Page:The World's Famous Orations Volume 9.djvu/33

 HAYNE the discretion of Congress for the limitations of the Constitution, brings the States and the peo- ple to the feet of the federal government, and leaves them nothing they can call their own. Sir, if the measures of the federal government were less oppressive, we should still strive against this usurpation. The South is acting on a principle she has always held sacred — resist- ance to unauthorized taxation. These, sir, are the principles which induced the immortal Hampden to resist the payment of a tax of twenty shillings. Would twenty shillings have ruined his fortune? No! but the payment of half twenty shillings, on the principle on which it was demanded, would have made him a slave. Sir, if in acting on these high motives — if, ani- mated by that ardent love of liberty which has always been the most prominent trait in the Southern character — we should be hurried be- yond the bounds of a cold and calculating pru- dence, who is there, with one noble and gener- ous sentiment in his bosom, that would not be disposed, in the language of Burke, to exclaim: ''You must pardon something to the spirit of liberty!"^ - Used in his si)eech " On Conciliation with America."