volution which
overturns, or controls, or successfully resists, the existing public
authority; that which arrests the exercise of the supreme power; that
which introduces a new paramount authority into the rule of the State.
Now, Sir, this is the precise object of nullification. It attempts to
supersede the supreme legislative authority. It arrests the arm of the
executive magistrate. It interrupts the exercise of the accustomed
judicial power. Under the name of an ordinance, it declares null and
void, within the State, all the revenue laws of the United States. Is
not this revolutionary? Sir, so soon as this ordinance shall be carried
into effect, _a revolution_ will have commenced in South Carolina. She
will have thrown off the authority to which her citizens have heretofore
been subject. She will have declared her own opinions and her own will
to be above the laws and above the power of those who are intrusted with
their administration. If she makes good these declarations, she is
revolutionized. As to her, it is as distinctly a change of the supreme
power as the American Revolution of 1776. That revolution did not
subvert government in all its forms. It did not subvert local laws and
municipal administrations. It only threw off the dominion of a power
claiming to be superior, and to have a right, in many important
respects, to exercise legislative authority. Thinking this authority to
have been usurped or abused, the American Colonies, now the United
States, bade it defiance, and freed themselves from it by means of a
revolution. But that revolution left them with their own municipal laws
still, and the forms of local government. If Carolina now shall
effectually resist the laws of Congress; if she shall be her own judge,
take her remedy into her own hands, obey the laws of the Union when she
pleases and disobey them when she pleases, she will relieve herself from
a paramount power as distinctly as the American Colonies did the same
thing in 1776. In other words, she will achieve, as to herself, a
revolution.

But, Sir, while practical nullification in South Carolina would be, as
to herself, actual and distinct revolution, its necessary tendency must
also be to spread revolution, and to break up the Constitution, as to
all the other States. It strikes a deadly blow at the vital principle of
the whole Union. To allow State resistance to the laws of Congress to be
rightful and proper, to admit nullification in some St