212 THE PRESENT CRISIS IN THE UNITED STATES, 



the confederate States, may be said to raise an absurd pretension. 

 But the convention of South Carolina has not committed this logical 

 inconsistency ; in refusing to execute the Tariff,, in threatening to 

 resist, she has expressed her will to separate from the union, in the 

 event of coercive measures being resorted to. The question is there- 

 fore altered, and hinges upon the following considerations. In rati- 

 fying a treaty of indefinite union, did the representatives of South 

 Carolina bind their descendants ad etcrnitatem, whatever might 

 be their wants, under every new combination of circumstances ? Or 

 did they give to the other States the right of constraining them by 

 force to remain members of the confederation, which they would find 

 a source of misery and oppression? These, it must be confessed, are 

 knotty questions, on which we will not venture an opinion, while 

 their solution by force of arms we feel is pregnant with danger. 



But it does not appear that things have yet reached this fatal ex- 

 tremity in the United States, for it is not the first time that symp- 

 toms of division have manifested themselves. Such an extremity 

 as would disfigure the magnificent character which hitherto the 

 American Union has maintained, we hope may be yet far distant. 

 The enlightened solicitude of the American government, and the 

 sound sense and patriotism of the people will yet, we predict, carry 

 the vessel of state safely through the shoals that have suddenly 

 crossed her course. General Jackson, in his admirable proclamation, 

 does not found his arguments upon that diabolical principle so com- 

 mon among the governments of Europe, that the government can do 

 no wrong but while he threatens to enforce obedience, still uses the 

 language of conciliation nay, he even hints at a modification of the 

 Tariff system, which may have been carried too far, deprecating only 

 the unconstitutional act of the convention of South Carolina. 



For it appears to be admitted on all hands, that the actual policy 

 or unpolicy of the Tariff itself as a commercial question, is wholly 

 unconnected with the point at issue between the general government 

 and the refactory state. Congress wished the Tariff to be wise and 

 just; the convention of South Carolina have by a large majority 

 willed it to be unjust, iniquitious, and oppressive the question is 

 not whether the Tariff be just or oppressive, but whether the act 

 of the convention be constitutional. The chief force of the argument 

 contained in the proclamation is directed against the assumption of 

 the right of resistance on the part of any individual State, or portion 

 of the union, to laws which have been passed by the authority of the 

 collective legislature. 



The attrition of these two principles in the American constitution, 

 teaches us at once the inability of human ingenuity ; and that every 

 human constitution carries within itself the seeds of its own destruction. 

 The mighty forces of local interests and discordant possessions, will 

 gradually dissolve the friendly attachments and sense of common in- 

 terest, that have hitherto cemented the union ; interfering regula- 

 tions of trade, and interfering claims and interests of territory, will 

 as wealth and population increase, render it impossible to harmonize, 

 under one uniform system of government, the discordant interests 

 and selfish passions of the various parts of that immense territory at 

 present embraced by the Federal Union : for like every thing that 



