Page:Nullification Controversy in South Carolina.djvu/162

 federal Constitution; the powers which they reserved they might still exercise unhindered; but such as they granted to the federal government they could not exercise nor resume, as long as that government lasted.

The argument that the Exposition recommended not an unqualified but a suspensive veto, until the power in question should be sanctioned by an amendment to the Constitution, Drayton pronounced meaningless. If a state could control the action of the general government on contested points of authority under the Constitution, it could do so also under an amendment. Even though an amendment were passed for a specific purpose, difference of interpretation might arise, as had happened in the case of the Eleventh Amendment. The state veto must end in civil war, and could not be a peaceful remedy, unless the President should fail to perform his duty. As to secession and a dissolution of the Union, he believed it not only impossible but unworthy of contemplation.

There was even a lingering defense of the tariff in the state, both as to its constitutionality and as to its expediency. The Union and State