stitution. But
his object is to show that there is nothing inconsistent in the
resolutions of 1798 with these opinions upon the sovereignty of the
United States; that he held them just as strongly then as he held them
now; and that they, and he as their author, looked to the States as a
whole, not to a single State, to find and apply a remedy, in a
constitutional way, for an unconstitutional measure of which an
administration of the government might be guilty. His position is
maintained with all the acuteness, ingenuity, and logical skill which
mark his earlier writings. There is no sign of failure of mental power,
of which those accused him who could not answer him. Such an imputation
he resented with as much indignation as he did a charge of
inconsistency, which here could only mean falsehood. There is no
possibility, then, of misunderstanding his opinions during the last six
years of his life; and the world has no right to doubt his repeated and
earnest assurances that these were his opinions when he wrote the
resolutions of 1798. It can only be said that the construction he gave
them thirty years afterward is opposed to the universal understanding of
them at the time they were written.

But if his defense of himself be considered complete, it is not even
specious when presented on behalf of Jefferson. Mr. Madison wrote in
1830: "That the term 'nullification' in the Kentucky resolutions belongs
to those of 1799, with which Mr. Jefferson had nothing to do.... The
resolutions of 1798, drawn by him, contain neither that nor any
equivalent term." It was not then generally known, whether Mr. Madison
knew it or not, that one of the resolutions and part of another which
Jefferson wrote to be offered in the Kentucky legislature in 1798 were
omitted by Mr. Nicholas, and that therein was the assertion already
quoted,--"where powers are assumed which have not been delegated, a
nullification of the act is the rightful remedy." The next year, when
additional resolutions were offered by Mr. Breckenridge, this idea, in
similar though not in precisely the same language, was presented in the
words, "that a nullification by those sovereignties [the States] of all
unauthorized acts, done under color of that instrument, is the rightful
remedy." In 1832, this fact, on the authority of Jefferson's grandson
and executor, was made public; and, further, that another declaration of
Mr. Jefferson's in the resolution not used was an exhortation