whole period of my service in Congress, I am firmly and solemnly impressed with the conviction, that the sovereignty of the several States, practically asserted and maintained, is the only barrier which can arrest the Federal Government in its fatal proclivity towards absolute despotism, and the only means under heaven, by which the rights, the liberties, or the property of the planting States, can be rescued from impending destruction. And I have the more confidence in this opinion, because it has been gradually and deliberately formed, as the result of actual observation and experience, in opposition to the preconceived theories of youth and inexperience, with which I entered upon the theatre of publie life.
However they may be amalgamated in the crucible of an executive proclamation, or of speculative theory, history bears testimony, that the States are, in point of fact, distinct and separate communities, mutually independent of each other, and each possessing the inherent and underived attribute of Sovereignty. Not only are they separated geographically, and by a distinct and independent political organization, but they are still more practically separated by the diversity of their staple productions, creating a direct and irreconcilable conflict of interest between the exporting and manufacturing States, as decided as ever existed between any two independent nations, ancient or modern. It is, for example, the undoubted interest, as it is the sacred right of the planting States, to exchange their staples for the manufactures of Europe, free from every obstruction or incumbrance. It is the interest of the manufacturing States, to abstract, incumber, and even prohibit this commerce of exchange, between the planting states and the manufacturing nations of Europe: and because it is their interest, they have availed themselves of the ascendancy of superior numbers, in the Federal Legislature, to impose high and prohibiting duties on imported manufactures in violation of every principle of natural Justice and the most sacred of our constitutional rights. A more vital opposition of interest cannot well be conceived. But the full extent and depth of the danger which impends over the planting States, has not yet been disclosed, and delicate as the subject is, I feel it to be my painful duty to present it distinctly to your view. The great agricultural staples of the planting States, are produced by a species of labour, peculiar to those states, and cannot be successfully produced by any other. It is demonstrable, that cotton could not be produced by the labour of hired freemen, for double the average price it has commanded for ten years past. As it is the cheapness only of our staples of exportation, that enables us to import foreign manufactures cheaper than they can be made by American manufacturers, it is obvious that the abolition of that kind of labour, which is the basis of our wealth and prosperity, would annihilate at a single blow, that entire branch of foreign commerce, which brings the industry of the exporting states into competition with that of the manufacturing states. Here, then, is the deep foundation of our past oppression and our future danger. The labour of hired freemen, cannot successfully contend with the labour of slaves; and it has been openly avowed in Congress; by a distinguished representative, that the labour of a Northern freeman should never be put in equal competition with the labour of a Southern slave. With these facts before his eyes, can any Southern statesman, who is not blinded by some strange infatuation contemplate the relative position of the southern states, without being deeply impressed with the sense of their insecurity?
Here is a conflict of pecuniary interest between separate and distinct communities of men, aggravated by the prejudices of a blind fanaticism against our domestic institutions, on the part of a large portion of the people of the Northern and Middle States.—And shall we, under these circumstances, fold our arms in fatal apathy, and permit the Federal Government to establish its supremacy and omnipotence upon the subverted sovereignty of South Carolina? When we see that it is the interest of those states which control the operations of the Federal Government, to shackle our commerce and destroy our property, shall South Carolina prostrate the ensigns of her sovereignty before them, and submit her rights and liberties to their magnanimity and justice? Let us not deceive ourselves, nor vainly hope to avoid danger by closing the eyes of our understanding against the evidence of its approaches. However melancholy the fact may be, all history is but a bloody testimonial to establish it, that no community of men upon the face of the earth, in any age, or under any dispensation, political or religious ever has been governed by justice in its negotiations or its conflicts with other states. No, gentlemen, it is not justice and magnanimity, but interest and ambition—dignified and disguised under the name of State Policy—and that ever has governed, and ever will govern masses of men, acting as political communities. Individuals may be actuated by a sense of justice, but what citizen in any country, would venture to contend for justice to a foreign and rival community, in opposition to the prevailing policy of the state, without forfeiting the character of a patriot? We habitually speak of Roman virtue, and Roman patriotism as proverbial, and they are held up, throughout Christendom, to the rising generation as models for imitation. And yet, in every period of the republic, with scarce an interval, these virtuous and patriotic citizens were engaged in vexing the ocean, and desolating the earth, by wars of plunder and conquest These are not mere abstract truths and barren speculations, but they practically illustrate the peculiar and perilous condition of the exporting and slave-holding states, as members of the great North American confederacy, and demonstrate the imperious necessity of rallying all parties around the standard of State Sovereignty, resolved in the spirit of our glorious motto—"Animis opibusque parati"—to maintain and preserve it untarnished, in every emergency and at every hazard, as the last hope of transmitting to our posterity, the blessings of constitutional liberty.
The entire legislation of Congress, on the conflicting interests of the planting and manufacturing states, has been a war of communities against communities, carried on by making unjust and unconstitutional laws, instead of fighting hazardous and bloody battles. In this legislative warfare, I have seen the truth of all that I have said as to the injustice of communities, acting as such, most strikingly illustrated. I have seen men of high honour and unblemished integity in all the relations of private life, who would shrink with abhorrence from the perpetration of an act of individual injustice, voting with an undisturbed conscience for measures of legislative plunder, and though fully convinced of their unequal and oppressive operation it would have been just as vain to think of restraining them by shewing their injustice, as it would have been to arrest the march of a Roman army by demonstrating the injustice of the war.
The rights and liberties of the minority States—so to speak—are in much greater jeopardy from the majority States, acting through the federal go-
