Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 14.djvu/246

 240 Southern Historical Society Papers.

by the Constitution, and that a State sees fit to veto the law; that the question, as must be the case, is submitted to all the States, and the objecting State is supported by one-fourth of the whole number. Is any dialectician sharp enough to disprove the fact that in such case the Constitution, though not a single letter is either added or erased, has been actually changed by one-fourth of the States, though that instrument expressly requires the consent of at least three-fourths to effect the slightest change? Working in defense of the peculiar in- terests of the slaveholders with the lever of State sovereignty, Cal- houn thus begins to subvert the foundation of the whole fabric of the Constitution."

The case here supposed is not a supposable case. First. Because it could rarely, if ever, happen. Secondly. Because the hypothesis dishonors one-fourth of the States. But if such a case could happen, it would not "change the Constitution " one iota, and the assertion that it "would be actually changed," is simply untrue and absurd. If one fourth of the States should refuse to abide by the decision of three fourths, that would not "change the Constitution." Their ac- tion would be an infraction of the Constitution, and the case would be one of revolution or overthrow, not a "change " of the Constitu- tion.

Replying to the more sensible objection that " a power of so high a nature might be abused by a State," Calhoun said:

" I do not deny (that) ; but when I reflect that the States unani- mously called the general Government into existence with all its powers, which they freely delegated on their part, under the convic- tion that their common peace, safety and prosperity required it, that they are bound together by a common origin and the recollec- tion of common suffering and common triumph in the great and splendid achievement of their independence, and that the strongest feelings of our nature, and among them the love of national power and distinction, are on the side of the Union, it does seem to me that the fear which would strip the States of their sovereignty, and degrade them to mere dependent corporations, lest they should abuse a right indispensable to the peaceable protection of their in- terests, which they reserved under their own peculiar guardianshi when they created the general Government, is unnatural and un- reasonable. If those who voluntarily created the system cannot be trusted to preserve it, who can ? "

.Speaking of the South Carolina Exposition, Dr. von Hoist says : " Whether such a veto is to be an injunction against the execution