common counsels. Pennsylvania, for
example, yielded the right of laying imposts in her own ports, in
consideration that the new government, in which she was to have a share,
should possess the power of laying imposts on all the States. If South
Carolina now refuses to submit to this power, she breaks the condition
on which other States entered into the Union. She partakes of the common
counsels, and therein assists to bind others, while she refuses to be
bound herself. It makes no difference in the case, whether she does all
this without reason or pretext, or whether she sets up as a reason,
that, in her judgment, the acts complained of are unconstitutional. In
the judgment of other States, they are not so. It is nothing to them
that she offers some reason or some apology for her conduct, if it be
one which they do not admit. It is not to be expected that any State
will violate her duty without some plausible pretext. That would be too
rash a defiance of the opinion of mankind. But if it be a pretext which
lies in her own breast, if it be no more than an opinion which she says
she has formed, how can other States be satisfied with this? How can
they allow her to be judge of her own obligations? Or, if she may judge
of her obligations, may they not judge of their rights also? May not the
twenty-three entertain an opinion as well as the twenty-fourth? And if
it be their right, in their own opinion, as expressed in the common
council, to enforce the law against her, how is she to say that her
right and her opinion are to be every thing, and their right and their
opinion nothing?

Mr. President, if we are to receive the Constitution as the text, and
then to lay down in its margin the contradictory commentaries which have
been, and which maybe, made by different States, the whole page would be
a polyglot indeed. It would speak with as many tongues as the builders
of Babel, and in dialects as much confused, and mutually as
unintelligible. The very instance now before us presents a practical
illustration. The law of the last session is declared unconstitutional
in South Carolina, and obedience to it is refused. In other States, it
is admitted to be strictly constitutional. You walk over the limit of
its authority, therefore, when you pass a State line. On one side it is
law, on the other side a nullity; and yet it is passed by a common
government, having the same authority in all the States.

Such, Sir, are the inevitable re