answer; and
consequently every man is _disposed_ to agree with his fellows, and,
if he cannot agree, to compromise. "Not at all." The chief reason why
juries generally agree is, that they are not interested in the matter
in dispute. The law of justice is so plainly written in the human
heart, that the fair thing is usually obvious to disinterested minds,
or can be made so. It is interest, it is rivalry, that blinds us to
what is right; and Mr. Calhoun's problem is to render "antagonistic"
interests unanimous. We cannot, therefore, accept this illustration as
a case in point.

Secondly, Poland. Poland is not the country which an American would
naturally visit to gain political wisdom. Mr. Calhoun, however,
repairs thither, and brings home the fact, that in the turbulent Diet
of that unhappy kingdom every member had an absolute veto upon every
measure. Nay, more: no king could be elected without the unanimous
vote of an assembly of one hundred and fifty thousand persons. Yet
Poland lasted two centuries! The history of those two centuries is a
sufficient comment upon Mr Calhoun's system, to say nothing of the
final catastrophe, which Mr. Calhoun confesses was owing to "the
extreme to which the principle was carried." A sound principle cannot
be carried to an unsafe extreme; it is impossible for a man to be too
right. If it is right for South Carolina to control and nullify the
United States, it is right for any one man in South Carolina to
control and nullify South Carolina. One of the tests of a system is to
ascertain where it will carry us if it _is_ pushed to the uttermost
extreme. Mr. Calhoun gave his countrymen this valuable information
when he cited the lamentable case of Poland.

From Poland the author descends to the Six Nations, the federal
council of which was composed of forty-two members, each of whom had
an absolute veto upon every measure. Nevertheless, this confederacy,
he says, became the most powerful and the most united of all the
Indian nations. He omits to add, that it was the facility with which
this council could be wielded by the French and English in turn, that
hastened the grinding of the Six Nations to pieces between those two
millstones.

Rome is Mr. Calhoun's next illustration. The _Tribunus Plebis_, he
observes, had a veto upon the passage of all laws and upon the
execution of all laws, and thus prevented the oppression of the
plebeians by the patricians. To show the inapplicability of thi