any change be made in the Constitution, particularly as the course which, it seems to me, it would be advisable to pursue, would be the same, whether the power be expressly conferred or not.

I next address myself to the members of the opposition, who principally represent the commercial and manufacturing portions of the country, where the banking system has been the farthest extended, and where a larger portion of the property exists in the shape of credit than in any other section, and to whom a sound and stable currency is most necessary, and the opposite most dangerous. You have no constitutional objection: to you it is a mere question of expediency. Viewed in this light, can you vote for the measure suggested? A measure designed to arrest the approach of events which, I have demonstrated, must, if not arrested, create convulsions and revolutions; and to correct a disease which must, if not corrected, subject the currency to continued agitations and fluctuations; and, in order to give that permanence, stability, and uniformity, which is so essential to your safety and prosperity. To effect this may require some diminution of the profits of banking, some temporary sacrifice of interest; but if such should be the fact, it will be compensated more than a hundred fold by increased security and durable prosperity. If the system must advance in the present course without a check, and if explosion must follow, remember that where you stand will be the crater-should the system quake, under your feet the chasm will open that will ingulf your institutions and your prosperity.

Can the friends of the administration vote for this measure? If I understand their views, as expressed by the senator from Missouri, behind me (Mr. Benton), and the senator from New-York (Mr. Wright), and other distinguished members of the party, and the views of the President as expressed in reported conversations, I see not how they can reject it. They profess to be the advocates of a metallic currency.

I propose to restore it by the most effectual measures that can be devised; gradually and slowly, and to the extent that experience may show that it can be done consistently with a due regard to the public interest. Farther no one can desire to go. If the means I propose are not the best and most effectual, let better and more effectual be devised. If the process which I propose be too slow or too fast, let it be accelerated or retarded. Permit me to add to these views what, it appears to me, those whom I address ought to feel with deep and solemn obligation of duty. They are the advocates and the supporters of the administration. It is now conceded, almost universally, that a rash and precipitate act of the executive, to speak in the mildest terms, has plunged this country into deep and almost universal distress. You are the supporters of that measure you personally incur the responsibility by that support. How are its consequences to terminate? Do you see the end? Can things remain as they are, with the currency and the treasury of the country under the exclusive control of the executive? And by what scheme, what device, do you propose to extricate the country and the Constitution from their present dangers?

I have now said what I intended. I have pointed out, without reserve, what I believe in my conscience to be for the public interest. May what I have said be received with favour equal to the sincerity with which it has been uttered. In conclusion, I have but to add, that, if what I have said shall in any degree contribute to the adjustment of this question, which I believe cannot be left open without imminent danger, I shall rejoice; but if not, I shall at least have the consolation of having discharged my duty.

U

IX.

SPEECH DELIVERED IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES APRIL 9, 1834, ON

THE BILL TO REPEAL THE FORCE ACT.

I HAVE, said Mr. Calhoun, introduced this bill from a deep conviction that the act which it proposes to repeal is, in its tendency, subversive of our political institutions, and fatal to the liberty and happiness of the country; which I trust to be able to establish to the satisfaction of the Senate, should I be so fortunate as to obtain a dispassionate and favourable hearing.

In resting the repeal on this ground, it is not my intention to avail myself of the objections to the details of the act, as repugnant as many of them are to the principles of our government. In illustration of the truth of this assertion, I might select that provision which vests in the President, in certain cases, of which he is made the judge, the entire force of the country, civil, military, and naval, with the implied power of pledging the public faith for whatever expenditure he may choose to incur in its application. And, to prove how dangerous it is to vest such extraordinary powers in the executive, I might avail myself of the experience which we have had in the last few months of the aspiring character of that department of the government, and which has furnished conclusive evidence of the danger of vesting in it even a very limited discretion. It is not for me to judge of the propriety of the course which the members of this body may think proper to pursue in reference to the question under consideration; but I must say that I am at a loss to understand how any one, who regards as I do the acts to which I have referred, as palpable usurpations of power, and as indicating on the part of the executive a dangerous spirit of aggrandizement, can vote against the bill under consideration, and thereby virtually vote to continue in the President the extraordinary and dangerous power in question.

But it may be said that the provision of the act which confers this power will expire, by its own limitation, at the termination of the present session. It is true it will then cease to be law; but it is no less true that the precedent, unless the act be expunged from the statute-book, will live forever, ready, on any pretext of future danger, to be quoted as an authority to confer on the chief magistrate similar, or even more dangerous powers, if more dangerous can be devised. We live in an eventful period, and, among other things, we have had, recently, some impressive lessons on the danger of precedents. To them immediately we owe the act which has caused the present calamitous and dangerous condition of the country; which has been defended almost solely on the ground of precedents -precedents almost unnoticed at the time; but had they not existed, or had they been reversed at the time by Congress, the condition of the country would this day be far different from what it is. With this knowledge of the facts, we must see that a bad precedent is as dangerous as the bad measure itself; and in some respects more so, as it may give rise to acts far worse than itself, as in the case to which I have alluded. In this view of the subject, to refuse to vote against the repeal of the act, and thereby constitute a precedent to confer similar, or more dangerous powers hereafter, would be as dangerous as to vote for an act to vest permanently in the President the power in question.

But I pass over this and other objections to the details not much less formidable. I take a higher stand against the act: I object to the principle in which it originated, putting the details aside, on the ground, as I

have stated, that they are subversive of our political institutions, and fatal, in their tendency, to the liberty and happiness of the country. Fortunately, we are not left to conjecture or inference as to what these principles are. It was openly proclaimed, both here and elsewhere, in the debates of this body and the proclamation and message of the President, in which the act originated, that the very basis on which it rests-the assumption on which only it could be supported-was, that this government had the final and conclusive right, in the last resort, to judge of the extent of its powers; and that, to execute its decision, it had the right to use all the means of the country, civil, military, and fiscal, not only against individuals, but against the states themselves, and all acting under their authority, whether in a legislative, executive, or judicial capacity.

If farther evidence be required as to the nature and character of the act, it will be found in the history of the events in which it took its origin. It originated, as we all know, in a controversy between this government and the State of South Carolina, in reference to a power which involved the question of the constitutionality of a protective tariff. I do not intend to give the history of this controversy; it is sufficient for my purpose to say that the state, in maintenance of what she believed to be her unquestionable power, assumed the highest ground: she placed herself on her sovereign authority as a constituent member of this confederacy, and made her opposition to the encroachment on her rights through a convention of the people, the only organ by which, according to our conception, the sovereign will of a state can be immediately and directly pronounced. This government, on its part, in resistance to the action of the state, assumed the right to trample upon the authority of the convention, and to look beyond the state to the individuals who compose it: not as forming a political community, but as a mere mass of insolated individuals, without political character or authority; and thus asserted in the strongest manner, not only the right of judging of its own powers, but that of overlooking, in a contest for power, the very existence of the state itself, and of recognising, in the assertion of what it might claim to be its power, no other authority whatever in the system but its own.

Such being the principle in which this bill originated, we are brought to the consideration of a question of the deepest import. Is an act, which assumes such powers for this government, consistent with the nature and character of our political institutions?

It is not my intention, in the discussion of this question, to renew the debate of the last session. But, in declining to renew that discussion, I wish to be directly understood that I do so exclusively on the ground that I do not feel myself justified in repeating arguments so recently advanced; and not on the ground that there is the least abatement of confidence in the positions then assumed, or in the decisive bearing which they ought to have against the act. So far otherwise, time and reflection have but served to confirm me in the impression which I then entertained; and, without repeating the arguments, I now avail myself, in this discussion, of the positions then established, and stand prepared to vindicate them against whatever assaults may be made upon them, come from what quarter they may. Without, then, reopening the discussion of the last session on the elementary principles of our government, which were then brought into controversy, I shall now proceed to take the plainest and most common-sense view of our political institutions, regarding them merely in a matter-of-fact way, in order to ascertain the parts of which they are composed, and the relations which they bear to each other.

Thus regarding our institutions, we are struck, on the first view, with the number and complexity of the parts-with the division, classification,

and organization which pervade every part of the system. It is, in fact, a system of governments; and these, in turn, are a system of departments a system in which government bears the same relation to government, in reference to the whole, as departments do to departments, in reference to each particular government. As each government is made up of the legislative, executive, and judicial departments organized into one, so the system is made up of this government, and the state governments, in like manner, organized into one system. So, too, as the powers which constitute the respective governments are divided and organized into departments, in like manner in the formation of the governments, their powers are classed into two distinct divisions: the one containing powers local and peculiar in their character, which the interests of the states require to be exercised by each state through a separate government; the other containing those which are more general and comprehensive, and which can be best exercised in some uniform mode through a common government. The former of these divisions constitutes what, in our system, are known as the reserved powers, and are exercised by each state through its own separate government. The latter are known as the delegated powers, and are exercised through this, the common government of the several states. This division of power into two parts, with distinct and independent governments, regularly organized into departments, legislative, executive, and judicial, to carry their respective parts into effect, constitutes the great striking and peculiar character of our system, and is without example in ancient or modern times; and may be regarded as the fundamental distribution of power under the system, and as constituting its great conservative principle.

If we extend our eyes beyond, we shall find another striking division between the power of the people and that of the government-between that inherent, primitive, creative power which resides exclusively in the people, and from which all authority is derived, and the delegated power or trust conferred upon the government to effect the object of their creation. If we look still beyond, we shall find another and most important division. The people, instead of being united in one general community, are divided into twenty-four states, each forming a distinct sovereign community, and in which, separately, the whole power of the system ultimately resides.

If we examine how this ultimate power is called into action, we shall find that its only organ is a primary assemblage of the people, known under the name of a convention, through which their sovereign will is announced, and by which governments are formed and organized. If we trace historically the exertion of this power in the formation of the gov ernments constituting our system, we shall find that, originally, on the separation of the thirteen colonies from the crown of Great Britain, each state for itself, through its own convention, formed separate constitutions and governments, and that these governments, in turn, formed a league or confederacy for the purpose of exercising those powers, in the regulation of which the states had a common interest. But this confederacy, proving incompetent for its object, was superseded by the present Constitution, which essentially changed the character of the system. If we compare the mode of the adoption of this Constitution with that of the adoption of original constitutions of the several states, we shall find them precisely the same. In both, each state adopted the Constitution through its own convention, by its separate act, each for itself, and is only bound in consequence of its own adoption, without reference to the adoption of any other state. The only point in which they can be distinguished is the mutual compact, in which each state stipulated with the

other to adopt it as a common Constitution. Thus regarded, this Constitution is, in fact, the Constitution of each state. In Virginia, for in stance, it is the Constitution of Virginia; and so, too, this government, and the laws which it enacts, are, within the limits of the state, the gov ernment and the laws of the state. It is, in fact, the Constitution and government of the whole, because it is the Constitution and government of each part; and not the Constitution and government of the parts because it is of the whole. The system commences with the parts, and ends with the whole. The parts are the units, and the whole the multiple, instead of the whole being a unit and the parts the fractions. Thus viewed, each state has two distinct Constitutions and governments-a separate Constitution and government, instituted, as I have stated, to regulate the object in which each has a peculiar interest; and a general one to regulate the interests common to all, and binding by a common compact the whole into one community, in which the separate and independent existence of each state as a sovereign community is preserved, instead of being fused into

a common mass.

Such is our system: such are its parts, and such their relation to each other. I have stated no fact that can be questioned, nor have I omitted any that is essential which I am capable of perceiving. In reviewing the whole, we must be no less struck with the simplicity of the means by which all are blended into one, than we are by the number and complex. ity of the parts. I know of no system, in either respect, ancient or modern, to be compared with it; and can compare it to nothing but that sublime and beautiful system of which our globe constitutes a part, and to which it bears in many particulars so striking a resemblance. In this system, this government, as we have seen, constitutes a part-a prominent, but a subordinate part, with defined, limited, and restricted powers.

I now repeat the question, Is the act which assumes for this government the right to interpret, in the last resort, the extent of its powers, and to enforce its interpretation against all other authority, consistent with our institutions? To state the question is to answer it. We might with equal propriety ask whether a government of unlimited power is consistent with one of enumerated and restricted powers. I say unlimited, for I would hold his understanding in low estimation who can make, practically, any distinction between a government of unlimited powers, and one which has an unlimited right to construe and enforce its powers as it pleases; who does not see that, to divide power, and to give one of the parties the exclusive right to determine what share belongs to him, is to annihilate the division, and to vest the whole in him who possesses the right? It would be no less absurd, than for one in private life to divide his property with another, and vest in that other the absolute and unconditional right to determine the extent of his share; which would be, in fact, to give him the whole. Nor could I think much more highly of the understanding of him who does not perceive that this exclusive right, on the part of this government, of determining the extent of its powers, necessarily destroys all distinction between reserved and delegated powers; and that it thus strikes a fatal blow at that fundamental distribution of power which lies at the bottom of our system. It also, by inevitable consequence, destroys all distinction between constitutional and unconstitutional laws, making the latter to the full as obligatory as the former; of which we had a remarkable example when the act proposed to be repealed was before the Senate. It is well known that the power in controversy between this government and the State of South Carolina had been pronounced to be unconstitutional by the legislatures of most of the Southern States, and also by many of the members of this body; and yet