ature in regard to
the constitutionality of the law, as if the Legislature, one department
only of the Government of a single State, could annul all the laws of
the Union? Even South Carolina does not urge a doctrine so monstrous,
for she declares this can be done solely by the 'delegates' of the State
in 'solemn convention.' South Carolina finds, then, in the practice of
Virginia and Kentucky, no warrant for the doctrine of nullification. She
finds neither ordinance, nor test oaths, nor standing armies, nor packed
juries, nor secession, or threats of secession, from the Union. They
find Mr. Jefferson in that great emergency protesting against 'a
scission of the Union,' in any event; and the ordinance of South
Carolina would have received his unqualified abhorrence. But, if we are
asked to surrender the principles which alone can preserve the Union, on
the assumed authority of Mr. Jefferson and Mr. Madison, of Kentucky and
of Virginia--why do not the advocates of nullification tell us that Mr.
Jefferson, in 1821, as appears by his printed memoirs, emphatically
denied the right of a State to _veto_ an act of Congress; and Mr.
Madison, a surviving founder of the Constitution, and framer of the
Virginia resolutions, unequivocally denounces the doctrine of
nullification? And are they not safer guides than Messrs. McDuffie,
Calhoun, and Hamilton, the former of whom wrote and published in 1821,
and the latter deliberately sanctioned, in a laudatory preface, a series
of essays, denouncing this very doctrine of nullification as the
'_climax_ of political heresies'? Why do not those who would look to
Kentucky and Virginia as the only safe expositors of the Constitution
inform us also, that the great and patriotic commonwealth of Kentucky is
indignantly repelling the charge that nullification ever was sustained
by her authority? Why do they not point to the unanimous resolution of
the Virginia Legislature in 1810, declaring in the very case of a
nullification, by a law of Pennsylvania, of a power of the General
Government, that the Supreme Court of the Union is the tribunal,
'already provided by the Constitution of the United States, to decide
disputes between the State and Federal' authorities?' (See 'Sup. Rev.
Code of Virginia,' page 150.) These resolutions, directly affirming the
supremacy of the judgment of the Supreme Court of the Union over the
laws and judgment of a State, were adopted by Virginia within a few
months after