Calhoun made several great speeches in the Senate of the United States, besides those in reference to a banking system connected with the government, which, whether wise or erroneous, contained some important truths. But the logical deduction of them all may be summed up in one idea,--the supremacy of State rights in opposition to a central government. This, from the time when the diverging interests of the North and the South made him feel the dangers in "the unchecked will of a majority of the whole," was the dogma of his life, from which he never swerved, and which he pursued to all its legitimate conclusions. Whatever measure tended to the consolidation of central power, whether in reference to the encroachments of the Executive or the usurpations of Congress, he denounced with terrible earnestness and sometimes with great eloquence. This is the key to the significant portion of his political career. In his speech on the Force Bill, in 1834, he says: "If we now raise our eyes and direct them towards that once beautiful system, with all its various, separate, and independent parts blended into one harmonious whole, we must be struck with the mighty change! All have disappeared, gone,--absorbed, concentrated, and consolidated in this government, which is left alone in the midst of the desolation of the system, the sole and unrestricted representative of an absolute and despotic majority.... In the place of their admirably contrived system, the act proposed to be repealed has erected our great Consolidated Government. Can it be necessary for me to show what must be the inevitable consequences?... It was clearly foreseen and foretold on the formation of the Constitution what these consequences would be. All the calamities we have experienced, and those which are yet to come, are the result of the consolidating tendency of this government; and unless this tendency be arrested, all that has been foretold will certainly befall us,--even to the pouring out of the last vial of wrath, military despotism." That was what Mr. Calhoun feared,--that the consolidation of a central power would be fatal to the liberties of the country and the rights of the States, and would introduce a system of spoils and the reign of demagogues, all in subserviency to a mere military chieftain, utterly unfit to guide the nation in its complicated interests. But his gloomy predictions fortunately were not fulfilled, in spite of all the misrule and obstinacy of the man he intensely distrusted and disliked. The tendency has been to usurpations by Congress rather than by the Executive. It is impossible not to admire the lofty tone, free from personal animus, which is seen in all Calhoun's speeches. They may have been sophistical, but they appealed purely to the intellect of those whom he addressed, without the rhetoric of his great antagonists. His speeches are compact arguments, such as one would address to the Supreme Court on his side of the question.