Nullification, Secession, Webster's Argument, and the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions: Considered in Reference to the Constitution and HistoricallyLoring, Caleb William
History
Nullification, Secession, Webster's Argument, and the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions: Considered in Reference to the Constitution and Historically
Loring, Caleb William
Nullification (States' rights); Secession
The dispute between the greater and smaller States was finally settled
by the provision that all money bills should originate in the first
branch of the Legislature, that direct taxation should be in proportion
to representation in that branch, and that there should be an equal
representation in the upper House, the vote however being _per capita_
and not by States. The final vote on this settlement was almost
unanimous, only one State, Maryland, in the negative.[35]
[35] 5 Elliot, 357.
It has been argued by Davis, Stephens, and others, that this equal
representation of the States in the Senate was an establishment of a
confederacy, and it has been a stumbling-block in the way of many
constitutional commentators who have considered it a _compromise_
between a national and a confederate government. It is a _compromise of
the right of representation_ in one branch only of the legislative
department of the government; but it is _no compromise_ in the _powers
granted_. The powers granted to the government are of supremacy,
legislative, executive, and judicial, over State and State constitutions
and State judiciaries. If there had been rotten boroughs established by
the Constitution like those then in Great Britain, if Delaware and Rhode
Island had been given double the representation that Virginia had, or if
every slave of the South had counted for two white men in the free
States, the granted powers of the government would have been none the
less supreme and national, as the Constitution itself declares, and as
they in reality are. Scotland is not a sovereign nation because her
peers elect twelve of their number to the House of Lords of the
government of Great Britain. Oxford and Cambridge Colleges are not
sovereign powers because they choose representatives to the House of
Commons. Charles Pinckney of South Carolina with reason said: “Give New
Jersey an equal vote and she will dismiss her scruples and concur in the
national system.”
The other resolutions of Virginia, except those relating to an
executive, had been acted upon, when Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts
moved, that “the proceedings of the convention for the establishing of a
_national government_” “be referred to a committee to prepare and report
a Constitution”; a committee of five was agreed upon, no one
objecting,[36] no one denying that the government was a national one.
From the 23d to the 26th of July the plan of the Executive was
considered and settled, and was unanimously referred to the Committee of
Detail, that of five already appointed to prepare and report the
Constitution. The convention adjourned until August 6th, to give the
necessary time to their committee. The resolves then passed are stated
in Elliot’s _Debates_.[37]
[36] 5 Elliot, 357.
[37] 5 Elliot, 374-6.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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