nding South Carolina from
what he chooses to think an attack on her, he first quotes the example
of Massachusetts, and then denounces that example in good set terms.
This twofold purpose, not very consistent, one would think, with itself,
was exhibited more than once in the course of his speech. He referred,
for instance, to the Hartford Convention. Did he do this for authority,
or for a topic of reproach? Apparently for both, for he told us that he
should find no fault with the mere fact of holding such a convention,
and considering and discussing such questions as he supposes were then
and there discussed; but what rendered it obnoxious was its being held
at the time, and under the circumstances of the country then existing.
We were in a war, he said, and the country needed all our aid: the hand
of government required to be strengthened, not weakened; and patriotism
should have postponed such proceedings to another day. The thing itself,
then, is a precedent; the time and manner of it only, a subject of
censure.

Now, Sir, I go much further, on this point, than the honorable member.
Supposing, as the gentleman seems to do, that the Hartford Convention
assembled for any such purpose as breaking up the Union, because they
thought unconstitutional laws had been passed, or to consult on that
subject, or _to calculate the value of the Union_; supposing this to be
their purpose, or any part of it, then I say the meeting itself was
disloyal, and was obnoxious to censure, whether held in time of peace or
time of war, or under whatever circumstances. The material question is
the _object_. Is dissolution the _object_? If it be, external
circumstances may make it a more or less aggravated case, but cannot
affect the principle. I do not hold, therefore, Sir, that the Hartford
Convention was pardonable, even to the extent of the gentleman's
admission, if its objects were really such as have been imputed to it.
Sir, there never was a time, under any degree of excitement, in which
the Hartford Convention, or any other convention, could have maintained
itself one moment in New England, if assembled for any such purpose as
the gentleman says would have been an allowable purpose. To hold
conventions to decide constitutional law! To try the binding validity of
statutes by votes in a convention! Sir, the Hartford Convention, I
presume, would not desire that the honorable gentleman should be their
defender or advocate, if he puts their ca