Page:Nullification Controversy in South Carolina.djvu/154

 and public services, not only regarded them as dangerous political heresies, but as the very seeds of disunion, discord, and revolution? Why was it, he asked, that the South must get rid of the tariff at all hazards? Was it more oppressive or more unconstitutional than other laws to which they had submitted?

The embargo was at one time, and the existing system of internal improvements was now, more ruinous to the country than the tariff. The purchase of Louisiana and the establishment of the National Bank were more glaring infractions of the Constitution than the encouragement of manufactures by protective duties. The Alien and Sedition laws were infinitely more alarming and more odious to the feelings of freemen than any measures Congress had passed before or since. And yet these oppressive and unconstitutional acts of the general government had been submitted to by the people of South Carolina with no thought of disunion or nullification. The general tendency, he thought, was for these excesses to cure themselves by natural reaction. The Sedition law had expired amidst the execrations of the people; and the Alien law remained a dead letter on the statute books. The purchase