212 JAMES MADISON 



tion of it does not deserve to be ranked along with 

 Mr. Madison's best work in constructive states- 

 manship; but it certainly contained no logical 

 basis for what its author unsparingly denounced 

 as the " twin heresies " of nullification and seces- 

 sion. 



With regard to the Kentucky resolutions the case is 

 different. They certainly furnished a method of stat- 

 ing the case, as to the relations between the states and 

 the federal government, of which Calhoun afterward 

 made use in developing his theory of nullification. 

 There has been much interesting discussion as to how 

 far Jefferson is to be held responsible for this view. 

 But this discussion has generally proceeded upon the 

 tacit and perhaps unconscious assumption that in 

 1 798 such an idea as that of nullification was a novel 

 heresy, and that in lending countenance to it, even in 

 the slightest degree, Jefferson figured as in some sense 

 the inventor of a notion which bore fruit in the seces- 

 sion movement of 1861 and the great Civil War. A 

 dispassionate student of history can have no wish to 

 absolve Jefferson or any one else from the proper 

 responsibility for his political acts. But the way in 

 which this case is usually stated, and still more the 

 mood in which it is apt to be stated, is not strictly 

 historical. It would be more instructive to bear in 

 mind that, in 1798, before Marshall's career as chief 

 justice had begun, the functions of the Supreme Court 

 and its efficiency in checking usurpations of power 

 were as yet mere matter of theory and very imperfectly 

 realized by the people ; that the new government was 

 as yet an experiment believed by half the people to 

 be a very hazardous experiment ; that thus far its 



