The great fabric which had been gradually built up made an overthrow of the government look very terrible; it made peaceable secession a mockery, and a withdrawal from the Union equivalent to civil war.

The boldest hesitated to espouse any principle which was avowedly revolutionary, and on both sides men wished to have a constitutional defence for every doctrine which they promulgated.

This was the feeling which led Mr.Calhoun to elaborate and perfect with all the ingenuity of his acute and logical mind the arguments in favor of nullification as a constitutional principle.

At the same time the theory of nullification, however much elaborated, had not altered in its essence from the bald and brief statement of the Kentucky resolutions.

The vast change had come on the other side of the question, in the popular idea of the Constitution.