have vested the Federal Legislature with the power to take their lives, to imprison their persons, and to seize their property. It is not the exercise of power over the most sacred rights which constitutes usurpation; but its exercise over any right, however unimportant, without the consent of the people. Before the adoption of the Constitution of the United States, all the States were sovereign and independent, and they still are so ; but a sovereign State may enter into a compact with other sovereign States. Each of the United States, being sovereign, did enter into a compact with each other; that compact is the Federal Constitution: they are, therefore, all bound to perform its conditions, one of which is, that where questions occur respecting the meaning of any of its parts, they shall be decided by a tribunal selected for that purpose by the Constitution, the act of all the States. Opposite opinions are entertained by the United States and the State of Georgia, as to the right of the one or of the other to extinguish the Indian occupancy to lands in that State. The United States allege, that under the Federal Constitution, the right is in them: Georgia, that it is in her, as she possessed it before the adoption of the Federal Constitution, and has never relinquished it since. Our own conviction is, that the exclusive right is with Georgia; but the question at issue, is one in which the United States and a State are at issue, upon a construction of the Constitution; and the interpretation given by the United States, has, during many years, been sanctioned by usage, and has been acquiesced in by the State of Georgia herself, until lately: the question therefore must be considered (if any question can be so considered) as one which ought to be settled by the Supreme Court. We know that objections have been made to that tribunal's deciding issues, affecting the rights of the States, especially when the United States are on the opposite side; but we have never perceived the force of them. Differences must be terminated in some manner, and by some authority, otherwise anarchy would reign. To constitute a judicial forum competent, and believed to be competent to decide controversies of deep public and private interest, the qualifications and guards required, are talents, impartiality, independence (that is from the powers of the Legislature and the Executive) and responsibility. Talents in the Federal Judges are insured, as far as is practicable, by the President and Senate appointing them from the whole nation, and by the obligation, which the dignity and importance of their functions, imposes upon the President and the Senate, that they will exercise the utmost caution in their selection. Their imVOL. II. NO. 4.

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partiality is secured, from their being exposed to no prejudices in favour of a State or of the General Government, for they are all citizens of the States and of the United States; and, therefore, are not to be presumed to entertain State or Federal prepossessions in a stronger degree than any other individuals in the community; their responsibility is guaranteed by their liability to impeachment by the House of Representatives, for crimes or misdemeanors: and their independence, by the tenure of their offices, during good behaviour, and the constitutional provision, that their salaries "shall not be diminished during their continuance in office." If a tribunal thus composed, be not adequate to its design, what tribunal is? Notwithstanding the numerous objections against the Federal Judiciary, we have never yet heard of any substitute proposed for it, which possessed equal claims to the public confidence.

A question, unfortunately, sometimes arises, when we cannot bring its merits before the Judiciary. An example has already been given in the law recently passed, nominally, for the increase of duties, actually, for the encouragement of American manufactures, by preventing or diminishing foreign importations. In the execration of this law, no one can exceed us. We think that a tax, which excludes importations from the natural and accustomed purchasers of the staples of the Southern States, reduces the exchangeable value of their exports, and is as substantially, a tax upon them, as if they were directly subjected to it: that a tax upon importations, not laid for revenue, or for common protection, or the discharge of common burthens, or for the regulation of commerce, is partial, oppressive, and unconstitutional: that a federal compact should receive a federal construction, by which every species of imposition would be avoided, which bore with peculiar hardship upon certain States, though a minority of the Union: that the spirit which dictated that the Constitution was adopted "to form a more perfect union"-"to insure domestic tranquillity"—"to promote the general welfare," could never have been mingled with a law, which distracts the "Union"-unsettles "domestic tranquillity"—and sacrifices "the general welfare" for the advancement of partial interests. We feel that the genius of our institutions is violated, when the government controls the current of human industry, which ought to be directed by the judgment and the enterprize of individuals, by whom their own interests, inseparable from those of the public, must be better understood, than they can be by secretaries and legislatures: we feel degraded, whilst other powers are rising superior to the prejudices and the barbarisms of the dark ages, that they should be revived,

in their pristine rankness, in our uncongenial soil: we feel indignant, as citizens of a republic, that we should be fettered by commercial restraints and prohibitions, which have always been regarded as characterizing the maxims and the practices of selfish and arbitrary rulers.

We have thus candidly and fully expressed our feelings and our opinions: we yet cannot bring ourselves to the conclusion that this odious law should, necessarily, be followed by the separation of the State of South-Carolina from the Union. We ought to bear in mind, that the government we have, proceeded from the people—that another, springing from the same source may be equally imperfect-that it will, unquestionably, like all human creations, be imperfect. Amidst our wrongs, we should not forget that we became a voluntary party to the Union-that we have passed with it through the perils of the Revolutionary war-that the States are knit together by the common sufferings which they have shared, and the common glory which they have acquired. Members of a body politic should not be governed by the same motives which direct individuals in their private conduct. By the latter, interest ought always to be sacrificed to principle, perhaps, even to the refinements of principle-the codes of religion, of morals, and of honour, will point out to them the path they ought to tread. To the former, the road is not so plain: they ought to reflect that a Federal Government, like ours, is a delicate and complex machine-that it harmonizes various discordant materials-that it binds together widely extended and thinly peopled territories-that we have lived under it for nearly forty years, during which period it has given us security in peace, and protection in war-that no Constitution, however guarded by definitions and limitations, by checks and counter-checks, can be exempt from occasional mal-administration; and that if the doctrine is to prevail, that the passage of an obnoxious law, deemed to be unconstitutional by a State, or by several States, is necessarily to be followed by the destruction of the federal compact, our government will be the worst, which our bitterest enemy could have devised,-it will, (if such a term does not imply a solecism)-be a government of revolutions.Should every effort be unavailing to erase the late tariff act and other acts originating in the same spirit, from our statute-book, and to re-establish a free commercial intercourse, are we not called upon by every social and moral obligation, to reflect whether disunion would not be fraught with consequences more calamitous than those of which we now complain; and after grave and profound meditation, to select the least of two evils presented to us? For ourselves, we have no hesitation in avowing

that we should consider the separation of South-Carolina from the confederation, as incalculably more to be deplored, than the existence of the laws which we condemn.

We had proposed to examine, somewhat in detail, the different expedients which have been recommended, to arrest or to diminish the ill effects produced by the restrictive system upon the agriculture and commerce of South-Carolina, but the length to which we have already carried this article, admonishes us to refrain. We will merely remark, that with the exception of an appeal to the Legislature, we think them either negative or injurious to ourselves, or unconstitutional. The unconstitutionality of taxing Northern and Eastern manufactures, upon their introduction into the State, we cannot doubt. Previously to the adoption of the Constitution, contributions were levied by several of the States upon imports from other States, and a variety of imposts were laid by some States upon certain exports, which operated injuriously to the interests of particular States. A remedy for these embarrassments constituted one of the principal inducements for the acceptance of the Federal Constitution, by one of the clauses of which, Congress is, exclusively, empowered "to regulate commerce among the several States." Commerce consists in the buying, selling, and interchanging commodities, and their transportation by land or by water. A state then cannot lay a tax upon the manufactures brought into it from another State, for sale. If it could, one State could prohibit the transportation and the sale of the commodities of another State, although Congress possessed exclusive jurisdiction over the subject-matter. Should the manufactures of other States, after their importation, be mixed up with the other stock of citizens or residents, then like any other species of property, they might be liable to taxation; but such a tax, we apprehend, would convert an intended remedy into an increase of the evil.

Let us not be misunderstood. We do not inculcate passive obedience and non-resistance. When the government of our choice is guilty of usurpation or of abuse of power (for abuse of power may be as intolerable as the usurpation of it) manifesting a system of lawlessness and tyranny, not only are we justifiable in casting it off, but we should be traitors to our country and to ourselves, if we did not. The right of a State to withdraw from the Union, is unquestionable. The people of every one of the States are sovereign: sovereignty is supreme: it can only be limited by itself. The people did not relinquish it, when they granted certain portions of power, for certain purposes, to the governments of the States and of the United States: so long as these governments are of force, they are binding upon the peo

ple; but they never parted with the sovereign right to decide in what cases, they might annul an existing, and create another government that right was inalienable. Upon the most momentous occasion which has occurred since the achievement of our independence, this principle was acted upon. In the confederation it was stipulated, that its "articles should be inviolably observed by every State, and that the Union should be perpetual; nor should any alteration, at any time thereafter, be made in any of them, unless such alteration be agreed to in the Congress of the United States, and be afterwards confirmed by the Legislatures of every State." Yet, without any alleged abuse of the confederation, the Constitution of the United States was resolved upon, although not a single State Legislature directly agreed to it, and although the State of Rhode-Island and of North-Carolina, directly disagreed to it. The seceding States (for thus correctly speaking, all of them excepting Rhode-Island and North-Carolina may be called) did not hesitate to adopt the Federal Constitution, not altering one article, but annulling all the Articles of the Confederation, when it had been ratified by conventions of the people in nine States. If the seceding States, contrary to an inviolable and perpetual covenant, could pull down one government and put up another, they have afforded to us as striking an example as could be exhibited, of their conviction of the right, either in a State or in a number of States, to exercise a similar conduct. Indeed they but practised what had been proclaimed in the declaration of Independence :-" that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of its ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute a new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness."

Admitting, unqualifiedly, as we do, the right of the people to abolish their government, we should deprecate its abuse, as one of the direst calamities with which civilized man could be afflicted. Rarely could a single breach of the letter or of the spirit of the Constitution, justify its overthrow, although we can imagineand could state some single breaches of both, which ought instantaneously to be followed by its dissolution. But we should, if possible, repair before we prostrate the edifice. Desperate expedients should be reserved for desperate ills "the extreme medicine of the Constitution should not be made its daily bread." Upon the occurrence of every act of mal-administration, disunion ought not to be recommended, or even talked of. By frequently and unnecessarily discoursing of it, we wear out the spring of that spirit which should not be exerted until danger