3. If the power thus applied for be 'granted, acquiescence then would be a duty on the part of the State; and in that event, the contest would terminate in converting a doubtful constructive power into one positively granted: but should it not be granted, no alternative would remain for the General Government but its permanent abandonment.' Such are the three leading points in the _doctrine of nullification_, as laid down by its principal champion. It will be perceived that they contemplate not a single act, but a long and complex course of proceedings, involving the agency not only of the nullifying State, but of the General Government and of all the other States. The discontented State _nullifies_ an obnoxious act: it then becomes the duty of the General Government to cease to execute the act within that State, and to apply to the States for the power in dispute: if the power be obtained, it is the duty of the nullifying State to acquiesce: if not, the act is definitively annulled. Now, if all this be legal and constitutional, why do we find no mention or hint of any part of it in the Constitution or the laws? As respects the first and third steps in the proceedings, it may be urged, with some plausibility, that the Constitution is silent, because it does not undertake to regulate in any way the action of the States, as bodies politic, or of their Governments. But what account can be given of the silence of the Constitution upon the second step in the proceedings? When a State has exercised the power of annulling an act of Congress, it then becomes 'the duty of the General Government to abandon the power, (by which Mr. Calhoun doubtless means to discontinue executing the act) at least within the limits of the nullifying State, and to apply to the States themselves in the form prescribed by the Constitution, to obtain it by a grant.' Here is a two-fold duty of great delicacy and importance, which, according to the Vice-President, devolves, in a certain contingency, upon the General Government. The General Government is bound to discontinue the execution of one of its laws within a particular State, and the General Government is bound to apply to the States, in the form prescribed in the Constitution, for a grant of the power to pass such a law. Of all this the Constitution says not one word. If the passage which we have quoted from the exposition stood alone, we should, in fact, be entirely at a loss to know what the Vice-President means in this place by _the form prescribed in the Constitution_, as that in which the General Government is to apply to the States for a grant of new powers: but from other parts of the document, we gather that he alludes to the clause which prescribes a form for amending that instrument. Now it is undoubtedly true that the General Government might, if they should by constitutional majorities deem it expedient, recommend to the States an amendment, which, if