_The same authority which imposes an obligation must of necessity possess the right of dispensing with it, or declaring its extent._ This principle, properly explained, may be received as true. But what is the authority which imposes the obligation,--for example, to execute a contract? Does the Vice-President suppose that it is the _will_ of the parties who make the contract, and that the same will which brought each of them under the obligation, can, at any time, release him from it? Does he suppose, for example, that it is the will of the two parties to a contract of marriage which imposes upon them the obligations incident to that contract, and that either party can, by a mere act of the will, exempt him or herself from these obligations? We are quite sure, that Mr. Calhoun would not himself think of maintaining a doctrine so monstrous. What then is the authority which imposes the obligation? The answer is plain. The authority imposing the obligation is the one which makes the law, from which the obligation results. In ordinary cases, when the obligation results from the laws of the land, the authority imposing it is the Government of the country. In the case of contracts between parties not subject to the same Government, the obligation results from the moral law, and is imposed by the will of the great Lawgiver of the Universe. The present is the case of an obligation resulting from the law of the land. The citizens of South Carolina are bound to pay the duties required by the existing Tariff, because it is a part of the law of the land. They were brought under the obligation to obey the laws of the United States, by the act of the State of South Carolina, by which she and twelve other States formed themselves into one body politic, under a common Government, just as an individual is brought under the obligations resulting from a contract of marriage, by his own will to enter into it. But the authority imposing the obligation is in both cases not the will of the party, but the Government of the country. The Government has the same right to repeal or alter the law which it had to enact it, and in this sense the principle is true, that the same authority which imposes the obligation, has a right to dispense with it or to declare its extent. But the citizens of South Carolina, whether in their individual or joint capacity, have no more right to exempt themselves, by any act of their own, from the obligation to obey the laws which they have come under by adopting the Constitution, or to declare its extent, than they have to exempt themselves by their own act from the obligation to support their wives and children, which they have come under by entering into contracts of marriage. Nor does it make any difference that the act, by which the citizens of Carolina became parties to the social compact, was performed by them in their joint and not in their individual capacity. There are many cases, in which