rejected, without revolution. But that is what I deny; and what I say
is, that no man can state the case with historical accuracy, and in
constitutional language, without showing that the honorable gentleman's
right, as asserted in his conclusion, is a revolutionary right merely;
that it does not and cannot exist under the Constitution, or agreeably
to the Constitution, but can come into existence only when the
Constitution is overthrown. This is the reason, Sir, which makes it
necessary to abandon the use of constitutional language for a new
vocabulary, and to substitute, in the place of plain historical facts, a
series of assumptions. This is the reason why it is necessary to give
new names to things, to speak of the Constitution, not as a
constitution, but as a compact, and of the ratifications by the people,
not as ratifications, but as acts of accession.

Sir, I intend to hold the gentleman to the written record. In the
discussion of a constitutional question, I intend to impose upon him the
restraints of constitutional language. The people have ordained a
Constitution; can they reject it without revolution? They have
established a form of government; can they overthrow it without
revolution? These are the true questions.

Allow me now, Mr. President, to inquire further into the extent of the
propositions contained in the resolutions, and their necessary
consequences.

Where sovereign communities are parties, there is no essential
difference between a compact, a confederation, and a league. They all
equally rest on the plighted faith of the sovereign party. A league, or
confederacy, is but a subsisting or continuing treaty.

The gentleman's resolutions, then, affirm, in effect, that these
twenty-four United States are held together only by a subsisting treaty,
resting for its fulfilment and continuance on no inherent power of its
own, but on the plighted faith of each State; or, in other words, that
our Union is but a league; and, as a consequence from this proposition,
they further affirm that, as sovereigns are subject to no superior
power, the States must judge, each for itself, of any alleged violation
of the league; and if such violation be supposed to have occurred, each
may adopt any mode or measure of redress which it shall think proper.

Other consequences naturally follow, too, from the main proposition. If
a league between sovereign powers have no limitation as to the time of
its duration, and con