The work upon which his reputation as a thinker will rest with posterity is his Treatise on the Nature of Government.  Written in the last year of his life, when at length all hope of further personal advancement must have died within him, it may be taken as the deliberate record or summary of his political opinions.  He did not live to revise it, and the concluding portion he evidently meant to enlarge and illustrate, as was ascertained from notes and memoranda in pencil upon the manuscript.  After the death of the author in 1850, the work was published in a substantial and elegant form by the Legislature of South Carolina, who ordered copies to be presented to individuals of note in science and literature, and to public libraries.  We are, therefore, to regard this volume, not merely as a legacy of Mr. Calhoun to his countrymen, but as conveying to us the sentiments of South Carolina with regard to her rights and duties as a member of the Union.  Events since its publication have shown us that it is more even than this.  The assemblage of troublesome communities which we have been accustomed to style “the South,” adopted this work as their political gospel.  From this source the politicians of the Southern States have drawn all they have chosen to present to the world in justification of their course which bears the semblance of argument; for, in truth, Mr. Calhoun, since Jefferson and Madison passed from the stage, is almost the only thinking being the South has had.  His was a very narrow, intense, and untrustworthy mind, but he was an angel of light compared with the men who have been recently conspicuous in the Southern States.

This treatise on government belongs to the same class of works as Louis Napoleon’s Life of Caesar, having for its principal object one that lies below the surface, and the effect of both is damaged by the name on the title-page.  The moment we learn that Louis Napoleon wrote that Life of Caesar, the mind is intent upon discovering allusions to recent history, which the author has an interest in misrepresenting.  The common conscience of mankind condemns him as a perjured usurper, and the murderer of many of his unoffending fellow-citizens.  No man, whatever the power and splendor of his position, can rest content under the scorn of mankind, unless his own conscience gives him a clear acquittal, and assures him that one day the verdict of his fellow-men will be reversed; and even in that case, it is not every man that can possess his soul in patience.  Every page of the Life of Caesar was composed with a secret, perhaps half-unconscious reference to that view of Louis Napoleon’s conduct which is expressed with such deadly power in Mr. Kinglake’s History of the Crimean War, and which is so remarkably confirmed by an American eyewitness, the late Mr. Goodrich, who was Consul at Paris in 1848.  Published anonymously, the Life of Caesar might have had some effect.  Given to the world by Napoleon III., every one reads it as he would a defence by an ingenious criminal of his own cause.  The highest praise that can be bestowed upon it is, that it is very well done, considering the object the author had in view.