tain nothing making it perpetual, it subsists only
during the good pleasure of the parties, although no violation be
complained of. If, in the opinion of either party, it be violated, such
party may say that he will no longer fulfil its obligations on his part,
but will consider the whole league or compact at an end, although it
might be one of its stipulations that it should be perpetual. Upon this
principle, the Congress of the United States, in 1798, declared null and
void the treaty of alliance between the United States and France, though
it professed to be a perpetual alliance.

If the violation of the league be accompanied with serious injuries, the
suffering party, being sole judge of his own mode and measure of
redress, has a right to indemnify himself by reprisals on the offending
members of the league; and reprisals, if the circumstances of the case
require it, may be followed by direct, avowed, and public war.

The necessary import of the resolution, therefore, is, that the United
States are connected only by a league; that it is in the good pleasure
of every State to decide how long she will choose to remain a member of
this league; that any State may determine the extent of her own
obligations under it, and accept or reject what shall be decided by the
whole; that she may also determine whether her rights have been
violated, what is the extent of the injury done her, and what mode and
measure of redress her wrongs may make it fit and expedient for her to
adopt. The result of the whole is, that any State may secede at
pleasure; that any State may resist a law which she herself may choose
to say exceeds the power of Congress; and that, as a sovereign power,
she may redress her own grievances, by her own arm, at her own
discretion. She may make reprisals; she may cruise against the property
of other members of the league; she may authorize captures, and make
open war.

If, Sir, this be our political condition, it is time the people of the
United States understood it. Let us look for a moment to the practical
consequences of these opinions. One State, holding an embargo law
unconstitutional, may declare her opinion, and withdraw from the Union.
_She_ secedes. Another, forming and expressing the same judgment on a
law laying duties on imports, may withdraw also. _She_ secedes. And as,
in her opinion, money has been taken out of the pockets of her citizens
illegally, under pretence of this law, and as she has p