his premises before proceeding to discuss the consequences flowing from them. But this he has carefully avoided, as much out of regard for the danger as for the difficulty of such an attempt. Without consulting either the prudence or the apprehensions of Mr. Dallas, we will venture to present a few thoughts upon that part of the subject under consideration which he has so signally neglected. It requires a mind of somewhat enlarged capacity to com prehend the division of powers established by the Constitution between the General Government and those of the States. The Federal Government is supreme and sovereign, though constitutionally restricted to certain powers affecting equally all the members of the Union. It possesses all the attributes of sovereignty: it can legislate and enforce its legislation; it is self-sustained; possesses powers adequate to its own protection, and for the defense of every member of the confederacy. It establishes its own tribunals, not only authorized to adjudicate all questions arising under the laws and treaties of the United States, but with power to determine controversies between the citizens of different States, and between States themselves. And still higher in importance, its tribunals are clothed with authority to determine all questions arising from a collision of the constitutions and laws of the States with those of the United States. With foreign nations it treats on the footing of a sovereign power, and its compacts and guaranties depend for their efficacy on no higher authority than that reposed in it by the Constitution. Such are the admitted powers of the Federal Government; and whether we choose to apply to such a political system the name of a "nation" or a "mere federal union," cannot add to or abate from its essential characteristics, or from the powers rightfully exercised under it. For ourselves, designing to dictate definitions to no one, we deem the word "nation" more expressive of the dignified character of the United States than any less significant term. different signification, and points to an aggressive spirit supposed to lurk in the framework of the Federal Constitution, struggling by insidious encroachments to overwhelm the State sovereignties. The nationality of the United States is in no respect inconsistent with the independent sovereignty of the States. The States are not subordinate, but, like the United States, limited sovereignties, each supreme, independent and self-sustaining within its proper sphere; that is to say, where the exclusive powers of the General Government are not encroached upon. Every citizen resident within the States is at once a member of the general and the local community-a citizen of the United States and of his own State. From him all loyalty and sincere attachment is due to both. The immediate and intimate bearing which the institutions of his State have upon his social and material interests will assure at least as firm an attachment to them as to a system more remote from his observation, and whose operations affect his interests in a manner more remote and more difficult to understand. Under such circumstances, for a citizen of the United States to become an instrument of erecting a consolidated empire upon the ruin of the State sovereignties, implies treason to an authority which affection, duty and interest conspire to preserve in its integrity. Who, then, are the conspirators whose machinations excite so lively an apprehension in the brain of our philosopher? Whoever they may be, the first act of encroachment upon the State sovereignties, the first breathings of such treason, are not recorded in the history of our political existence. Are not the Northern States struggling to enforce the constitutional guaranty of a purely local State right, under circumstances evincing the strength of their attachment for the Union? Are not sacrifices of honestly entertained opinions and prejudices daily made, to maintain the supremacy of law? The warmth of the discussion, the fermentations and disturbances occasionally arising in some of the Northern States, and gradually yielding to the peaceful sway of law, furnish the strongest argument in behalf of the loy To a certain extent the term "nation" implies consolidation. As applied to our Constitution, it implies the consolidation of the federal powers in an organic, objective gov-alty of the North to the Constitution. These ernment. But the term consolidation, when applied by the declaimers as a bug-bear, has a far indications are rightly interpreted by generous minds in every section of the Union, and give strength to the conviction that there yet exists among us enough of forbearance | vities to achieve some strange destiny for us. with the opinions of others, and of fraternal sympathy, to transmit our noble Constitution-the gift of a generation that is past in all its purity to the generation which shall succeed to us. To minds constituted like that of Mr. Dallas, these considerations are inappreciable. But fortunately, if they do not possess the power of appreciating that which is noble and dignified, they are themselves the more easily appreciated in their length and breadth, compass and volume. Does the secret lie in prosperity at home and honor abroad-in industry, abundance and contentment? It may perhaps be portended in the silence that pervades and surrounds certain closed and deserted buildings, not long since noisy with the clangor of wheel and anvil. Then again may it not lurk in the necessity for electing a Democratic successor to Fillmore? It would seem highly probable that this last is the true origin of Mr. Dallas's apprehensions for the future; for throughout his patriotic letter he nowhere loses sight of this means of accomplishing that beneficent consummation. We will venture, then, to assume that the impending ruin can only be averted by the election of a Democratic President at the approaching presidential election; and thus having placed ourselves in sympathy of purpose and feeling with Mr. Dallas, we will with which he applies the means requisite to that end, or to wonder at the presumption involved in the attempt, as the result may warrant. Mr. Dallas has mistaken the indications of the political horoscope. From the lofty elevations of Schooley's Mountain he may have observed all the stars in the firmament in their courses, but he has failed to discover their conjunctions; his astrology is as much at fault as his philosophy. The most sensitive and jealous among the sisterhood of States have no need nor desire for his sympathy, and can gain as little from his cham-examine in order to admire the adroitness pionship as the Union can lose by the worst act of treason of which his genius is capable. Mr. Dallas thinks that we are, as a people, rather too conservative and calm; too much so for our good; too much so to fulfil the destiny marked out for us by our Constitution. It may be so; but it seems strange that so apathetic a race "should endure years of dangerous agitation, unsettling our sentiments as fellow-citizens, and winding gradually up to a social convulsion." That must be a strange conservatism that can agitate to the verge of a social crisis, but cannot remove the cause of agitation without belying its own principles; that a most desirable calmness that can maintain itself throughout such fermentations. Two notable champions of Democracy are at this moment watching each other over the wide regions that separate the peninsula of the North from the farthest South, ready to meet in terrible encounter some day : "Two planets rushing with aspect malign Of fiercest opposition in mid sky." But for a certain "noise and confusion," one would long since have spoken to some purpose; while the other prudently keeps silence, lest a worse noise and confusion should ensue. At this juncture, a feeble trumpet-note is heard in an unexpected quarter. A former politician, supposed long since to have been dead and buried and embalmed, is lustily piping away like a very Anthony Van Corlaer, till the little valleys of the Schooley ring again with the clangor, though the sound is scarcely audible so far off as the Atlantic. But it matters little whether we be conservative or radical, calm or impetuous, if the fact be that we are winding up to a social convulsion. Let us stand upon this firm ground-not so elevated as the summit of Schooley's Mountain-and look about us for the portents of the coming storm. Is it in the honor recently achieved by our commercial marine? Is it in the widely-expanding wings of our commerce? Are railroads, With a composure worthy of the highest telegraph lines and canals, stretching into conscious rectitude, the discontented are and subduing forests, the emissaries of the invited to unite in an agitation for an amendinfernal power, forging chains for freedom ment of the Constitution designed to guarin the dark caverns of the earth? All these antee more effectually and for ever to secure agents are about us, coiling their folds the rights of the States from federal entighter and tighter, and straining their acti-croachments. There is-what a politician the catastrophe he displays his highest tragic mood. stands most in need of, next to a God and a party-an issue, a something to attach adherents, to inflame zeal, to turn the breath "What," he inquires, "if this doubtful of patriotic enthusiasm full into the sail of and dilatory course should prove abortive ?” the fortunate craft that has been lucky A world of despair for the experiment of free enough to trim for a breeze from the right government and for the shrewdness and quarter. The time was, when personal sobriety of the popular judgment is implied superiority attracted the admiration and in those portentous words doubtful and determined the choice of the millions; when dilatory. When this crisis arrives, we are heroic fortitude and self-devotion were ideal-assured that the quick instinct of self-presized and worshipped. In those days heroes ervation will grasp at disunion as the only were magnified to demi-gods, and men were alternative left. So Mr. Dallas can look but slaves; but now-a-days ideas are the through the present and calmly contemplate heroes, and those who ride them in the race disunion as a possible, nay, a probable resolufor glory are their squires and lackeys. The tion of impending difficulties. Much allowtime may yet come when a joint consulship ance ought at all times to be made for dif of ideas and ideal men will control the des- ferences of judgment and feeling; but it is tiny of mankind. That will be a happy safe to say of any citizen of the United day for the world, but a sad one for such States, with the opportunities that Mr. Dalpoliticians as Mr. Dallas. las has wasted to understand the purest system of political freedom the world has yet produced, and to become imbued with a generous attachment to its principles, and who yet can calmly look disunion in the face, and calculate its present and future advantages that the air he breathes and the food he consumes were better bestowed upon the humblest drudge that has a warm and honest heart. Fratricide may, under possible circumstances, be justified by the quick instinct of self-preservation; but the man who suffers his mind to become familiar with such a thought, under any degree of provocation however great, is guilty of the crime without the justification. To such a mind the principle of union is expediency, and that which to other minds is sacred and reverend is valued by it from the dollar-and-cent standard. Will not our calm and conservative people seize upon this real and tangible proposition, for lack of something better to contend and wrangle about? Shall not mass meetings be assembled, and sharp quills be dipped in gall for such an occasion? We think not; though the voice that has spoken from Schooley's Mountain should be uttered from every peak of the Alleghanies, though Mr. Dallas should prove a false prophet and a worse politician. But we are told that we ought not to falter in our reliance on the shrewd and sober judgment of our fellow-citizens, and we are assured that they will rally in their might to prop up the tottering fragments of the Union. A more cunning demagogue would have professed to trust that sober judgment to work a happy issue out of that impending crisis, without the aid of paper barriers to keep apart the warlike spirits of the States. It would be a notable example of forbearance, worthy of beginning a new chapter in the history of human actions, should an infuriated people, rushing headlong to the accomplishment of a result dictated by passion, stop in their career to erect bulwarks strong enough to resist their impetuosity. In that day madmen will erect cells and forge chains to curb their own fury. But Mr. Dallas is not much out of his reckoning, for all this inconsistency. His dramatic talent has been overtasked in sketching the characters of his dramatis personæ, and in contriving his plot; but in It is time that we should all, North and South, East and West, come to an understanding about this much talked-of disunion. And we might as well know it first as last, that the thing is impossible. Union is indelibly stamped upon the geographic features of our continent; it is a part of our political and social being; it is determined for us, whether we will or no, by our physical and moral constitutions; and, to express the whole in a phrase vastly popular at this day with those of Mr. Dallas's way of thinking, it is our manifest destiny. The indissoluble character of the marriage bond is by all civilized societies acknowledged to be the strongest means of repressing domestic discords and dissensions; and if we would be good citizens, we must train our minds to regard the Union as equally indissoluble, and our charities to fit us to live harmoniously together under it. So long as threats of disunion are tolerated, and disunion is regarded as an alternative for any, even the worst of conditions, there will be no end to the haughty demands fostered by local and sectional interests and peculiarities, whether at the North or South, East or West, and backed by threats of secession which must inevitably spring from the misconducted warmth of an active, enthusiastic and ambitious people. We repeat what under other words we have already said, there is no peaceful and legal means by which this Union can be dissolved. Revolution may overwhelm it, anarchy may paralyze it, but no method exists by which it can be torn asunder short of violence. No tribunal exists, or can exist, possessing authority adequate to pronounce a decree of divorce that shall remit the States to a condition of absolute independence. That which destroys the Constitution must be superior to it. Where shall such transcendent authority be found? Not in Congress, for that is the creature of the Constitution; the national legislature derives its authority from no inherent right in the people's representatives to govern, nor from any gift of power independent of the Constitution, but from the Constitution itself. The right to impair or annul the guaranties of the Constitution has not been conferred upon Congress, and therefore cannot be exercised by it. The framers of the Constitution wisely provided a means of future amendment; but like Cortez, when once they were united under a common standard upon the firm soil of a new world, they destroyed the ships in which they had been tossed upon a tempestuous sea, and trusted their all to a common destiny. While any number of the States remain loyal to the Union, there is but one power that can adjudge its overthrow, and those who deem themselves equal to the undertaking must, with arms in their hands, appeal to the God of war. pression, and he who resorts to it is execrated as a traitor or revered as a hero, according to the justice and necessity of resistance, and the moderation with which it is conducted. A proper regard for the consequences which must ensue from a determined denial of the rights of any member of the confederacy cannot fail to inspire due respect for the guaranties of the Constitution; and while on the one hand it will deter aggressors, on the other it teaches those who take fire at any fancied interference with their rights the folly and imprudence of their reiterated threats of disunion. Were these consequences less terrible, a necessary check upon passion would be lost, and there would remain less hope for the experiment of frec government than the history of our country has hitherto justified. Reflecting minds in every section of the Union are deeply weighing those considerations vividly presented by the recent agitations. A generous and enduring attachment for the Union is every where gaining strength, and the clamor of demagogues finds fewer listeners at the present day than at any previous time. There are a few turbulent spirits left who with Mr. Dallas fan the flame of discord for their personal advantage, and who, under the pretense of an ardent desire to preserve the State sovereignties, hope to ingratiate themselves with the discontented; who raise the cry against consolidation as a mere steppingstone to an ambition that would erect itself over the fragments of the Union rather than submit to occupy the position for which nature, in the unequal distribution of her gifts, designed them. But Mr. Dallas is as yet the only public man who has ventured, while asserting that there are elements of agitation at work threatening social convulsion and the forcible dissolution of the nation, to propose a course which, if adopted under such circumstances, would blow the embers into a flame of resistless fury. In striking contrast to the extravagances of Mr. Dallas, let us turn to the masterly discriminations of these subjects— secesWe are not among those who believe in sion, nullification and revolution-presented passive submission under all circumstances in a recent letter from the Hon. Henry to constituted authority. The right of Clay. This most gifted of living statesrevolution—a right absolutely inalienable men, who has carried an intellect of unamong mankind-sets the limit of obedience surpassed comprehensiveness, a judgment. to constituted authority; but that right remarkable not less for its solidity and sobriis the last and most solemn appeal from op-ety than for its rich stores of well-considered experience, and a sway over the minds and ment, free or despotic, known to mankind, and interrupting the intercourse and violating or menacing the execution of the laws of the dismembered confederacy. It contends for this right as well for Louisiana as for South Carolina, although the province of Louisiana cost us so much money, and was nigh involving us in a foreign war; for Texas, although it occasioned us a war with Mexico, the boundaries and to acquire it, many were willing payment of ten millions of dollars to arrange its to risk a war with England; and for distant California, although that was acquired by the double title of conquest and the payment of an ample pecuniary consideration. "The alleged right of secession is, I apprehend, sometimes confounded with a right of revolution; but its partisans mean a totally different thing. They contend that it is a peaceful, lawful, and, if not constitutional remedy, that it is not forbidden by the Constitution. They insist that it is a State right, to be recognized and respected; and that, whenever exercised by a State, far from being centled to the co-operation of other States. The prusured or condemned, the State, if necessary, is entident valor of these partisans, in imitation of the previous example of the friends of nullification, disclaims the purpose of using themselves, and protests against the application to them of any physical force. "Nullification and secession have sprung from the same metaphysical school; and the latter is the ally, if not the offspring of the former. They both agree that a single State is invested with power to nullify the laws of all the other States, passed by Congress; but nullification claims a right to accomplish that object, and to remain at the same time in the Union; whilst secession asserts a right to attain it by withdrawing from the Union, and absolving the State from all obliThe right of revolution is that right which an gation to the Constitution and laws of the United unjustly oppressed people, threatened with, or States. They both maintain that a resort to either borne down by, intolerable and insupportable process is peaceful and legitimate. Nullification tyranny and injustice, have, of resorting to forcible derived an ambiguous but contested support from resistance to prevent or redress the wrongs with the memorable resolutions of the States of Virginia which they are menaced, or under which they are and Kentucky, adopted in 1798-9; but these resosuffering. It may aim simply at a removal of lutions afford no color or countenance to the pre-existing government, or to establish within its grievances, or it may seek totally to change the tensions of secession. "The doctrine of secession assumes, that any one of the thirty-one States composing the Union, wherever or however situated, whether in the interior or on the frontier, has a right, upon its own separate will, and according to the dictates of its exclusive judgment, to withdraw from the Union whenever it pleases; that this act of secession is peaceful, and not to be controverted or obstructed by the rest of the States, or by the application of any force, within the limits of the seceding State, to execute the laws of the United States; and that thereupon, the State and its citizens are absolved from all obligations and duties to the United States, and become a power as independent and sovereign as any of the nations of the earth. The doctrine maintains that this right of secession may be exercised whenever the State deems it has sufficient cause; at all times—in a state of profound peace and prosperity, or in the midst of a furious war raging in all our borders; and that, in the latter case, transforming itself into a distinct and independent nation, it may escape the calamities of war, make a separate treaty of peace with the common enemy, become neutral, or even ally itself with that enemy, and take up arms against the United States. It asserts this right, although it may lead, in process of time, to the promiscuous dotting over, upon the surface of the territory of the United States, of petty independent nations, establishing for themselves any form of govern 66 limits a new government. It is a right not confined by the boundaries of States, (although, being organized political bodies, they may be capable of giving greater effect to revolutionary efforts,) but it belongs to oppressed man, whatever may be his condition. In all revolutions, however, there are two parties-those who revolt, and the government which they forcibly resist. There are generally two opposite opinions, also, entertained of the cause of resistance that of those who rise in rebellion, believing themselves to be wronged, and that of the existing government, which denies having inflicted any oppression or injustice. It is incumbent upon wise and considerate men, before they hastily engage in a revolution, deliberately to consider the motives and causes of revolt, and carefully to calculate the probable consequences of forthey will be guilty of treason, and incur the penalty cible resistance. If unsuccessful, they know that upon traitors." inflicted It is proper that those who profess doctrines which, in any country where the freedom of speech is less absolute than in our own, would be deemed to have a tincture of treasonable license in them, should understand distinctly what it is they profess; so that those who have been misled, through want of reflection, may return to allegiance |