THE WORLD'S FAMOUS ORATIONS No doubt, sir, a great majority of the people J of New England conscientiously believed the ^^embargo law of 1807 unconstitutional; as con- ^ientiously, certainly, as the people of South Carolina hold that opinion of the tariff. They reasoned thus: Congress has power to regulate commerce ; but here is a law, they said, stopping all commerce, and stopping it indefinitely. The law is perpetual ; that is, it is not limited in point of time, and must of course continue until it shall be repealed by some other law. It is per^ petual, therefore, as the law against treason or murder. Now, is this regulating commerce or destroying it? Is it guiding, controlling, giving the rule to commerce, as a subsisting thing, or is it putting an end to it altogether? Nothing is more certain than that a majority in New England deemed this law a violation of the Constitution. The very case required by the gentleman to justify State interference had then arisen. Massachusetts believed this law to be a deliberate, palpable, and dangerous exercise of a power not granted by the Consti- tution. Deliberate it was, for it was long continued; palpable she thought it, as no words in the Constitution gave the power, and only a construction, in her opinion most violent, raised it; dangerous it was, since it threatened titter ruin to her most important interests. Here, then, was a Carolina case. How did Massachusetts deal with it? It was, as she thought, a plain, manifest, palpable violation of 52
