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and among the avowed disciples, too, of a truly great and patriotic personage, who, I can not doubt, is destined to be much better understood and much more accurately appreciated hereafter than it was his fortune to be by many in his own age.

Thus speaks John C. Calhoun, as it were, from the tomb wherein he lies inurned:

"Constitutional governments, of whatever form, are, indeed, much more similar to each other in their structure and character than they are, respectively, to the absolute governments even of their own class. All constitutional governments, of whatever class they may be, take the sense of the community by its parts, each through its appropriate organ, and regard the sense of all its parts as the sense of the whole. They all rest on the right of suffrage, and the responsibility of rulers, directly or indirectly. On the contrary, all absolute governments, of whatever form, concentrate power in one uncontrolled and irresponsible individual or body, whose will is regarded as the sense of the community. And hence the great and broad distinction between governments is not that of the one, the few, or the many, but of the constitutional and the absolute.

"From this there results another distinction, which, although secondary in its character, very strongly marks the difference between these forms of government. I refer to their respective conservative principle—that is, the principle by which they are upheld and preserved. This principle, in constitutional governments, is compromise, and in absolute governments is force, as will be next explained.

"It has been already shown that the same constitution

was hoped might be of sufficient power to prevent the election of the then incumbent for a second presidential term, and secure the elevation in his stead of one of the most accomplished statesmen, as well as one of the most astute and skillful political managers that has yet made his appearance any where upon the public stage. With a view to attaining the interesting end then held in view, it was necessary that steps should be immediately taken to aggregate all the elements of political opposition in one cohesive and potential mass, that the same might be wielded with adequate efficacy against those who were then seated in the highest stations of Federal trust. Hence the adroit preparation of the celebrated Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions of 1798, '9, the former of which are now known to have been drawn by Mr. Jefferson, and transmitted to certain trusted political friends of his in Kentucky, while the latter were drafted by Mr. Madison, under the counsels of the same distinguished personage (always recognized by the former thereafter as his veritable political Magnus Apollo), and placed in the willing and ever facile hands of the celebrated John Taylor, of Caroline, for presentation to the Virginia Legislature. I have not time now to analyze either of these famous sets of resolutions, nor have I the smallest inclination to do so. They answered admirably well the purposes for which they had been originally fabricated; and though the dogmas embodied in these resolutions were not sufficiently fortunate to find general sanction in the. co-states of the Union, yet they undoubtedly constituted, in a great degree, the basis upon which that great political party was then brought into existence, which was

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soon to raise to the presidency three eminent personages in succession, all of whom will go down to future generations as representatives of a school of politics which owes its origin and long-retained ascendency mainly to the subtle and prolific genius of him to whom his numerous admirers have been long accustomed to refer as "the sage of Monticello." That the fearful doctrine of nullification, which was more than twenty years subsequent to this period so imposingly blazoned forth to the world by Mr. Calhoun and his enthusiastic political disciples, and that of secession likewise, which has been recently subjected to the severest of all earthly tests, may be directly traced to these same resolutions, though perchance not set forth in either of them with all the precision and clearness that an Aristotle or a Locke would have required, no discerning and unprejudiced man will be much inclined to dispute. That either set of these resolutions contains sound and salutary principles, and is in strict unison with the Constitution framed by our fathers, few, it is to be presumed, will be hereafter heard to assert. It is certainly not a little remarkable that Mr. Madison, who, in the Federal Convention, was the close ally of Hamilton and Governeur Morris in claiming for the new government which he was aiding to build up powers wholly inconsistent with the practical enforcement either of nullification or secession, and who had said on one occasion, according to his own report of the matter, that he "was of opinion, in the first place, that there was less danger of encroachment from the general government than from the state governments; and, in the second place, that the mischiefs from the encroachments

would be less fatal," should have not only consented to draw up the Virginia Resolutions of '98, but should have also agreed to be the draftsman, one year later, of an elaborate report prepared expressly for the purpose of explaining and enforcing these same resolutions. It is true that in after life he disavowed any intention on this occasion to yield his sanction either to nullification or secession, and I have certainly no inclination either to call in question the sincerity of this eminent personage, or to accuse him of gross forgetfulness as to the operations of his own clear and well-balanced intellect; but I repeat that the language of his resolutions, as well as those drawn by Mr. Jefferson, as already noticed, must be regarded as inculcating all the perilous doctrines now recognized as specially appertaining to the South Carolina school of politicians. However objectionable these doctrines may be in practice, I am not aware that their promulgation, at the close of the last century, in the manner described, had the effect of calling into action feelings of sectional jealousy, or of impressing upon the public mind in either section sentiments of acerbity, alienation, or distrust. It is indeed probable that the effect of the exciting struggle for political ascendency in 1801 was chiefly to cause the depositories of Federal power to be a little more on their guard against the perpetration of encroachments on the reserved rights of the states and people than they might otherwise have been, and that, in point of fact, it may in this way have contributed rather to prevent than to instigate collisions calculated to endanger the domestic peace.

I can not well refrain from remarking here, in passing,

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that, during the four years just elapsed, the Southern States of the Union have had the most conclusive evidence supplied to them, and in forms eminently impressive in every way, of the utter futility and worthlessness of all the ultra states-rights governmental theories; since, in less than a twelve-month after a Constitution had been agreed upon at Montgomery, framed especially with a view to indicating the intention of its framers to set forth and promulgate to all the world a "compact among sovereign states," to which compact each of said states should be recognized as having "acceded as a state, its co-states forming, as to itself, the other party;" providing, too, that the "government created" by said compact should not be "the exclusive or final judge of the extent of powers delegated to itself;" and providing still farther, that "as in all other cases of compact among powers having no common judge, each party" should have "a right to judge for itself, as well of infractions as of the mode and manner of redress;" since, I repeat, in less than a twelve-month after this same boasted states-right Constitution was put in operation, its very framers notoriously, and in spite of all remonstrances, succeeded in consolidating all governmental power in the central agency at Richmond, and, upon the stale plea of military necessity, shamelessly trod under foot all the reserved rights of the states and people, and organized an irresponsible military despotism in the very bosom of the Ancient Dominion, as harsh and grinding in its character as has ever heretofore existed in any age of the world. On this subject I shall in due season bring forward such damning evi-. dences as will profoundly shock the sensibilities of all

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