The Calhoun doctrine was something entirely different from this. According to his doctrine, any single State might order at once a suspension of the law within her borders, and not until three-fourths of the States in national convention had overruled the nullification could the State be forced to obey the obnoxious law. To use Calhoun's own words, his theory was, that "it belongs to the State, as a member of the Union, in her sovereign capacity in convention, to determine definitely, as far as her citizens are concerned, the extent of the obligation which she has _contracted_; and if, in her opinion, the act exercising the power in dispute be unconstitutional, to declare it null and void, which declaration would be obligatory on her citizens." The sum and substance of this was, as Von Holst has pointed out,[1] to give to one-fourth of the States the power if they saw fit to deprive the Federal Government of every power entrusted to it, that is, to alter the constitution at will. [Footnote 1: _Constitutional History of the United States_, Vol. I, p. 474, note.] The right of secession follows as a logical outcome of the theory of nullification rigidly carried out. Federal laws are general in their nature, and if binding anywhere, must be binding everywhere. If then, a minority of States insist on their right of nullification, the federal government will be obliged either to admit that every act of Congress is without any force in a State until it has obtained the tacit approval of the people of that State, or else it will be driven to the necessity of obtaining the enforcement of the law by arms. Such employment of force would of course be but the prelude to secession. Indeed, South Carolina, in her Ordinance of Nullification, declared that she would secede, if the United States did not repeal the obnoxious laws, or if she should attempt to enforce the collections of the tariff duties provided for by the acts in dispute. According to the Unionist view, it is held that in no case has the individual State the right to resist the operation of a federal law, much less does it possess the actual power to pass a law affecting its relation to, or continuance in, the Union. This view is supported by an interpretation of the constitution that denies to that instrument the character of a compact between the States and the National Government. The constitutional theory of this school is that the National Government was formed _by the people_ as a whole, and not by the States. That the States accepted this government, but were in no sense parties to an agreement between them and the Nation. According to this view, the Union began with the first acts of resistance taken in common by the colonies, and is thus, in a sense, older than the state governments, which were not formed until after the Declaration of Independence. Also, that when the States gave in 1788 their consent to the constitution, their consent was irrevocable. Two quotations from