University of Virginia Library

TO MATTHEW CAREY.

Dear Sir I have recd. your favor of the 21st,
with your commencing address to the Citizens of
S. Carolina. The strange doctrines and misconceptions
prevailing in that quarter are much to be
deplored; and the tendency of them the more to be
dreaded, as they are patronized by Statesmen of
shining talents, and patriotic reputations. To trace
the great causes of this state of things out of which
these unhappy aberrations have sprung, in the effect
of markets glutted with the products of the land,
and with the land itself; to appeal to the nature of the
Constitutional compact, as precluding a right in any
one of the parties to renounce it at will, by giving
to all an equal right to judge of its obligations; and,
as the obligations are mutual, a right to enforce correlative

with a right to dissolve them; to make manifest
the impossibility as well as injustice, of executing
the laws of the Union, particularly the laws of commerce,
if even a single State be exempt from their
operation; to lay open the effects of a withdrawal of
a Single State from the Union on the practical conditions
& relations of the others; thrown apart by
the intervention of a foreign nation; to expose the
obvious, inevitable & disastrous consequences of a
separation of the States, whether into alien confederacies
or individual nations; these are topics which
present a task well worthy the best efforts of the best
friends of their country, and I hope you will have
all the success, which your extensive information
and disinterested views merit. If the States cannot
live together in harmony, under the auspices of such
a Government as exists, and in the midst of blessings,
such as have been the fruits of it, what is the prospect
threatened by the abolition of a Common Government,
with all the rivalships collisions and animosities, inseparable
from such an event. The entanglements
& conflicts of commercial regulations, especially as
affecting the inland and other non-importing States,
& a protection of fugitive slaves, substituted for
the present obligatory surrender of them, would
of themselves quickly kindle the passions which are
the forerunners of war.

My health has not been good for several years, and
is at present much crippled by Rheumatism; This
with my great age warns me to be as little as possible
before the public; and to give way to others who with

the same love of their Country, are more able to be
useful to it.