Nullification is the provocation to that brutal and foul contest of force, which has hitherto baffled all the efforts of the European and Southern American nations, to introduce among them constitutional governments of liberty and order. It strips us of that peculiar and unimitated characteristic of all our legislation--free debate; it makes the bayonet the arbiter of law; it has no argument but the thunderbolt. It were senseless to imagine that twenty-three States of the Union would suffer their laws to be trampled upon by the despotic mandate of one. The act of nullification would itself be null and void. Force must be called in to execute the law of the Union. Force must be applied by the nullifying State to resist its execution-- "Ate, hot from Hell, Cries Havoc! and lets slip the dogs of war." The blood of brethren is shed by each other. The citizen of the nullifying State is a traitor to his country, by obedience to the law of his State; a traitor to his State, by obedience to the law of his country. The scaffold and the battle-field stream alternately with the blood of their victims. Let this agent but once intrude upon your deliberations, and Freedom will take her flight for heaven. The Declaration of Independence will become a philosophical dream, and uncontrolled, despotic sovereignties will trample with impunity, through a long career of after ages, at interminable or exterminating war with one another, upon the indefeasible and unalienable rights of man. The event of a conflict of arms, between the Union and one of its members, whether terminating in victory or defeat, would be but an alternative of calamity to all. In the holy records of antiquity, we have two examples of a confederation ruptured by the severance of its members; one of which resulted, after three desperate battles, in the extermination of the seceding tribe. And the victorious people, instead of exulting in shouts of triumph, "came to the House of God, and abode there till even before God; and lifted up their voices, and wept sore, and said,--O Lord God of Israel, _why_ is this come to pass in Israel, that there should be to-day one tribe lacking in Israel?" The other was a successful example of resistance against tyrannical taxation, and severed forever the confederacy, the fragments forming separate kingdoms; and from that day, their history presents an unbroken series of disastrous alliances and exterminating wars--of assassinations, conspiracies, revolts, and rebellions, until both parts of the confederacy sunk in tributary servitude to the nations around them; till the countrymen of David and Solomon hung their harps upon the willows of Babylon, and were totally lost among the multitudes of the Chaldean and Assyrian monarchies, "the most despised portion of their slaves."