ates, and yet not
expect to see a dismemberment of the entire government, appears to me
the wildest illusion, and the most extravagant folly. The gentleman
seems not conscious of the direction or the rapidity of his own course.
The current of his opinions sweeps him along, he knows not whither. To
begin with nullification, with the avowed intent, nevertheless, not to
proceed to secession, dismemberment, and general revolution, is as if
one were to take the plunge of Niagara, and cry out that he would stop
half-way down. In the one case, as in the other, the rash adventurer
must go to the bottom of the dark abyss below, were it not that that
abyss has no discovered bottom.

Nullification, if successful, arrests the power of the law, absolves
citizens from their duty, subverts the foundation both of protection and
obedience, dispenses with oaths and obligations of allegiance, and
elevates another authority to supreme command. Is not this revolution?
And it raises to supreme command four-and-twenty distinct powers, each
professing to be under a general government, and yet each setting its
laws at defiance at pleasure. Is not this anarchy, as well as
revolution? Sir, the Constitution of the United States was received as a
whole, and for the whole country. If it cannot stand altogether, it
cannot stand in parts; and if the laws cannot be executed everywhere,
they cannot long be executed anywhere. The gentleman very well knows
that all duties and imposts must be uniform throughout the country. He
knows that we cannot have one rule or one law for South Carolina, and
another for other States. He must see, therefore, and does see, and
every man sees, that the only alternative is a repeal of the laws
throughout the whole Union, or their execution in Carolina as well as
elsewhere. And this repeal is demanded because a single State interposes
her veto, and threatens resistance! The result of the gentleman's
opinion, or rather the very text of his doctrine, is, that no act of
Congress can bind all the States, the constitutionality of which is not
admitted by all; or, in other words, that no single State is bound,
against its own dissent, by a law of imposts. This is precisely the evil
experienced under the old Confederation, and for remedy of which this
Constitution was adopted. The leading object in establishing this
government, an object forced on the country by the condition of the
times and the absolute necessity of the law, was