order or interest, the people of the United States.  The English government, says Mr. Calhoun, is so exquisitely constituted, that the greater the revenues of the government, the more stable it is; because those revenues, being chiefly expended upon the lords and gentlemen, render them exceedingly averse to any radical change.  Mr. Calhoun does not mention that the majority of the people of England are not represented in the government at all.  Perhaps, however, the following passage, in a previous part of the work, was designed to meet their case:—­

“It is a great and dangerous error to suppose that all people are equally entitled to liberty.  It is a reward to be earned, not a blessing to be gratuitously lavished on all alike;—­a reward reserved for the intelligent, the patriotic, the virtuous, and deserving; and not a boon to be bestowed on a people too ignorant, degraded, and vicious to be capable either of appreciating or of enjoying it.”

Mr. Calhoun does not tell us who is to bestow this precious boon.  He afterwards remarks, that the progress of a people “rising” to the point of civilization which entitles them to freedom, is “necessarily slow.”  How very slow, then, it must be, when the means of civilization are forbidden to them by law!

With his remarks upon England, Mr. Calhoun terminates his discussion of the theory of government.  Let us grant all that he claims for it, and see to what it conducts us.  Observe that his grand position is, that a “numerical majority,” like all other sovereign powers, will certainly tyrannize if it can.  His remedy for this is, that a local majority, the majority of each State, shall have a veto upon the acts of the majority of the whole country.  But he omits to tell us how that local majority is to be kept within bounds.  According to his reasoning, South Carolina should have a veto upon acts of Congress.  Very well; then each county of South Carolina should have a veto upon the acts of the State Legislature; each town should have a veto upon the behests of the county; and each voter upon the decisions of the town.  Mr. Calhoun’s argument, therefore, amounts to this:  that one voter in South Carolina should have the constitutional right to nullify an act of Congress, and no law should be binding which has not received the assent of every citizen.

Having completed the theoretical part of his subject, the author proceeds to the practical.  In his first essay he describes the “organism” that is requisite for the preservation of liberty; and in his second, he endeavors to show that the United States is precisely such an organism, since the Constitution, rightly interpreted, does confer upon South Carolina the right to veto the decrees of the numerical majority.  Mr. Calhoun’s understanding appears to much better advantage in this second discourse, which contains the substance of all his numerous speeches on nullification.  It is marvellous how this morbid and intense mind