US Presidency
1833

Though the revenue laws are already declared to be void in South Carolina, as well as the bonds taken under them and the judicial proceedings for carrying them into effect, yet as the full action and operation of the ordinance are to be suspended until the 1st of February the interval may be assumed as the time within which it is expected that the most complicated portion of the national legislation, a system of long standing and affecting great interests in the community, is to be rescinded and abolished. If this be required, it is clear that a compliance is impossible. In the uncertainty, then, that exists as to the duration of the ordinance and of the enactments for enforcing it, it becomes imperiously the duty of the Executive of the United States, acting with a proper regard to all the great interests committed to his care, to treat those acts as absolute and unlimited. They are so as far as his agency is concerned. He can not either embrace or lead to the performance of the conditions.