The pretensions of States have found their ablest and frankest upholder in John C. Calhoun. I take a single instance, on account of its explicitness. In reply to a Northern Senator, the defender of Slavery said:-- “Now let me tell the Senator that the doctrines which we advocate are the result of the fullest and most careful examination of our system of government, and that our conviction that we constitute _an Union, and not a Nation_, is as strong and as sincere as that of the Senator or any other in the opposite opinion.” “We are as devoted to the Union as any portion of the American people (I use the phrase as meaning the people of the Union); but we see in a national consolidated government evils innumerable to us. Admit us to be a Nation and not an Union, and where would we stand? _We are in the minority._”[77] Evidently, in that minority he saw the doom of Slavery. * * * * * Local self-government, whether in the town, county, or State, is of incalculable advantage, supplying the opportunities of political education, and also a local administration adapted precisely to local wants. On this account the system has been admired by travellers from abroad, who have found in our “town meetings” the nurseries of the Republic, and have delighted in local exemption from central supervisorship. De Tocqueville, who journeyed here, has recorded his authoritative praise,--and Laboulaye, who has visited us only in his remarkable studies, unites with De Tocqueville. Against that exacting centralization, absorbing everything, of which Paris is the example, I oppose the American system of self-government, which leaves the people to themselves, subject only to the paramount conditions of national life. But these conditions cannot be sacrificed. No local claim of self-government can for a moment interfere with the supremacy of the Nation, in the maintenance of Human Rights.