d was a zealous advocate of the
principles which resulted in the election of Mr. Jefferson, and the
great political revolution of 1800; and if any one man has done more to
support all the just rights of the States than General Jackson, that man
is not known to me. It is now nearly ten years since I had the honor to
propose the name of this illustrious patriot to the first meeting of a
portion of the Democracy of Pennsylvania as a candidate for the
presidency, and I will not hear him denounced as a Federalist without,
at least, an effort in his defence. Who made the right of secession as a
constitutional right of every State an article in the creed of the
Democratic party, and by what authority? By what reasoning is
nullification denounced, and secession supported, as a constitutional
remedy? If there be any real difference, the former is check, and the
latter a check-mate, to the movements of the Government of the Union.
The same reasoning demonstrates the fallacy of nullification or
secession, with equal clearness and certainty. A State cannot nullify a
law of the Union, because the _Constitution_ and _laws_ of the State are
made _subordinate_ to the Constitution and laws of the Union, by a
compact to which the people of each State were one party, and bound
themselves to the people of all the other States, as the other party.
One State cannot change the compact, or any of its terms or provisions,
yet it may rescind the compact at pleasure! It would be abuse of
language to call such an instrument a _compact_, because it would be
obligatory upon none. Without the constitutional right to nullify a law
of Congress by the ultimate judgment of the State against it, how could
the constitutional power of secession arise? It is said, from a
violation of the Constitution of the Union by the General Government;
but if a State has not, as the opponents of nullification admit, any
right to pass ultimate judgment on the constitutionality of an act of
Congress, how can it make the supposed violation of the Constitution by
the General Government the basis of the act of secession? The preamble
of the ordinance on which the State would rest its act of secession, by
asserting the unconstitutionality of an act of Congress, would be swept
away by the non-existence of a power in a single State to pronounce
ultimate judgment upon the acts of the Government of the Union; and the
preamble and ordinance of secession would fall together. Thus, whe