded by Mr. Madison and Mr. Randolph, the most prominent advocates for a Supreme Government, that it was impossible to draw this line, because no tribunal sufficiently impartial, as they conceived could be found, and that there was no alternative, but to make the Federal Government supreme, by giving it, in all such cases, a negative on the acts of the State Legislatures. The pertinacity with which this negative power was insisted on by the advocates of a national Government, even after all the important provisions of the judiciary or third article of the Constitution were arranged and agreed to, proves beyond doubt, that the Supreme Court was never contemplated by either party in that Convention, as an arbiter, to decide conflicting claims of rovereignty between the States and Congress; and the repeated rejection of all proposals to take from the States, the power of placing their own construction upon the articles of Union, evinces that the States were resolved never to part with the right to judge whether the acts of the Federal Legislature were or were not, an infringement of those articles.

Correspondent with the right of a Sovereign State to judge of the infractions of the Federal Compact, is the duty of this Convention to declare the extent of the grievance, and the mode and measure of redress. On both these points, public opinion has already anticipated us, in much that we could urge. It is doubted, whether in any country, any subject has undergone before the people, a more thorough examination than the constitutionality of the several acts of Congress for the protection of Domestic Manufactures. Independent of the present embarrassments, they throw in the way of commerce, and the plain indications, that certain articles, which

are the natural exchange for our valuable staple products, arc sooner or later to be virtually prohibited-Independent of the diminution, which these impost duties cause in our incomes, and the severity of the Tax upon all articles of consumption needed by the poor, they recognize a principle, not less at war with the ends for which this great confederacy was formed, than it is with that spirit of justice, and those feelings of concord which ought to prevail amongst States, united by so many common interests and exalted triumphs. The people surely need not be told, in this advanced period of intellect and of freedom, that no government can be free, which can rightfully impose a tax, for the encouragement of one branch of industry at the expense of all others, unless such a tax be justified by some great, and unavoidable public necessity. Still less can the people believe, that in a confederacy of States, designed principally as an alliance offensive and defensive, its authors could ever have contemplated, that the federal head should regulate the domestic industry of a widely extended country; distinguished above all others, for the diversity of interests, pursuits and resources in its various sections. It was this acknowledged diversity, that caused the arrangement of a conjoint and separate exercise of the sovereign authority; the one to regulate external concerns, and the other to have absolute control over the lives, liberties, and properties of the people, and the internal order, improvement, and prosperity of the States."

It is the striking characteristic in the operation of a simple and consolidated government, that it protects Manufactures, Agriculture, or any other branch of the public industry-that it can establish corporations, or make Roads and Canals, and patronize learning, and the arts. But it would be difficult to shew, that such was the government, which the sages of the Convention designed for the States. All these powers were proposed to be given to Congress, and they were proposed by that party in the Convention, who desired a firm National Government. The Convention having decided, on the federal form, in exclusion of the national, all these propositions were rejected; and yet we have lived to see an American Congress who can hold no power except by express grant, as fully in the exercise of these powers, as if they were part and parcel of their expressly delegated authority. Under a pretence of regulating Commerce, they would virtually prohibit it. Were this regulation of Commerce resorted to, as a means of Coercing foreign nations to a fair reciprocity in their intercourse with us, or for some other bona fide commercial purpose, as has been justly said by our Legislature, the Tariff acts would be Constitutional. But none of these acts have been passed as countervailing or retaliatory measures, for restrictions placed on our Commerce by foreign nations. Whilst other nations seem disposed to relax in their restraints upon trade, our Congress seems absolutely bent upon the interdiction of those articles of Merchandize, which are exchangeable for the products of Southern labor, thus causing the principal burthen of taxation to fall upon this portion of the Union, and by depriving us of our accustomed Markets, to impoverish our whole