armed force, the mandate of the
State in opposition to the mandate of the Federal authorities; and the
officer of Pennsylvania, acting under the mandate of the Governor and a
positive law of the State, was condemned for executing a law of the
State opposed to the mandate of the General Government, and only escaped
punishment by the pardon of President Madison: and thus falls the very
basis of the doctrine of nullification. Here is a commentary by Messrs.
Jefferson and Madison, demonstrating their entire concurrence with our
present Chief Magistrate. And, if any further evidence of Mr.
Jefferson's views were wanting, it is to be found in his letters,
already referred to, protesting against a separation of the Union, and
denying the right of a State to '_veto_' an act of Congress; and in many
other letters to be found in his memoirs, insisting upon the power even
of the old confederacy to exercise 'COERCION over its delinquent
members,' the States. 'Compulsion,' he says, 'was never so easy as in
our case, where a single frigate would levy on the commerce of a State
the deficiency of its contributions; nor more safe than in the hands of
_Congress_, which has _always_ shown that it would wait, as it ought to
do, to the last extremities, before it would exercise any of its powers
which are disagreeable.' Here, then, we find Mr. Jefferson most
distinctly admitting the power of Congress under the old, as in 1807 he
admitted under the present confederacy, to _compel a State_ by FORCE to
obey the laws of the Union. Why, then, is General Jackson denounced as a
tyrant, for doing that which his oath and the Constitution compel him to
do? Suppose any State, by its ordinance, should arrest the passage of
the mail through their limits, upon the pretext that the law was
unconstitutional; the acts of Congress place at the disposal of the
President the militia of any one or all of the States, or 'the land or
naval force of the United States', to _execute the law of the Union in
every State, by whomsoever resisted or opposed_. The Constitution and
his oath command him to execute the laws; he must execute them, and the
mail must pass on, though the edict of a single State should attempt to
arrest it by nullification or secession. Such, too, was the opinion of
Mr. Jefferson; and that illustrious patriot would have laid his head on
the block, and blessed the hand that severed it from his body, rather
than sever the Union by the promulgation of