ne must see that the
other States, in self-defense, must oppose it at all hazards.

These are the alternatives that are presented by the convention--a
repeal of all the acts for raising revenue, leaving the Government
without the means of support, or an acquiescence in the dissolution of
our Union by the secession of one of its members. When the first was
proposed, it was known that it could not be listened to for a moment. It
was known, if force was applied to oppose the execution of the laws,
that it must be repelled by force; that Congress could not, without
involving itself in disgrace and the country in ruin, accede to the
proposition; and yet if this is not done in a given day, or if any
attempt is made to execute the laws, the State is by the ordinance
declared to be out of the Union. The majority of a convention assembled
for the purpose have dictated these terms, or rather this rejection of
all terms, in the name of the people of South Carolina. It is true that
the governor of the State speaks of the submission of their grievances
to a convention of all the States, which, he says, they "sincerely and
anxiously seek and desire." Yet this obvious and constitutional mode of
obtaining the sense of the other States on the construction of the
federal compact, and amending it if necessary, has never been attempted
by those who have urged the State on to this destructive measure. The
State might have proposed the call for a general convention to the other
States, and Congress, if a sufficient number of them concurred, must
have called it. But the first magistrate of South Carolina, when he
expressed a hope that "on a review by Congress and the functionaries of
the General Government of the merits of the controversy" such a
convention will be accorded to them, must have known that neither
Congress nor any functionary of the General Government has authority to
call such a convention unless it be demanded by two-thirds of the
States. This suggestion, then, is another instance of the reckless
inattention to the provisions of the Constitution with which this crisis
has been madly hurried on, or of the attempt to persuade the people that
a constitutional remedy had been sought and refused. If the legislature
of South Carolina "anxiously desire" a general convention to consider
their complaints, why have they not made application for it in the way
the Constitution points out? The assertion that they "earnestly seek" it
is com