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OUR RELATION TO OUR COUNTRY.

[Part II.

viduals, or of combinations of individuals, well be distinguishedfrom that of the nation itself. Every nation is responsible forthe conduct of its members. This is the established doctrineof the Law of Nations, and must unquestionably apply in all itsforce (a fortiori ) to the very intimate relation subsisting amongthe United States.*

3. Again, another way in which the harmony of the States,and also of still larger sections of the Union, has been, and maybe still further impaired is, by the mutual abuse and vilificationof one another’s institutions and other peculiarities, circulated innewspapers, reviews, and sometimes in publications of more

* “ If the other States of the Union,” says the legislature of North Carolina,11 were foreign states, it would be a violation of national law in them, either toset.on foot themselves, or permit their own subjects to set on foot, any projectthe object or tendency of which would be to disturb our peace, by arraying oneportion of society against another. The Constitution which unites us, and byvirtue of which we have ceased to be foreign states in regard to each other,and have become bound in the closest union, and the most intimate relations,for the promotion of the common defence and general welfare, cannot be sup-posed to have lessened our mutual obligations, or to have made an act harmless,which would have been gross wrong, had we continued in respect to each otheras we now are in respect to other nations, —in war, enemies, and only in peace,friends. It is evident, on the contrary, that every duty of friendship towardseach other, which before existed, is by our union heightened in its obligation,and enforced by motives the most exalted and endearing. Whatever institutionor state of society we think proper to establish or permit, is by no other State tobe disturbed or questioned. We enter not into the inquiry, whether such insti-tution be deemed by another State just or expedient. It is sufficient that wethink proper to allow it. To protect us from attempts to disturb what we allowand they approve, would be to support not our institutions, but their own opin-ions, — to exercise a supervising power over our legislation, and to insult uswith a claim of superiority in the very offer to discharge the duty which ourrelations authorize us to require. As our right is indisputable to regulate ex-clusively, according to our own notions, the interior relations of our own peo-ple, the duty of preventing every attempt to disturb what we have established,results from the simple fact, that we have established it. And the propriety andimpropriety, in the view of others, of such regulations as we have pleased tomake, can never either enhance or lessen the duty of such prevention. Noother State, therefore, and no portion of the people of any other State, can claimto interfere in any matter of ours, either by authority, advice, or persuasion;and such an attempt, from whatever quarter it may come, must ever be met byus with distrust, and repelled with indignation.” (Report and Resolutions ofNorth Carolina, on the Subject of Incendiary Publications, December 19th,1835.)