The opposition of the strict parliamentarians, on the ground that the Senate could not originate a revenue bill, was overcome by the action of the House of Representatives in substituting the Clay bill for the Verplanck bill, and passing it on the 26th, and sending it to the Senate for concurrence. The Senate now passed the House bill on March 1st, and the House immediately passed the Wilkins bill, against the protest of {238} the South Carolinians that it could now have no purpose since every member of Congress from South Carolina had voted for the new Tariff Act. [Sidenote: The nullification ordinance withdrawn.] The President signed both bills at the same time, March 2nd, and South Carolina rescinded the Nullification Ordinance. [Sidenote: Motives and general results.] It is not easy to see what principles or what party finally triumphed in this contest, or to comprehend all the motives of the chief actors in it. It has been said, or hinted, that Mr. Calhoun, chagrined and disappointed at not gaining the presidency in 1832, was induced to take the course which he followed in reference to nullification by the hope of breaking up the Union and winning, thus, the presidency of a Southern confederacy; that President Jackson was largely influenced, in the decided attitude which he assumed, by the desire to take revenge on Mr. Calhoun and South Carolina for Mr. Calhoun's attempt to court-martial him more than a dozen years before, and for South Carolina's slight upon him in the election of 1832; and that Mr. Clay was moved far more by his jealousy of President Jackson, and his fear of trusting him with extraordinary powers, than by any dread of the destruction of the Union. There is probably some truth in certain, if not in all, of these speculations, but such things are not the matters of chief value in the search for the line of development of the constitutional history of this country. They do indeed help us to appreciate the motives for the particular form of adjustment put upon that development at any stage of its course; but our chief concern must be with the advance or retrogression in principle of that development, our question must be whether the Union and the Constitution were strengthened or weakened by {239} the events of 1832 and 1833, whether the political nationality of the country was cemented or suffered disintegration, and whether strength was gathered, or the seeds of weakness were sown, in the results attained.