rtion to your exports, not to your consumption of imported
articles. Your pride was roused by the assertion that a submission to
those laws was a state of vassalage and that resistance to them was
equal in patriotic merit to the opposition our fathers offered to the
oppressive laws of Great Britain. You were told that this opposition
might be peaceably, might be constitutionally, made; that you might
enjoy all the advantages of the Union and bear none of its burthens.
Eloquent appeals to your passions, to your State pride, to your native
courage, to your sense of real injury, were used to prepare you for the
period when the mask which concealed the hideous features of _disunion_
should be taken off. It fell, and you were made to look with complacency
on objects which not long since you would have regarded with horror.
Look back to the arts which have brought you to this state; look forward
to the consequences to which it must inevitably lead! Look back to what
was first told you as an inducement to enter into this dangerous course.
The great political truth was repeated to you that you had the
revolutionary right of resisting all laws that were palpably
unconstitutional and intolerably oppressive. It was added that the right
to nullify a law rested on the same principle, but that it was a
peaceable remedy. This character which was given to it made you receive
with too much confidence the assertions that were made of the
unconstitutionally of the law and its oppressive effects. Mark, my
fellow-citizens, that by the admission of your leaders the
unconstitutionality must be _palpable_, or it will not justify either
resistance or nullification. What is the meaning of the word _palpable_
in the sense in which it is here used? That which is apparent to
everyone; that which no man of ordinary intellect will fail to perceive.
Is the unconstitutionality of these laws of that description? Let those
among your leaders who once approved and advocated the principle of
protective duties answer the question; and let them choose whether they
will be considered as incapable then of perceiving that which must have
been apparent to every man of common understanding, or as imposing upon
your confidence and endeavoring to mislead you now. In either case they
are unsafe guides in the perilous path they urge you to tread. Ponder
well on this circumstance, and you will know how to appreciate the
exaggerated language they address to you. They are