revolution did not subvert government in all its forms.  It did not subvert local laws and municipal administrations.  It only threw off the dominion of a power claiming to be superior, and to have a right, in many important respects, to exercise legislative authority.  Thinking this authority to have been usurped or abused, the American Colonies, now the United States, bade it defiance, and freed themselves from it by means of a revolution.  But that revolution left them with their own municipal laws still, and the forms of local government.  If Carolina now shall effectually resist the laws of Congress; if she shall be her own judge, take her remedy into her own hands, obey the laws of the Union when she pleases and disobey them when she pleases, she will relieve herself from a paramount power as distinctly as the American Colonies did the same thing in 1776.  In other words, she will achieve, as to herself, a revolution.

But, Sir, while practical nullification in South Carolina would be, as to herself, actual and distinct revolution, its necessary tendency must also be to spread revolution, and to break up the Constitution, as to all the other States.  It strikes a deadly blow at the vital principle of the whole Union.  To allow State resistance to the laws of Congress to be rightful and proper, to admit nullification in some States, and yet not expect to see a dismemberment of the entire government, appears to me the wildest illusion, and the most extravagant folly.  The gentleman seems not conscious of the direction or the rapidity of his own course.  The current of his opinions sweeps him along, he knows not whither.  To begin with nullification, with the avowed intent, nevertheless, not to proceed to secession, dismemberment, and general revolution, is as if one were to take the plunge of Niagara, and cry out that he would stop half-way down.  In the one case, as in the other, the rash adventurer must go to the bottom of the dark abyss below, were it not that that abyss has no discovered bottom.

Nullification, if successful, arrests the power of the law, absolves citizens from their duty, subverts the foundation both of protection and obedience, dispenses with oaths and obligations of allegiance, and elevates another authority to supreme command.  Is not this revolution?  And it raises to supreme command four-and-twenty distinct powers, each professing to be under a general government, and yet each setting its laws at defiance at pleasure.  Is not this anarchy, as well as revolution?  Sir, the Constitution of the United States was received as a whole, and for the whole country.  If it cannot stand altogether, it cannot stand in parts; and if the laws cannot be executed everywhere, they cannot long be executed anywhere.  The gentleman very well knows that all duties and imposts must be uniform throughout the country.  He knows that we cannot have one rule or one law for South Carolina, and another for other States.  He must see, therefore, and does see,