I omit all consideration of the minor vices of the act—great and flagrant in themselves, but subordinate in comparison to the mischiefs done to the frame of our government. At any other time these vices of matter, and manner, would have been crushing to a bill. No bill containing a tithe of the vices, crowded into this one, could ever have got through Congress before. The overthrow of the old revenue principle, that duties were to be levied on luxuries, and not on necessaries—substitution of universal ad valorems to the exclusion of all specific duties—the substitution of the home for the foreign valuation—the abolition of all discrimination upon articles in the imposition of duties—the preposterous stipulation against protection, while giving protection, and even in new and unheard of forms; all these were flagrant vices of the bill, no one of which could ever have been carried through in a bill before; and which perished in this one before they arrived at their period of operation. The year 1842 was to have been the jubilee of all these inventions, and set them all off in their career of usefulness; but that year saw all these fine anticipations fail! saw the high protective policy re-established, more burthensome than ever: but of this hereafter. Then the vices in the passage of the bill, being a political, not a legislative action—dominated by an outside interest of manufacturers—and openly carried in the Senate by a douceur to some men, not in "Kendal Green," but Kendal cotton. Yet it was received by the country as a deliverance, and the ostensible authors of it greeted as public benefactors; and their work declared by legislatures to be sacred and inviolable, and every citizen doomed to political outlawry that did not give in his adhesion, and bind himself to the perpetuity of the act. I was one of those who refused this adhesion—who continued to speak of the act as I thought—and who, in a few years, saw it sink into neglect and oblivion—die without the solace of pity or sorrow—and go into the grave without mourners or witnesses, or a stone to mark the place of its interment.
CHAPTER LXXXVII.
VIRGINIA RESOLUTIONS OF '98-'99—DISABUSED OF THEIR SOUTH CAROLINA INTERPRETATION—1. UPON THEIR OWN WORDS—2. UPON CONTEMPORANEOUS INTERPRETATION.
The debate in the Senate, in 1830, on Mr. Foot's resolutions, has been regarded as the dawn of those ideas which, three years later, under the name of "nullification," but with the character and bearing the seeds of disorganization and civil war, agitated and endangered the Union. In that debate, Mr. Hayne, as heretofore stated, quoted the third clause of the Virginia resolutions of 1798, as the extent of the doctrines he intended to avow. Though Mr. Webster, at the time, gave a different and more portentous interpretation to Mr. Hayne's course of argument, I did not believe that Mr. Hayne purposed to use those resolutions to any other effect than that intended by their authors and adopters; and they, I well knew, never supposed any right in a State of the Union, of its own motion, to annul an act of Congress, or resist its operation. Soon after the discussion of 1830, however, nullification assumed its name, with a clear annunciation of its purpose, namely, to maintain an inherent right in a State to annul the acts of the federal government, and resist their operation, in any case in which the State might judge an act of Congress to exceed the limits of the constitution. And to support this disorganizing doctrine, the resolutions of 1798, were boldly and perseveringly appealed to, and attempted to be wrested from their real intent. Nor is this effort yet abandoned; nor can we expect it to be whilst nullification still exists, either avowed or covert. The illustrious authorship of the Resolutions of 1798; the character and reputation of the legislators who adopted them; their general acceptance by the republican party, the influence they exercised, not only on questions of the day, but on the fate of parties, and in shaping the government itself, all combine to give them importance, and a high place in public esteem; and would go far to persuade the country that nullification was right, if they were nullification. In connection, therefore, with the period and events in which nullification had its rise, the necessity is imposed of an examination into the scope and objects of those resolutions; and the same reasons that have made, and make, the partisans of nullification so urgent to identify their fallacies with the resolutions, must make every patriot solicitous for the vindication of them and their author and adopters from any such affinity.
Fortunately, the material is at hand, and abundant. The resolutions are vindicated on their text alone; and contemporaneous authentic interpretation, and the reiterated, earnest—even indignant—disclaimers of the illustrious author himself, utterly repudiate the intent that nullification attempts to impute to them. I propose, therefore, to treat them in these three aspects:
I. Vindicated on their text.
The clause of the resolutions, chiefly relied on as countenancing nullification, is the third resolution of the series, and is as follows:
"That this assembly doth explicitly and peremptorily declare that it views the powers of the federal government, as resulting from the compact, to which the States are parties, as limited by the plain sense and intention of the instrument constituting that compact; and that, in case of a deliberate, palpable, and dangerous exercise of other powers not granted by the said compact, the States, who are the parties thereto, have the right, and are in duty bound, to interpose for arresting the progress of the evil, and for maintaining, within their respective limits, the authorities, rights, and liberties appertaining to them."
The right and duty of interposition is certainly here claimed for the States, in case of a "deliberate, palpable, and dangerous assumption of powers, by the federal government;" but, looking alone to the words of the text, it is an unreasonable inference, that forcible or nullifying interposition is meant. The word does not import resistance, but rather the contrary; and can only be understood in a hostile sense, when the connection in which it is used necessarily implies force. Such is not the case in this resolution; and no one has a right to suppose that, if its authors had intended to assert a principle of such transcendent importance, as that the States were severally possessed of the right to annul an act of Congress, and resist its execution, they would not have used words to declare that meaning explicitly, or, that they would intimate covertly a doctrine they dared not avow.