Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, January 9, 1833.

Ordered, That Messrs. CROWNINSHIELD, of Boston,

with such as the Senate may join, be a Committee to consider so much of the Governor's Address as relates to the proceedings of the late Convention of the people of South Carolina, and the purposes and policy thereof, and also the Resolutions of the State of Pennsylvania thereon: Sent up for concurrence.

L. S. CUSHING, Clerk.

IN SENATE, January 10th, 1833.

Concurred, and Messrs. Everett, Hoar, Barton and Burnell

are joined.

ATTEST,

CHAS. CALHOUN, Clerk.

Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

IN SENATE, February 15, 1833.

The Joint Select Committee, appointed to consider so much of the Governor's Address as relates to the proceedings of the late Convention of the people of South Carolina, and the purposes and policy thereof: and to whom have been referred Resolutions of the States of Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, Illinois, North Carolina and Delaware upon that subject, have attended to the duty assigned them, and beg leave to submit the following

REPORT:

In the partial Report which they have already submitted, the Committee have stated in general terms the character of the proceedings of the late Convention of the people of South Carolina; and the subject is now so familiar to the public, that it does not seem necessary to enter very fully into a recapitulation of facts. It is generally known that this Convention, which appears to have been assembled agreeably to the forms prescribed by the Constitution of the State, met at Columbia on the 22d of last November that almost immediately after, and with very little deliberation, it proceeded to pass an Act, denominated an Ordinance, declaring null and void all the laws of the United States which impose duties upon the importation of foreign goods, particularly those of the 19th of May, 1828, and the 14th of June, 1832; prohibiting the execution of them within the State of South Carolina, and making it the duty of the Legislature to pass such laws as should be necessary to give full effect

to the Ordinance, and to prevent the enforcement and arrest the execution of the laws aforesaid :-that the Legislature, at a session subsequent to the meeting of this Convention, has in fact passed certain laws for these purposes, which were to go into operation on the first day of this month, and which, if executed, must bring the constituted authorities of the United States and of South Carolina, into open collision.

The papers in the hands of the Committee include a printed copy of this Ordinance of the Convention, transmitted by its order to His Excellency the Governor, and also printed copies of a long report of the committee which drafted the Ordinance, and of addresses in the name of the Convention to the people of the United States and of South Carolina. These documents undertake to justify the proceedings of the Convention, on the ground that the duties on the importation of foreign goods were laid, in part at least, for the purpose of protecting domestic industry: that the General Government is not invested by the Constitution with the power of laying duties for this purpose, and that, whenever the General Government assumes powers which, in the opinion of any one of the States, are not given to it by the Constitution, the State which entertains this opinion may, without violating the Constitution, declare the act by which the power so assumed has been exercised, null and void, and prevent the execution of it within its limits. It also appears to have been supposed by the Convention, that, on the adoption of such measures by any one State, it would become the duty of the General Government to suspend the execution of the law complained of, at least within the limits of the complaining State, and to apply to the people in the form prescribed for amending the Constitution, for a grant of the power supposed to have been unconstitutionally assumed :-that, if the power should on this application be refused by the people, it would be the duty of the General Government definitively to repeal the law by which it had been exercised, and that if, ou the contrary, it should be granted, it would then become the duty of the complaining State to acquiesce. There seems, however, to be some uncertainty in the views of this part of the subject entertained by that portion of the citizens of South Carolina upon whom the responsibility for the semeasures rests: as the Legislature of the State,

instead of leaving it to the General Government to propose to the people in the form prescribed for amending the Constitution a grant of the power of laying duties upon the importation of foreign goods, have themselves, at their late session, passed resolutions, proposing to the other States to hold a Convention for the purpose of settling this and other questions which they consider as doubtful.

It is affirmed, in these addresses and reports, that the laws of the United States, imposing duties upon the importation of foreign goods, thus declared to be null and void, are exceedingly burthensome and oppressive to the people of South Carolina.— This proposition is not made out by the statement of any facts which tend to prove the existence of actual distress; and it is remarkable that the Governor of South Carolina, in his address to the Legislature, at the opening of their late session, congratulates them upon the extraordinary prosperity of the State. The Convention attempt to maintain their assertion of the ruinous tendency of the impost laws, by laying down certain abstract principles in political economy, which are very paradoxical, and as the Committee believe, entirely erroneous. It is unnecessary, however, for the purpose of the present report, to enter upon a particular examination of these doctrines, because the justification of the proceedings of South Carolina does not, after all, depend in any degree upon the question of their truth or falsehood. Whatever may be the real operation of the impost laws upon the peculiar interests of that State,-were it as unfavorable as the Committee believe it to be beneficial and salutary, it is admitted that the State would have no right to seek redress in the form in which it is now sought, unless the enactment of these laws involve an assumption by the General Government of powers not granted by the Constitution. No abuse of constitutional power, however glaring and intolerable, would on the theory of the Convention, justify a resort to nullification.

The question of the real operation of the impost laws upon the prosperity of South Carolina, may therefore be laid entirely out of the case. Nor, although the justification of the proceedings of the Convention is to be sought, on the ground taken by that body, in the supposed unconstitutional character of these laws, do the Committee deem it important for the present purpose to