The grave subjects introduced in your letter of invitation have drawn from me the frank exposition of opinions which I have neither interest nor inclination to conceal.

Grateful for the kindness you have personally expressed, I renew my expressions of regret that it is not in my power to accept your kind invitation, and have the honor to be, with great respect, your obedient and humble servant,

(Signed)

ANDREW JACKSON.

TO JOHN STONEY and others, Committee of Arrangements.

SPEECH OF THE HON. T. R. MITCHELL.

Dr. William Read, the first vice-president, gave the following: "The Hon. Thomas R. Mitchell: The uniform and consistent advocate both of State Rights and of the integrity of the Union."

To which Mr. Mitchell made the following reply, during which he was frequently interrupted by highly approving acclamation.

Mr. President and Gentlemen,-I know not how to thank you for the kind sentiment which you have just expressed. The approbation of so large a portion of my fellow-citizens of Charleston, the great capital of the South and of our beloved South Carolina, is a boon given by your kindness, not due to my merit.

When I look around me and consider those who compose this meeting and its objects, I am overwhelmed with sadness and with joy—with sadness at the occasion of the meeting, the distractions of our once united and harmonious State; with joy at beholding such an assemblage of intelligence, of virtue, of firmness, and of patriotism. We have truly met under the most interesting circumstances: not only to celebrate the most sublime and momentous event of our history, the Declaration of Independence, but to declare before God and our country, that we and ours will maintain, to the utmost of our power, the Union of the States, the Constitutions of the United States and that of our own beloved State, in their perfect integrity. These are the objects of our meeting; these form the bond of our Union. Differing, as many of us do, on important points of policy and constitutional construction, the magnitude of these objects is paramount to them all-suppresses every discordant sentiment, and unites us as a band of brothers by ties stronger than those of blood.

We have been charged, and it has often been repeated, with harboring imaginary fears on these subjects. Imaginary fears! When we have been gravely told by a high dignitary of the State, on a most solemn occasion, that it is time to calculate the costs of the Union! When the Hartford Convention, the only blot in our history, and which has hitherto called forth the execration of every Carolinian, is held up to the people as an example for their imitation and emulation! When one of

our representatives, in and out of Congress, in the back country and the low country, has been endeavoring by misstatements and sophisms, to prove the utter incompatibility of the interests of the North and South; to disaffect our people towards the general government, and to present in the most deceptive colors the advantages of a separation of our State from the confederacy! When the general government has been called, in an official communication by the highest authority of the State, a foreign government! Finally, when we daily and hourly hear the raven sounds of disunion and civil war rung in our ears in changes on the word nullification. Are not these signs?-signs, not of political peril, not of the destruction of our constitutions of government, not of the conflagration of our towns and of the devastation of our fields-for, could we suppose that these misguided people had the will, they surely have not the power to effect their objects; but sure and veritable signs of the loss by our State of the sympathy and good will of the rest of the Union, more especially that of the South; of her degradation to the low estate of Massachusetts, when, under a similar influence, she refused to muster her militia at the call of the President, and convened her Hart ford Convention. And signs of the fall of our State from that high and prominent stand in the confederacy which she once held, when her sons gave proof of the utter nothingness of wealth and numbers, when opposed to virtue and talent; when, though small in representation and still smaller in physical force, she stood in the National Councils in point of influence equal to Virginia and superior to New York. Oh, had you witnessed the noble bearing of our little State in the government at Washington when her chosen son, William Lowndes, guided and governed her councils. William Lowndes! Name most cherished, most dear to every Carolinian. Spotless patriot! In thee we beheld the rare rivalry between goodness and greatness. These are the effects of what has been miscalled the Carolina doctrines-as the pernicious theory of Henry Clay has been called the American system-when it is well known that before its adoption freedom was the living principle of our commercial policy. Where and by whom have these doctrines been recognized and adopted? By Georgia? No; she has solemnly disclaimed them. By North Carolina? Her legislature has put them down by a vote of 5 to 1. By Alabama-a cotton State, and the youngest of the Southern sisterhood? They have shared there a like fate. By Virginia, the leading State of this great Southern equinoctial region-the land of genius and liberty-the first and most strenuous advocate of State Rights? No; her legislature has passed them by with studied neglect, while she has not a newspaper of any character which is not levelled against them. Where then and by whom, I ask, have they been recognized and adopted? Shall I say by the one-half of our people? If I were to tell you that they were recognized by the one-fourth or the one

twentieth of our population, you would charge me with exaggeration. I sincerely and honestly believe-and this belief is founded on laborious researches, extended as far as I could-that if the nature and tendency of these doctrines were fully explained and developed to all the people, that its advocates would in a very short time be reduced to a handful of factious and disorganizing politicians.

Do not mistake me when I speak thus of the Carolina doctrines. I am, and have ever been, through good report and through evil report, without change or deviation, openly and above-board, an advocate of State Rights as understood and explained by Jefferson and Madison. I was proud to be an humble disciple in that school when the majority of the delegation, with which I then served, denounced them as radical; and Calhoun and M'Duffie stigmatised them as the worst and most stupid of all heresies. But the faith of the Christian is not more different from that of the Turk than the doctrine of State Rights is different from that of the Carolina, as it is termed. The doctrine of State Rights opposes only the abuses of the Constitution; the Carolina doctrine opposes the Constitution itself. The doctrine of State Rights considers the Constitution, when administered according to its legitimate end and design, as the best of all governments. The Carolina doctrine considers the Constitution under any circumstances as the worst, and sneers at it as a mongrel-half horse, half alligator-half national, half Federal. The doctrine of State Rights considers the action of the Constitution on the people of the States as a new and beautiful idea-as one of the great inventions and improvements of the eighteenth century. The Carolina doctrine considers this action as a fungus, as an excrescence, and in all its reasonings and conclusions, places the State in the same attitude in which she stood under the articles of the old Confederation. Were I to be asked what is necessary for the preservation of State Rights, I should say a strict and literal interpretation of the Constitution. State Rights admit of no constructive powers but what are essentially necessary to the execution of the enumerated powers-and the word necessary is here understood in a strict philosophical sense-while the Carolina doctrine, to sustain its favorite theory of nullification, is compelled to resort to a latitude of construction which will make any and every thing of the Constitution. Can this new light then be true light? The doctrine of State Rights is as old as the Constitution itself. It was the foundation of the first division of parties. It has been investigated, analyzed, and discussed by patriots of transcendant minds who revered State sovereignty as the palladium of liberty and property. Yet who among them ever imagined, much less affirmed, that a State had a right to put her veto on the proceedings of the general government. This discovery was reserved for Mr. Calhoun, who, his most consistent friend, M'Duffie, has proclaimed to be the father of the great system of internal improvement;

and who, when at the head of the War Department and in expectation of the Presidency, was the zealous and uncompromising advocate of high taxes, conscription, and the most lavish expenditure of the people's money. But I will tire you no longer with a discussion so dry. Brothers of South Carolina, supporters of the Constitution, under the banner of the thirteen stripes, the sacred emblem of the Union of the twenty-four States, which waved triumphantly over Washington in our war for political independence, and over Jackson in our war for commercial independence-under those glorious stripes, which have been to our country, by sea and by land, a cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night-under those glorious stripes, whose political influence is now operating on the continent of Europe from the Borysthenes to the Mediterranean-under those sacred stripes which floated over the dead and mangled bodies of our fathers of the Revolution we are celebrating the Fourth of July. What sentiment, in accordance with this scene, and with the feelings it calls forth, can I better give than the following:

"The Union-The Constitution-Liberty: The true and natural order of things for without the Union we can have no Constitution, and without the Constitution no Liberty."

SPEECH OF HUGH S. LEGARE, Esq.

The Hon. Thomas Lee offered the following volunteer toast:

"Hugh S. Legare: An enlightened jurist and sound constitutional lawyer a friend to the Union, and an able and efficient advocate of State Rights."

On which Mr. Legare rose and addressed the meeting in the subjoined admirable speech:

Mr. Legare said he was obliged to the meeting for the opportunity offered him, according to an established usage, of saying what he thought and felt upon the momentous occasion, for so it seemed to him, that had brought them together, and would gladly avail himself of it to speak very much at length, were it not physically impossible to make himself heard in so vast an assemblage. He thought it due to himself and to those who were cf the same way of thinking, that their sentiments should be fairly and fully expressed-for he had no doubt that they were such as would meet the hearty concurrence of a great majority of the people of South Carolina. He felt the less regret, however, at the self-denial he was obliged to practice, because the able speech of the orator of the day had maintained the doctrines which he (Mr. L.) professed, and for which, as the representative of the people of Charleston, he had strenuously, and he flattered himself, not unsuccessfully, contended in the Legislature of the State during several successive sessions. These doctrines they had heard expounded and enforced that morning by a man and in a manner worthy of the proudest days of

this proud city, nor did he think that any one could have listened to that discourse without being the wiser and better for it.

It has been frequently thrown out of late, in the language of complaint and censure, said Mr. L., and on a recent occasion, very emphatically, by a gentleman for whom on every account, I entertain the profoundest respect, that there is a certain party among us who seem much more intent upon "correcting the errors of some of our statesmen" (as they are said modestly to express it) than upon putting their shoulders to the wheel along with the rest of their fellow-citizens, in an honest and manly effort to relieve the State from the burthens under which it is thought to be sinking-in plain English, that their pretended hostility to the tariff acts is all a sham. Sir, this would be a severe rebuke, if it were deserved. I, for one, should be very sorry to think that the part I am taking in the proceedings of this day were open to that construction. God knows it was with extreme reluctance that I made up my mind to take this step. But what was I to do? What alternative has been left us by those who have the constructive majority of the State, that is to say, the majority of the Legislature at their back? They have chosen to narrow down the whole controversy concerning the American system to a single point. They have set up an issue and demand a categorical expression of opinion upon the expediency of immediately interposing the sovereign power of the State, to prevent the execution of the tariff law. That is to say, according to Mr. M’Duffie's reading (the only sensible reading) of that rather ambiguous phrase, to raise the standard of the State, and to summon her subjects, by the allegiance which they owe to her, to gather around it in order to resist a law of Congress. Sir, if I do not misunderstand all that we have recently heard from men in high places (and if I do misunderstand them, it is not because I have not most anxiously and patiently examined whatever they have said and done), this, and this alone, is the question now before us. In such a question all minor considerations are swallowed up and lost. Upon such a question, no man can, or ought to be-no man in the face of a community, excited and divided as this is, dare be neutral. It is propounded to us after the fashion of the old Roman Senate: You who think thus, go thither-you who are of any other opinion stay here. The country calls upon every individual, however humble he may be, to take his post in this mighty conflict. Sir, I obey that paramount command, and be it for weal, or be it for woe, be it for glory, or be it for shame, for life and for death, here I am.

But, sir, I repeat it, I should most deeply regret that what we are now doing should be thought to give any countenance to any part of the "American system." It is known, I believe, to everybody present, from various publications which have been long before the community, that I think that system unconstitutional, unjust and inexpedient. This