procceded 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, on 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 these measures 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 burdensome 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, congratulated 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 inquire particularly how far this obligation is well founded. Entertaining, themselves, no doubt whatever, that the power of laying duties on imported foreign goods, with a view to any appropriation of them, which, in the discretion of the government, may be required by the common defence and general welfare, is given by the Constitution, the committee are also persuaded, that were this a doubtful point, or were it even conceded that the General Government has no such power, the proceedings of South Carolina would not, on that account, be any the more defensible. The objection to them is, that they propose an unconstitutional and illegal method of obtaining relief from a supposed political grievance. It is therefore unnecessary to inquire, whether this grievance be real or imaginary, since the objection, if substantiated, is equally valid in either contingen

cy.

Omitting, therefore, any consideration of the expediency or constitutionality of the laws imposing duties on imported foreign goods, the committee will confine themselves to the single inquiry, how far the proceedings of the Convention of South Carolina are consistent with the Constitution and laws of the country? Even in this restricted shape, the subject is far too extensive to be examined, in a full and satisfactory manner, within the limits assigned by usage to a document of this kind. The committee can only undertake to

present a few of the considerations that bear most strongly and obviously upon the leading points of the argument.

The suggestion that would probably first occur to an impartial mind, on examining the account of these proceedings, is the apparent want of consistency and precision in the reasoning and conduct of the Convention, admitting even the correctness of the general principles on which they profess to act. It would be natural to expect, that in a case of so novel a character, and of such extraordinary interest and importance, every step would be carefully guarded, and no conclusions drawn, which did not follow, in the strictest manner, from their supposed premises. This, however, is far from being the case. The committee have already remarked the difference between the theories of the Convention and the Legislature, as to the second step in the process of nullification.While the Convention appear to suppose that after a State has annulled an act of Congress, it becomes the duty of the General Government to apply to the States for a grant of the disputed power, the Legislature have addressed themselves directly to the States, and proposed a Convention. The want of consistency in the texture of the Ordinance, is not less apparent. The whole reasoning of that act, and the accompanying papers, supposes that the right of a State to annul an act of Congress, can only exist in the case of an assumption, by that body, of powers not delegated by the Constitution; and for the purpose of bringing the impost laws within this rule, the Convention attempt, at great length, to prove that they do, in fact, involve such an assumption. Thus far their conduct, if not justifiable, is consistent; but after first annulling the tariff laws, the Convention proceed, in open defiance of their own rules and reasoning, to annul an important provision of another law, which has never been regarded by any one as unconstitutional, and which the Convention themselves do not even pretend to represent as being so.While the judiciary law gives the right of appeal from the State courts to the United States, in all cases involving any question of the validity of an act of Congress, the Ordinance prohibits any such appeal in all cases involving any question of the validity of the acts of Congress which it professes to annul. This is done without even the ceremony of affirming, or attempting to prove, that this provision of the judiciary act involves an assumption of power not delegated by the Constitution.

This feature in the Ordinance renders it, perhaps, in some degree, superfluous, to examine the reasoning by which the Convention undertake to justify its leading provisions. If they can venture to annul one act of Congress, without even pretending to assert that it is unconstitutional, it is not easy to see why they should be at so much pains to make this out, in regard to another, before they subject it to the same process: nor does it seem to be very necessary to inquire, how far they succeed in establishing this proposition, when their proceedings so clearly show, that if it be necessary to their argument, it is in no way necessary to their action. But without enlarging upon this consideration, the committee will proceed to examine, very concisely, the nature of the reasoning by

which the Convention undertake to prove, that any one State has a right to annul an act of Congress, which, in the opinion of such State, involves an assumption of power not delegated by the Constitution. The substance of the argument is understood to be as follows:

The Constitution is a compact between the States, which were, at the time of forming it, and are now, distinct communities, politically independent of each other. It confers on the General Government, certain specific powers, and the assumption by that government of any power not so delegated, is a breach of the compact. But in this, as in all other cases of compacts or treaties between independent States, a breach of the compact by one party, exempts the rest from the obligation they were under to observe it: and each is, of course, the only judge for itself, whether the compact is, or is not observed.

Or, in still more concise language:

The States were independent of each other at the time when they formed the Constitution; therefore they are 'independent of each other now.

This argument appears to the committee to be defective in poth its parts. It is far from being a settled and acknowledged point, that the States can fairly be considered as having been absolutely independent of each other at the time when the present Constitution was formed; and if this were even admitted, it would by no means follow, that they possess, and may exercise under the Constitution, and consistently with it, the rights belonging to mutually and absolutely independent States.

1. It is far from being a settled point, that the States can fairly be considered as having been absolutely independent of each other at the time when the Constitution was formed and adopted. It is well known, that this is a question upon which the ablest statesmen and purest patriots in the country have differed, and at this moment continue to differ, in opinion. The President of the United States, in his late proclamation upon the subject of the proceedings of South Carolina, expressed his belief, that the Acts of Union which preceded the Declaration of Independence, had combined the States into ONE PEOPLE, and that it was in their joint capacity as such, that they formed the Constitution. His predecessor has publicly professed the same sentiment. On the other hand, Presidents Jefferson and Madison, with various other citizens of the highest respectability, many of whom had concurred in the forming of the Constitution, consider the States as having been, from the time of the Declaration of Independence until the adoption of the Constitution, distinct communities, entirely independent of each other.

This diversity of views, among individuals of equal talent and unsuspected integrity, will not appear very extraordinary, when it is recollected that during the period in question, the country was in a revolutionary state. Its condition was analagous to that of England during the interval between the overthrow of the arbitrary government or the Stuarts and the settlement of the Consti

tution in 1688; or that of France, between the destruction of the old monarchy in 1789, and the final sanction of the present charter, after the three great days of July, 1830. In both the cases alluded to, it is well known, that political institutions, of various and opposite characters, rapidly succeeded each other, and that neither country could be said, with propriety, to possess a regular and settled government. They were in a state of transition from one form of political existence to another, and this was substantially the condition of the United States from the Declaration of Independence until the adoption of the Constitution. It was not only a natural, but, as the committee conceive, a necessary result of this condition, that political events of different and even contradictory characters, should successively occur, and that individuals, as they have been led by circumstances to attach greater or less importance to one or another of these events, should draw different conclusions as the existing forms of government. On the one hand, the States acted, for many purposes, as distinct communities, claiming to be politically independent of each other; while, on the other hand, they organized a Union among themselves, with a Congress of Delegates at the head of it, who exercised most of the powers of a General Government. It would, perhaps, be difficult to reconcile all the acts and powers of Congress and the State Governments at that time, with any consistent and precise political theory; and the failure of the experiment tends to confirm the opinion, that the elements which entered into the structure of the old confederacy, were incoherent and self-contradictory. The committee are inclined to believe, as they have already remarked, that the future historian will consider the whole period in question as a revolutionary one, and the form of the government as unsettled and fluctuating, until it was finally fixed, for the first time by the adoption of the present Constitution.

2. But the committee deem it unnecessary to dwell upon this point, since, were it even admitted that the States, at the time when they formed the Constitution, were distinct communities, politically independent of each other, it would by no means follow, as the Convention of South-Carolina appear to suppose, that they are still in that condition, and that the Union is a League or Confederacy of mutually and absolutely independent States. The rights and obligations of the parties to a contract, are determined by its nature and terms, and not by their condition previously to its conclusion. As respects the latter point, the only question is, were the parties legally, or in cases when they are not subject to a common government, morally capable of making such a contract? If this question be answered in the affirmative, the previous condition of the parties, in other respects, is immaterial; and in order to ascertain to what the contract binds them, we have only to inquire what the contract is.

Now there can be no doubt, that independent States are morally as capable of forming themselves into a body politic, as independent individuals. A great proportion of the political societies which now exist, or of which we know the history, were consti