ADDRESS.

To the People of Massachusetts, Virginia, New York, 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 approved 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 can owe either to the memory of their ancestors, 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 affects 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 granted by that instrument; that all its acts not intentionally authorized, are of themselves 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 vassalage, 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 industry wherever they can be most advantageously exchanged, whether in foreign or domestic markets. South Carolina produces, almost exclusively, agricultural staples, which derive their principal value from the demand for them in foreign countries. Under these circumstances, her natural markets are abroad; and restrictive duties imposed upon her intercourse with those markets, diminish the exchangeable value of her productions very nearly to the full extent of those duties.

Under a system of free trade, the aggregate crop of South

Carolina could be exchanged for a larger quantity of manufactures, by at least one third, than it can be now exchanged for under the protecting system. It is no less evident, that the value of that crop is diminished by the protecting system very nearly, if not precisely, to the extent that the aggregate quantity of manufactures which can be obtained for it, is diminished. It is, indeed, strictly and philosophically true, that the quantity of consumable commodities which can be obtained for the cotton and rice annually produced by the industry of the State, is the precise measure of their aggregate value. But for the prevalent and habitual error of confounding the money price with the exchangeable value of our agricultural staples, these propositions would be regarded as self-evident. If the protecting duties were repealed, one hundred bales of cotton, or one hundred barrels of rice, would purchase as large a quantity of manufactures, as one hundred and fifty will now purchase. The annual income of the State, its means of purchasing and consuming the necessaries and comforts and luxuries of life, would be increased in a corresponding degree.

Almost the entire cotton crop of South Carolina, amounting annually to more than six millions of dollars, is ultimately exchanged either for foreign manufactures, subject to protecting duties, or for similar domestic manufactures. The natural value of that crop would be all the manufactures which we could obtain for it, under a system of unrestricted commerce. The artificial value, produced by the unjust and unconstitutional legislation of Congress, is only such part of those manufactures as will remain after paying a duty of fifty per cent. to the Government, or, to speak with more precision, to the Northern manufactuTo make this obvious to the humblest comprehension, let it be supposed that the whole of the present crop should be exchanged by the planters themselves, for those foreign manufactures, for which it is destined, by the inevitable course of trade, to be ultimately exchanged, either by themselves or their agents. Let it be also assumed, in conformity with the facts of the case, that New Jersey, for example, produces of the very same description of manufactures, a quantity equal to that which is purchased by the cotton crop of South Carolina. We have, then, two States of the same confederacy, bound to bear an

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