"The national government possesses those powers which it can be shown the people have conferred on it, and no more. All the rest belongs to the State governments, or to the people themselves. So far as the people have restrained State sovereignty by the expression of their will, in the constitution of the United States, so far, it must be admitted, State sovereignty is effectually controlled. I do not contend that it is, or ought to be, controlled further. The sentiment to which I have referred propounds that State sovereignty is only to be controlled by its own 'feelings of justice;' that is to say, it is not to be controlled at all; for one who is to follow his feelings, is under no legal control. Now, however men may think this ought to be, the fact is, that the people of the United States have chosen to impose control on State sovereignties. The constitution has ordered the matter differently from what this opinion announces. To make war, for instance, is an exercise of sovereignty; but the constitution declares that no State shall make war. To coin money is another exercise of sovereign power; but no State is at liberty to coin money. Again, the constitution says, that no sovereign State shall be so sovereign as to make a treaty. These prohibitions, it must be confessed, are a control on the State sovereignty of South Carolina, as well as of the other States, which does not arise 'from feelings of honorable justice.' Such an opinion, therefore, is in defiance of the plainest provisions of the constitution."
Mr. Webster proceeded to investigate the South Carolina doctrine as it was then termed; he referred to the resolutions of Pennsylvania and Kentucky declaring the tariff laws constitutional, while in South Carolina the same laws were declared to be a palpable, deliberate usurpation of power by Congress; and in speaking of the absurdity of allowing each State to decide in such cases, he said:
"If there be no power to settle such questions, independent of either of the States, is not the whole Union a rope of sand? Are we not thrown back again precisely upon the old confederation?
"It is too plain to be argued. Four and twenty interpreters of constitutional law, each with a power to decide for itself, and none with authority to bind anybody else, and this constitutional law the only bond of their union! What is such a state of things but a mere connection during pleasure, or, to use the praseology of the times, _during feeling_? And that feeling, too, not the feeling of the people who established the constitution, but the feeling of the State governments."