Page:Nullification Controversy in South Carolina.djvu/60

 was not a single ray of hope for help from Congress, that it would be folly for the legislature to take a positive stand now, just at the time when there was a prospect, even though a slight one, of justice. He favored an adjourned meeting of the legislature to be called after Congress had acted. The coming session of Congress would decide the question forever; if the decision went against the South, then the only alternatives would be for the legislature to declare a peaceable secession or declare the unconstitutional laws a nullity not to be obeyed.

The other writer, "State Rights," could see in such a course nothing better than the "wordy warfare," bordering upon the ridiculous, which the legislature, as " Lowndes " admitted, had kept up for the last five or six years. He would have the legislature demand of Congress (he calling of a convention of the states. "Lowndes" pronounced this nothing short of chimerical for if the South was unable to get a simple majority of Congress for the repeal of the obnoxious laws, it was more than obvious to him that it need never think of relief by means of so complicated and tedious a way as a convention, even though that was an essential feature in the plan of the author