ieties for others. I think you
have shown this clearly, and in so doing have demonstrated the
fallacy of the principle on which either nullification or the right
of peaceful, constitutional secession is asserted.

"The time is arrived when these truths must be more generally
spoken, or our Union is at an end. The idea of complete
sovereignty of the State converts our government into a league,
and, if carried into practice, dissolves the Union.

"I am, dear sir,

"Yours affectionately,

"J. MARSHALL.

"HUMPHREY MARSHALL, ESQ.,

"FRANKFORT, KY."]

The Nullifiers hailed with pretended satisfaction the report from the
House Committee on Ways and Means of a Bill making great reductions and
equalizations of Tariff duties, as a measure complying with their
demands, and postponed the execution of the Ordinance of Nullification
until the adjournment of Congress; and almost immediately afterward Mr.
Clay's Compromise Tariff Act of 1833 "whereby one tenth of the excess
over twenty per cent. of each and every existing impost was to be taken
off at the close of that year; another tenth two years thereafter; so
proceeding until the 30th of June, 1842, when all duties should be
reduced to a maximum of twenty per cent."--[Says Mr. Greeley, in his
History aforesaid.]--agreed to by Calhoun and other Nullifiers, was
passed, became a law without the signature of President Jackson, and
South Carolina once more became to all appearances a contented,
law-abiding State of the Union.

But after-events proved conclusively that the enactment of this
Compromise Tariff was a terrible blunder, if not a crime. Jackson had
fully intended to hang Calhoun and his nullifying coadjutors if they
persisted in their Treason. He knew that they had only seized upon the
Tariff laws as a pretext with which to justify Disunion, and prophesied
that "the next will be the Slavery or Negro question." Jackson's
forecast was correct. Free Trade, Slavery and Secession were from that
time forward sworn allies; and the ruin wrought to our industries by the
disasters of 1840, plainly traceable to that Compromise Tariff measure
of 1833, was only to be supplemented by much greater ruin and disasters
caused by the Free Trade Tariff of 1846--and to be followed by the armed
Rebellion of the Free Trade and Pro-Slavery States of the South in 1861,
in a mad attempt to destroy the Union.