it does, it affirms a proposition which would effectually repeal all
constitutional and all legal obligations. The Constitution declares,
that every public officer, in the State governments as well as in the
general government, shall take an oath to support the Constitution of
the United States. This is all. Would it not have cast an air of
ridicule on the whole provision, if the Constitution had gone on to add
the words, "as he understands it"? What could come nearer to a solemn
farce, than to bind a man by oath, and still leave him to be his own
interpreter of his own obligation? Sir, those who are to execute the
laws have no more a license to construe them for themselves, than those
whose only duty is to obey them. Public officers are bound to support
the Constitution; private citizens are bound to obey it; and there is no
more indulgence granted to the public officer to support the
Constitution only _as he understands it_, than to a private citizen to
obey it only _as he understands it_, and what is true of the
Constitution, in this respect, is equally true of any law. Laws are to
be executed, and to be obeyed, not as individuals may interpret them,
but according to public, authoritative interpretation and adjudication.
The sentiment of the message would abrogate the obligation of the whole
criminal code. If every man is to judge of the Constitution and the laws
for himself, if he is to obey and support them only as he may say he
understands them, a revolution, I think, would take place in the
administration of justice; and discussions about the law of treason,
murder, and arson should be addressed, not to the judicial bench, but to
those who might stand charged with such offences. The object of
discussion should be, if we run out this notion to its natural extent,
to enlighten the culprit himself how he ought to understand the law.

Mr. President, how is it possible that a sentiment so wild, and so
dangerous, so encouraging to all who feel a desire to oppose the laws,
and to impair the Constitution, should have been uttered by the
President of the United States at this eventful and critical moment? Are
we not threatened with dissolution of the Union? Are we not told that
the laws of the government shall be openly and directly resisted? Is not
the whole country looking, with the utmost anxiety, to what may be the
result of these threatened courses? And at this very moment, so full of
peril to the state, the chief m