now established, a large surplus revenue to be applied to Internal Improvements and other unwarrantable purposes, is to be levied by the imposition of enormous Taxes on the necessaries of life, the very articles received chiefly in exchange for Southern productions; and this has been done, in order to protect the industry of the North, with which ours comes into competition, while the articles of luxury universally acknowledged to be the fittest subjects for Taxation, are to be admitted, duty free.*

Now, let it be remembered, that the very point in controversy, has all along been, not the Revenue, but the Protecting duties, and yet we see, that in answer to all our petitions and remonstrances, Congress has been graciously pleased to make an adjustment of the Tariff, which simply consists in taking off the duties imposed for Revenue, while the protecting duties are allowed to remain substantially untouched. It was not so much the amount of the imposition, as the inequality and injustice of the Protecting System, that has roused the people of South Carolina to determined resistance, and yet we find, that this inequality has been aggravated, and that injustice, perpetuated by the deliberate adoption of a measure, which was calculated and intended to rivet this System upon us, beyond all hope of relief.

The grave and solemn question now occurs, what is to be done to redeem ourselves from the state of Colonial vassalage into which we have unhappily fallen? Shall we still continue to wait for a returning sense of justice on the part of our oppressors? We are thoroughly persuaded, that the hope can no longer be indulged, that the tariff majority in Congress will, of their own accord, relieve us from this cruel bondage-experience teaches us that this expectation so long and fondly indulged, is utterly delusive. The only effect of further delay must be to strengthen the hand of the oppressor, to crush the public spirit-deaden the sensibility of the people to the inestimable value of their rights-and teach them the degrading lesson of wearing their chains in patience. It is almost inconceivable that any reflecting man can believe that the crisis in our affairs arising from the final extinction of the public debt, should be suffered to pass away, without reducing the tariff to the revenue standard, and yet that such reduction may be expected to take place at some future period. What period so auspicious as that which has been allowed to pass away unimproved? Is any one so ignorant of human nature, as not to know that the annual surplus, which then will be brought into the Treasury, under the act of 1832, will be speedily absorbed by new and enlarged appropriations serving as additional props to a system, which some vainly imagine to be tottering on its base, ready to fall under its own weight? Even at the last session of Congress, the annual appropriations were enlarged by several millions of dollars, in anticipation of this expected surplus, and the foundation is already laid for its absorption; and when this shall be accomplished, where will be the hopes of those who now say that the evil is to correct itself, and

*See Treasury Estimate published in August last shewing an aggregate reduction of $5,187,078, of which $3,108,631 were made entirely free.

who tell us that the act of 1832, which was in fact designed to rivet the system upon the country forever-and was hailed by its friends as "a clear, distinct, and indisputable admission of the principle of protection," is to be viewed as a blessed reform presenting the brightest auspices for the future? The truth unquestionably is, that the American System is from its very nature progressive. When its foundations were laid, it was foreseen and predicted that the great interests which it would build up, would exert a controlling influence over the legislation of the country. The history of the world indeed affords no example of a voluntary relinquishment by a favored class of any pecuniary or political advantage, secured to them by the laws and general policy of the country. Force has often torn from the hands of the oppressor, his unrighteous gains, but reason and argument are as vain in convincing the understanding, as appeals to justice and magnanimity have ever proved to be impotent in softening the hearts of those who are enriched under the operation of laws passed professedly for the public good. Who is there, that can for one moment believe that any thing short of a direct appeal to their interests will induce the dependants upon the Federal Government, the wealthy sugar planters and iron masters, or the joint stock companies, who have millions invested in cotton and woollen factories, yielding under the operation of the protecting system an annual income of 10 or 20 per cent, voluntarily to relinquish the advantage secured to them by the laws, and consent to come down to a level with the other classes of the community! It is impossible. From every view then which your committee have been able to take of this subject, they are constrained to announce to this Convention, the solemn truth that after more than ten years of patient endurance of a system, which is believed by the people of this state to be fatal to their prosperity and a gross, deliberate, and palpable violation of their constitutional rights-after the most earnest and unavailing appeals to that sense of justice, and those common sympathies, which ought to bind together the different members of a confederated republic, the crisis has at length arrived, when the question must be solemnly and finally determined, whether there remain any means, within the power of the State, by which these evils may be redressed?

It is useless to disguise the fact, or to attempt to delude ourselves on this subject; the time has come when the State must either adopt a decisive course of action, or we must at once abandon the contest. We cannot again petition-it would be idle to remonstrate, and degrading to protest. In our estimation it is now a question of Liberty or Slavery. It is now to be decided, whether we shall maintain the rights purchased by the precious blood of our fathers, and transmit them unimpaired to our posterity, or tamely surrender them without a struggle. We are constrained to express our solemn conviction, that under the protecting system, we have been reduced to a state of "colonial dependence, suffering and disgrace," and that unless we now fly with the spirit which becomes freemen to the rescue of our liberties, they are lost forever,— Brought up in an ardent devotion to the Union of the States, the

people of South Carolina have long struggled against the conviction, that the powers of the Federal Government have been shamefully perverted to the purposes of injustice and oppression. Bound to their brethren by the proud recollections of the past, and fond hopes of the future, by common struggles for liberty and common glories, acquired in its defence-they have been brought slowly, and with the utmost reluctance, to the conclusion, that they are shut out from their sympathies, and made the unpitied victims of an inexorable system of tyranny, which is without example in any country claiming to be free. Experience has at length taught us the lamentable truth, that administered as the government now is, and has been for several years past, in open disregard of all the limitations prescribed by the Constitution, the Union itself, instead of being a blessing must soon become a curse. Liberty we are thoroughly persuaded, cannot be preserved under our system without a sacred and inviolable regard not merely to the letter, but to the true spirit of the Constitution; and without liberty the Union would not be worth preserving. If then there were no other alternatives but to submit to these evils, or to seek a remedy even in Revolution itself, we could not without proving ourselves recreant to the principles hallowed by the example of our ancestors, hesitate a moment as to our choice. We should say, in the spirit of our fathers, "we have counted the cost, and find nothing so intolerable as voluntary slavery." But we cannot bring ourselves for one moment to believe that the alternatives presented to us are revolution or slavery. We confidently believe that there is a redeeming spirit in our institutions, which may on great occasions be brought to our aid for the purpose of preserving the public liberty-restoring the Constitution and effecting a regeneration of the government, and thereby producing a redress of intolerable grievances, without war, revolution, or a dissolution of the Union. These great objects, we feel assured, may even now be effected, unless those who are in possession of the powers of the government and charged with the administration of our national affairs, shall resolve to persevere in a course of injustice, and prove by their conduct that they love the usurpation (to which the people of this State are unalterably determined not to submit) better than the Union. We believe that the redeeming spirit of our system is STATE SOVEREIGNTY, and that it results from the very form and structure of the Federal Government, that when the rights reserved to the several States are deliberately invaded, it is their right and their duty to "interpose for the purpose of arresting the progress of the evil of usurpation, and to maintain within their respective limits the authorities and privileges belonging to them as independent sovereignties." If the several States do not possess this right, it is in vain that they claim to be sovereign. They are at once reduced to the degrading condition of humble dependents on the will of the Federal Government. South Carolina claims to be a sovereign State. She recognizes no tribunal upon earth as above her authority. It is true she has entered into a solemn com

*Virginia Resolutions of '98.

pact of Union with other sovereign States, but she claims, and will exercise the right to determine the extent of her obligations under that compact, nor will she consent that any other power shall exercise the right of judgment for her. And when that compact is violated by her co-States, or by the government which they have created, she asserts her unquestionable right, "to judge of the infractions, as well as of the MODE and MEASURE OF REDRESS."*South Carolina claims no right to judge for others. The States who are parties to the compact, must judge each for itself, whether that compact has been pursued or violated, and should they differ irreconcilably in opinion, there is no earthly tribunal, that can authoritatively decide between them. It was in the contemplation of a similar case, that Mr. Jefferson declared that if the difference could neither be compromised, nor avoided, it was the peculiar felicity of our system, to have provided a remedy in a Convention of all the States, by whom the Constitution might be so altered or amended, as to remove the difficulty. To this tribunal, South Carolina is willing that an appeal should now be made, and that the constitutional compact should be so modified as to accomplish all the great ends for which the Union was formed, and the Federal Government constituted, and at the same time, restore the rights of the States, and preserve them from violation hereafter. Your Committee purposely avoid entering here into an examination of the nature and character of this claim, which South Carolina asserts, to interpose her sovereignty, for the protection of her citizens from the operation of unconstitutional laws, and the preservation of her own reserved rights. In an Address, which will be submitted to the Convention, this subject will be fully examined, and they trust that it will be made to appear, to the entire satisfaction of every dispassionate mind, that in adopting the ORDINANCE which the Committee herewith report, declaring the Tariff laws passed for the protection of Domestic Manufactures, null and void, and not law, and directing the Legislature to provide, that the same shall not be enforced within the limits of this State-South Carolina will be asserting her unquestionable rights, and in no way violating her obligations under the Federal compact,

The Committee cannot dismiss this point, however, even for the present, without remarking that in asserting the principles, and adopting the course, which they are about to recommend, South Carolina will only be carrying out the doctrines, which were asserted by Virginia and Kentucky in 1798, and which have been sanctioned by the high authority of Thomas Jefferson. It is from the pen of this great apostle of liberty, that we have been instructed that to the Constitutional compact, "each State acceded as a State, and is an integral party, its co-States forming as to itself the other party," that "they alone being parties to the compact, are solely authorized to judge in the last resort of the powers exercised under it; Congress being not a party but merely the creature of the compact," that "it becomes a sovereign State, to submit to undelegated and consequently unlimited power in no man or

Kentucky Resolutions of 1798.

body of men on earth; that in cases of abuse of the delegated powers, the members of the General Government being chosen by the people, a change by the people would be the Constitutional remedy, but where powers are assumed which have not been delegated [the very case now before us] A NULLIFICATION OF THE ACT IS THE RIGHTFUL REMEDY; that every State has a natural right in cases not within the compact [casus non fæderis] to NULLIFY of their own authority all assumption of power by others within their limits, and that without this right they would be under the dominion, absolute and unlimited, of whomsoever might exercise the right of judgment for them," and that in case of acts being passed by Congress "so palpably against the Constitution as to amount to an undisguised declaration, that the compact is not meant to be the measure of the powers of the General Government, but that it will proceed to exercise over the States all powers whatsoever, by seizing the rights of the States, and consolidating them in the hands of the General Government with a power assumed of binding the States, not merely in cases made federal, but in all cases whatsoever, by laws made, not with their consent, but by others against their consent, it would be the duty of the States to declare the acts void and of no force, and that each should take measures of its own for providing that neither such acts, nor any other of the General Government not plainly and intentionally authorized by the Constitution, shall be exercised within their respective territories."

In acting on these great and essential truths, South Carolina surely cannot err. She is convinced, and has so declared to Congress and the World, that the protecting system is in all its branches a "gross, deliberate, and palpable violation of the Constitution." She believes that after having exhausted every other means of redress in vain, it is her right, and that it has now become her solemn duty, to interpose for arresting the evil within her own limits, by declaring said acts "to be null and void and no law, and taking measures of her own that they shall not be enforced within her territory." That duty she means to perform, and to leave the consequences in the hands of Him, with whom are the issues of life and the destinies of nations.

South Carolina will continue to cherish a sincere attachment to the UNION of the States, and will to the utmost of her power endeavor to preserve it, "and believes that for this end, it is her duty to watch over and oppose any infraction of those principles which constitute the only basis of that union, because a faithful observance of them can alone secure its existence." She venerates the CONSTITUTION, and will protect and defend it "against every aggression either foreign or domestic," but above all, she estimates as beyond all price her LIBERTY, which she is unalterably determined never to surrender while she has the power to maintain it. Influenced by these views, your committee report herewith for the adoption of the Convention, a solemn DECLARATION and ORDINANCE.