old opponents,
whose conclusions were fairly drawn from their premises, while his
premises ought to have led him to opposite conclusions. The gentleman
has told us that the new-fangled doctrines, as he chooses to call them,
have brought State rights into disrepute. I must tell him, in reply,
that what he calls new-fangled are but the doctrines of '98; and that it
is he (Mr. Rives), and others with him, who, professing these doctrines,
have degraded them by explaining away their meaning and efficacy. He
(Mr. R.) has disclaimed, in behalf of Virginia, the authorship of
nullification. I will not dispute that point. If Virginia chooses to
throw away one of her brightest ornaments, she must not hereafter
complain that it has become the property of another. But while I have,
as a representative of Carolina, no right to complain of the disavowal
of the Senator from Virginia, I must believe that he (Mr. R.) has done
his native State great injustice by declaring on this floor, that when
she gravely resolved, in '98, that "in cases of deliberate and dangerous
infractions of the Constitution, the States, as parties to the compact,
have the right, and are in duty bound, to interpose to arrest the
progress of the evil, and to maintain within their respective limits the
authorities, rights, and liberties appertaining to them," she meant no
more than to proclaim the right to protest and to remonstrate. To
suppose that, in putting forth so solemn a declaration, which she
afterward sustained by so able and elaborate an argument, she meant no
more than to assert what no one had ever denied, would be to suppose
that the State had been guilty of the most egregious trifling that ever
was exhibited on so solemn an occasion.

THOMAS H. BENTON, OF MISSOURI. (BORN 1782, DIED 1858.)

ON THE EXPUNGING RESOLUTION

--UNITED STATES SENATE, JANUARY 12, 1837

MR. PRESIDENT:

It is now near three years since the resolve was adopted by the Senate,
which it is my present motion to expunge from the journal. At the moment
that this resolve was adopted, I gave notice of my intention to move to
expunge it; and then expressed my confident belief that the motion would
eventually prevail. That expression of confidence was not an ebullition
of vanity, or a presumptuous calculation, intended to accelerate the
event it affected to foretell. It was not a vain boast, or an idle
assumption, but was the result of a deep conviction of the injustice
done