to give to Congress
power to lay and collect imposts _without the consent of particular
States_. The Revolutionary debt remained unpaid; the national treasury
was bankrupt; the country was destitute of credit; Congress issued its
requisitions on the States, and the States neglected them; there was no
power of coercion but war, Congress could not lay imposts, or other
taxes, by its own authority; the whole general government, therefore,
was little more than a name. The Articles of Confederation, as to
purposes of revenue and finance, were nearly a dead letter. The country
sought to escape from this condition, at once feeble and disgraceful, by
constituting a government which should have power, of itself, to lay
duties and taxes, and to pay the public debt, and provide for the
general welfare; and to lay these duties and taxes in all the States,
without asking the consent of the State governments. This was the very
power on which the new Constitution was to depend for all its ability to
do good; and without it, it can be no government, now or at any time.
Yet, Sir, it is precisely against this power, so absolutely
indispensable to the very being of the government, that South Carolina
directs her ordinance. She attacks the government in its authority to
raise revenue, the very main-spring of the whole system; and if she
succeed, every movement of that system must inevitably cease. It is of
no avail that she declares that she does not resist the law as a revenue
law, but as a law for protecting manufactures. It is a revenue law; it
is the very law by force of which the revenue is collected; if it be
arrested in any State, the revenue ceases in that State; it is, in a
word, the sole reliance of the government for the means of maintaining
itself and performing its duties.

Mr. President, the alleged right of a State to decide constitutional
questions for herself necessarily leads to force, because other States
must have the same right, and because different States will decide
differently; and when these questions arise between States, if there be
no superior power, they can be decided only by the law of force. On
entering into the Union, the people of each State gave up a part of
their own power to make laws for themselves, in consideration, that, as
to common objects, they should have a part in making laws for other
States. In other words, the people of all the States agreed to create a
common government, to be conducted by