American Eloquence, Volume 1: Studies In American Political History (1896)
History
American Eloquence, Volume 1: Studies In American Political History (1896)
Speeches, addresses, etc., American; United States -- History; United States -- Politics and government
south of Cape Finisterre, a cape in the northern part of Spain; while
north of that, the trade of the colonies was prohibited, except through
the mother-country, by means of her commercial regulations. If we
compare the products of the country north and south of Cape Finisterre,
we shall find them almost identical with the list of the protected and
unprotected articles contained in the list of last year. Nor does the
analogy terminate here. The very arguments resorted to at the
commencement of the American Revolution, and the measures adopted, and
the motives assigned to bring on that contest (to enforce the law), are
almost identically the same.
But to return from this digression to the consideration of the bill.
Whatever difference of opinion may exist upon other points, there is one
on which I should suppose there can be none; that this bill rests upon
principles which, if carried out, will ride over State sovereignties,
and that it will be idle for any advocates hereafter to talk of State
rights. The Senator from Virginia (Mr. Rives) says that he is the
advocate of State rights; but he must permit me to tell him that,
although he may differ in premises from the other gentlemen with whom he
acts on this occasion, yet, in supporting this bill, he obliterates
every vestige of distinction between him and them, saving only that,
professing the principles of '98, his example will be more pernicious
than that of the most open and bitter opponent of the rights of the
States. I will also add, what I am compelled to say, that I must
consider him (Mr. Rives) as less consistent than our old opponents,
whose conclusions were fairly drawn from their premises, while his
premises ought to have led him to opposite conclusions. The gentleman
has told us that the new-fangled doctrines, as he chooses to call them,
have brought State rights into disrepute. I must tell him, in reply,
that what he calls new-fangled are but the doctrines of '98; and that it
is he (Mr. Rives), and others with him, who, professing these doctrines,
have degraded them by explaining away their meaning and efficacy. He
(Mr. R.) has disclaimed, in behalf of Virginia, the authorship of
nullification. I will not dispute that point. If Virginia chooses to
throw away one of her brightest ornaments, she must not hereafter
complain that it has become the property of another. But while I have,
as a representative of Carolina, no right to complain of the disavowal
of the Senator from Virginia, I must believe that he (Mr. R.) has done
his native State great injustice by declaring on this floor, that when
she gravely resolved, in '98, that "in cases of deliberate and dangerous
infractions of the Constitution, the States, as parties to the compact,
have the right, and are in duty bound, to interpose to arrest the
progress of the evil, and to maintain within their respective limits the
authorities, rights, and liberties appertaining to them," she meant no
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