ouses, this Union would, in all probability, have been scattered to
the four winds. I ask the gentleman, therefore, to apply his principles
to that case; I ask him to come forth and declare, whether, in his
opinion, the New England States would have been justified in interfering
to break up the embargo system under the conscientious opinions which
they held upon it? Had they a right to annul that law? Does he admit or
deny? If what is thought palpably unconstitutional in South Carolina
justifies that State in arresting the progress of the law, tell me
whether that which was thought palpably unconstitutional also in
Massachusetts would have justified her in doing the same thing. Sir, I
deny the whole doctrine. It has not a foot of ground in the Constitution
to stand on. No public man of reputation ever advanced it in
Massachusetts in the warmest times, or could maintain himself upon it
there at any time.

I wish now, Sir, to make a remark upon the Virginia resolutions of 1798.
I cannot undertake to say how these resolutions were understood by those
who passed them. Their language is not a little indefinite. In the case
of the exercise by Congress of a dangerous power not granted to them,
the resolutions assert the right, on the part of the State, to interfere
and arrest the progress of the evil. This is susceptible of more than
one interpretation. It may mean no more than that the States may
interfere by complaint and remonstrance, or by proposing to the people
an alteration of the Federal Constitution. This would all be quite
unobjectionable. Or it may be that no more is meant than to assert the
general right of revolution, as against all governments, in cases of
intolerable oppression. This no one doubts, and this, in my opinion, is
all that he who framed the resolutions could have meant by it; for I
shall not readily believe that he was ever of opinion that a State,
under the Constitution and in conformity with it, could, upon the ground
of her own opinion of its unconstitutionality, however clear and
palpable she might think the case, annul a law of Congress, so far as it
should operate on herself by her own legislative power.

I must now beg to ask, Sir, Whence is this supposed right of the States
derived? Where do they find the power to interfere with the laws of the
Union? Sir, the opinion which the honorable gentleman maintains is a
notion founded in a total misapprehension, in my judgment, of the origin
of this