and every man sees, that the only alternative is a repeal of the laws throughout the whole Union, or their execution in Carolina as well as elsewhere.  And this repeal is demanded because a single State interposes her veto, and threatens resistance!  The result of the gentleman’s opinion, or rather the very text of his doctrine, is, that no act of Congress can bind all the States, the constitutionality of which is not admitted by all; or, in other words, that no single State is bound, against its own dissent, by a law of imposts.  This is precisely the evil experienced under the old Confederation, and for remedy of which this Constitution was adopted.  The leading object in establishing this government, an object forced on the country by the condition of the times and the absolute necessity of the law, was to give to Congress power to lay and collect imposts without the consent of particular States.  The Revolutionary debt remained unpaid; the national treasury was bankrupt; the country was destitute of credit; Congress issued its requisitions on the States, and the States neglected them; there was no power of coercion but war, Congress could not lay imposts, or other taxes, by its own authority; the whole general government, therefore, was little more than a name.  The Articles of Confederation, as to purposes of revenue and finance, were nearly a dead letter.  The country sought to escape from this condition, at once feeble and disgraceful, by constituting a government which should have power, of itself, to lay duties and taxes, and to pay the public debt, and provide for the general welfare; and to lay these duties and taxes in all the States, without asking the consent of the State governments.  This was the very power on which the new Constitution was to depend for all its ability to do good; and without it, it can be no government, now or at any time.  Yet, Sir, it is precisely against this power, so absolutely indispensable to the very being of the government, that South Carolina directs her ordinance.  She attacks the government in its authority to raise revenue, the very main-spring of the whole system; and if she succeed, every movement of that system must inevitably cease.  It is of no avail that she declares that she does not resist the law as a revenue law, but as a law for protecting manufactures.  It is a revenue law; it is the very law by force of which the revenue is collected; if it be arrested in any State, the revenue ceases in that State; it is, in a word, the sole reliance of the government for the means of maintaining itself and performing its duties.