Page:Review of the Proclamation of President Jackson.djvu/116

 XIII.

, January 30, 1833.

careful examination of the late Proclamation presents to my view no other objection, there urged, to this right of secession, than such as I have already noticed.

The summary of its argument, and very nearly in its own words in this.—Each State has expressly parted with so many powers, as to constitute it jointly with the other States, a single nation. In becoming parts of a nation, the States surrendered many of their essential rights of sovereignty, and so were no longer sovereign; the allegiance of their citizens being; transferred to the government of the United States. But this government thereupon became their sovereign, because it can punish Treason, which is an offence against sovereignty, and sovereignty must reside with the power to punish it. Moreover, the Constitution of the United States forms a government. Every government has a sanction expressed or implied, therefore, a government has a right by the law of self-defence, to pass acts for punishing offences against its authority, unless that right is modified, restrained, or resumed by the constitutional act. In our system, although the right is modified in the case of Treason, yet authority is expressly given, to pass all laws necessary to carry the powers of government into effect.—Hence, no State of this Union may secede, because such secession would destroy the Unity of the Nation, any attempt to do which act, would be an offence against the sovereignty of the government, and might be properly punished at its own discretion.

In reply to this argument, I have already endeavoured to shew, that these States do not, and never did, constitute a single nation: but are, as they ever have been since they assumed to be States, free and sovereign States, not consolidated into one nation, but united only by a written covenant of Union, which we call the Constitution of the United States. That the government formed by this Constitution, so far from being a sovereign, is a mere creature of the will of these States, subject to amendment, and rightful destruction at their pleasure, endowed with but limited