Excerpt from Defence of a Liberal Construction of the Powers of Congress as Regards Internal Improvement, Etc: With a Complete Refutation of the Ultra Doctrines Respecting Consolidation and State Sovereignty
"Ambitious men, of inferior talents, finding they have no hone to be distinguished in the councils of the general government, naturally wish to increase the power and consequence of (he state governments, the theatres in which they expect to acquire distinction. It is not, therefore, a regard for the rights of the people, and a real apprehension that those rights are in danger, that have caused so much to be said on the subject of prostrate state sovereignties, and consolidated empire." - One of the People. By George M'Duffie, Esq.
The United States exhibit at present, a most extraordinary spectacle to the world. We are stunned with the most impassioned declamations in favour of "state rights" - and the danger they are in from the usurpations, and ambition, and despotic views of the general government, which is preparing to devour them, and labouring to produce the so-styled, most abominable of all governments, consolidation, whereby the lives, liberties, and property, of all our citizens, from Maine ta Florida, will be inevitably annihilated. To guard against this conglomeration of evils, preparations are making "to renew" the bloody "scenes of the revolutionary war."
A spectator remote from the fervid atmosphere of South Carolina who could view the state of the country with the calm eye of a dispassionate philosopher, would pronounce that this alarming prospect was not only without foundation, but that the dangers of the nation were in a totally opposite direction. "The lion" of the United States government "is bearded in his den" - and by second or third rate members of the confederacy. He would pronounce, with Mr. M'Duffie, [see postea 13] that "we have more cause of apprehension from the states than from the general government, or, in other words, that there is in our system, a greater tendency to disunion than to consolidation." Treaties entered into with all the solemn sanctions that bind civilized nations, are set aside without consulting either of the high contracting parties - and the dreaded monster, the United States, is powerless to enforce the observance of them, or to protect the suffering party. Maine appears disposed to be somewhat troublesome, about the decision of the boundary line. None of us has forgotten the difficulties the United States' government experienced during the late war, from the seditious opposition of individual states. To crown the whole, South Carolina, with a population of 280,000 white inhabitants, and 260,000 slaves, appears, so far as can be collected from the proceedings of the nullifiers, to be preparing to annul, and it appears from the operations of her executive, that he is preparing, vi et armis, to resist the operation of, laws enacted in due form by the entire confederacy of twenty-four states.
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