Page:United States Statutes at Large Volume 11.djvu/823

 APPENDIX. PROCLALJATION. N0. 26. 779 illegal and disorganizing ordinance of the convention,—to exhort those who have refused to support it, to persevere in their determination to uphold the Constitution and laws of their country,-—and to point out to all the perilous situation into which the good people of that State have been led, and that the course they are urged to pursue is one of ruin and disgrace to the very State whose rights they affect to support. Fellow citizens of my native State !--let me not only admonish you, as the First. Magistrate of our common country, not to incur the enalty of its laws, but use the miluence that a father would over his children wliom he saw rushing- to certain ruin. In that paternal language, with that paternal feeling, let me tell you, my countrymen, that you are deluded by men who are either deceived themselves, or wish to deceive you. Mark under what pretences you have been led on to the brink of insurrection and treason, on which you stand! First, a diminution of the value of your staple commodity, lowered by over production in other quarters, and the consequent diminution in the value of your lands, were the sole effect of the tariif laws. The effect of those laws was oonfessedly injurious, but the evil was greatly exaggerated by the unfounded theory you were taught to believe, that its burthens were in proportion to your ex orts, not to your consumption of imported articles. Your ride was mused by the assertion that a submission to those laws was a state ot? vassalage, and that resistance to them was eoéual, in Eatriotic merit, to the opposition our fathers offered to the oppressive ws of reat Britain. You were told that this opposition mi ht be peaceably-—might be constitutionally made—that you mi ht enjoy all the advantages of the Union, and bear none of its burthens. gliloquent appeals to _ your passions, to your State pride, to your native courage, to your sense of real injury, were used to prepare you for the period when the mask, which concealed the hideous features of disunirm, should be taken of It fell, and you were made to look with complacency on objects which, not long since, you would have regarded with horror. Look back to the arts which have brought you to this state—look forward to the consequences to which it must inevitably lead! Look back towhat was iirst told you as an inducement to enterinto this dangerous course. The great political truth was repeated to you, that you had the revolutionary right of resisting all laws that were palpably unconstitutional and intolerably 0ppressive—it was added that the right tonnullify a law rested on the same principle, but that it was a Lpeaceable remedy! This character which was given to it, made you receive, wi too much confidence, the assertions that were made of the unconstitutionality of the law and its oppressive effects. Mark, my fellow citizens, that by the admission of your leaders, the uncoustitutionality must be palpable, or it will not justify either resistance or nulliiicatiou! What is the meaning of the word pa pable, in the sense in which it is here used? that which is apparent to every one; that which no man of ordinary intellect will fail to x perceive. Is the unconstitutionality of these laws of that description ? Let those among your leaders who once approved and advocated the principle of rotective duties, answer the question; and let them choose whether they will he considered as incapable, then, of erceiving that which must `hnve been aparent to every man of common understanding, or as imposing upon your conhdence, and endeavoring to mislead you now. In either case, they are unsafe guides, in the perilous path they urge you to tread. Ponder well on this circumstance, and you will now how to appreciate the exaggerated language they address to you. They are not champions of liberty em ating the fame of our Revolutionary Fathers; nor are you an oppressed people, contending, as they repeat to you, against worse than colonial vassalage. You are free members of a flourishing and happy Union. There is no settled design to oppress you. You have indeed felt the unequal operation of laws which may have been unwisely, not unconstitutionally passed; but that inequality must necessarily be removed. At the very moment when you were madly urged on to the unfortunate course you have begun, a change in public opinion had commenced The nearly approaching payment of the public debt, and the consequent necessit of a diminution of duties, had already produced a considerable reduction, and that, too, on some articles of general consumption in your State. The unportauce of this change was underrated, and you were authoritatively told that no further alleviation of your burthens was to be expected, at thelvery time when the condition of the country imperiously demanded such a modification of the duties as should reduce them to a just and equitable scale. But, as if apprehensive of the eifectof this change in allaying your discontents, you were precipitated into the fearful state in which you now find yourselves. I have urged you to look back to the means that were used to hurry you on