A Biography of Henry Clay, the Senator from Kentucky / Containing Also, a Complete Report of All His Speeches; Selections From His Private Correspondence; Eulogies in the Senate and House; and a Poem, by George D. Prentice, Esq.

by Unknown

She is oppressed by better prices for that staple than she could command, if the system to which they object did not exist.

She is oppressed by the option of purchasing cheaper and betterarticles, the produce of the hands of American freemen, instead of dearer and worse articles, the produce of the hands of British subjects.

She is oppressed by the measures of a government in which she has had, for many years, a larger proportion of power and influence, at home and abroad, than any state in the whole union, in comparison with the population.

A glance at the composition of the government of the union, will demonstrate the truth of this last proposition. In the senate of the United States, South Carolina having the presiding officer, exercises nearly one sixteenth instead of one twenty-fourth part of both its legislative and executive functions.

In both branches of congress, some of her citizens now occupy, as chairmen of committees, the most important and influential stations. In the supreme court of the United States, one of her citizens being a member, she has one seventh part, instead of about one twentieth, her equal proportion of the whole power vested in that tribunal. Until within a few months, she had nearly one third of all the missions of the first grade, from this to foreign countries. In a contingency, which is far from impossible, a citizen of South Carolina would instantly become charged with the administration of the whole of the vast power and patronage of the United States.

Yet her situation has been compared to that of a colony which has no voice in the laws enacted by the parent country for its subjection! And to be relieved from this cruel state of vassalage, and to put down a system which has been established by the united voice of all America, some of her politicians have broached a doctrine as new as it would be alarming, if it were sustained by numbers in proportion to the zeal and fervid eloquence with which it is inculcated. I call it a novel doctrine. I am not unaware that attempts have been made to support it on the authority of certain acts of my native and adopted states. Although many of their citizens are much more competent than I am to vindicate them from this imputation of purposes of disunion and rebellion, my veneration and affection for them both, urge me to bear my testimony of their innocence of such a charge. At the epoch of 1798–9, I had just attained my majority, and although I was too young to share in the public councils of my country, I was acquainted with many of the actors of that memorable period; I knew their views, and formed and freely expressed my own opinions on passing events. The then administration of the general government was believed to entertain views (whether the belief was right or wrong is not material to this argument, and is now an affair of history,) hostile to the existence of the liberties of this country. The alien and sedition laws, particularly, and other measures, were thought to be the consequences and proofs of thoseviews. If the administration had such a purpose, it was feared that the extreme case, justifying forcible resistance, might arise, but no one believed that, in point of fact, it had arrived. No one contended that a single state possessed the power to annul the deliberate acts of the whole. And the best evidence of these remarks is the fact, that the most odious of those laws, (the sedition act,) was peaceably enforced in the capitol of that great state which took the lead in opposition to the existing administration.

The doctrines of that day, and they are as true at this, were, that the federal government is a limited government; that it has no powers but the granted powers. Virginia contended, that in case ‘of a palpable, deliberate, and dangerous exercise of other powers not granted by said compact, the states, who are parties thereto, have the right to interpose for arresting the progress of the evil, and for maintaining, within their respective limits, the authorities, rights, and liberties, appertaining to them.’ Kentucky declared, that the ‘several states, that framed that instrument, the federal constitution, being sovereign and independent, have the unquestionable right to judge of its instructions, and a nullification by those sovereignties, of all unauthorized acts, done under color of that instrument, is the rightful remedy.’

Neither of these two commonwealths asserted the right of a single state to interpose and annul an act of the whole. This is an inference drawn from the doctrines then laid down, and it is not a principle expressly asserted or fairly deducible from the language of either. Both refer to the states collectively, (and not individually,) when they assert their right, in case of federal usurpation, to interpose ‘for arresting the progress of evil.’ Neither state ever did, no state ever yet has, by its separate legislation, undertaken to set aside an act of congress.

That the states collectively, may interpose their authority to check the evils of federal usurpation, is manifest. They may dissolve the union. They may alter, at pleasure, the character of the constitution, by amendment; they may annul any acts purporting to have been passed in conformity to it, or they may, by their elections, change the functionaries to whom the administration of its powers is confided. But no one state, by itself, is competent to accomplish these objects. The power of a single state to annul an act of the whole, has been reserved for the discovery of some politicians in South Carolina.

It is not my purpose, upon an occasion so unfit, to discuss this pretension. Upon another and a more suitable theatre, it has been examined and refuted, with an ability and eloquence, which have never been surpassed on the floor of congress. But, as it is announced to be one of the means which is intended to be employed to break down the American system, I trust that I shall be excused for a few additional passing observations. On a late festiveoccasion, in the state where it appears to find most favor, it is said, by a gentleman whom I once proudly called my friend and towards whom I have done nothing to change that relation,—a gentleman who has been high in the councils and confidence of the nation, that the tariff must be resisted at all hazards. Another gentleman, who is a candidate for the chief magistracy of that state, declares that the time and the case for resistance had arrived. And a third, a senator of the United States, who enjoys unbounded confidence with the American executive, laid down principles and urged arguments tending directly and inevitably to violent resistance, although he did not indicate that as his specific remedy.