whole? A part of the present national debt was contracted to pay the old
debts of Texas. Is it just that she shall leave and pay no part of this
herself?

Again: If one State may secede, so may another; and when all shall have
seceded none is left to pay the debts. Is this quite just to creditors?
Did we notify them of this sage view of ours when we borrowed their
money? If we now recognize this doctrine by allowing the seceders to go
in peace, it is difficult to see what we can do if others choose to go
or to extort terms upon which they will promise to remain.

The seceders insist that our Constitution admits of secession. They
have assumed to make a national constitution of their own, in which
of necessity they have either _discarded_ or _retained_ the right of
secession, as they insist it exists in ours. If they have discarded it,
they thereby admit that on principle it ought not to be in ours. If they
have retained it, by their own construction of ours they show that to be
consistent they must secede from one another whenever they shall find it
the easiest way of settling their debts or effecting any other selfish
or unjust object. The principle itself is one of disintegration, and
upon which no government can possibly endure.

If all the States save one should assert the power to _drive_ that one
out of the Union, it is presumed the whole class of seceder politicians
would at once deny the power and denounce the act as the greatest
outrage upon State rights. But suppose that precisely the same act,
instead of being called "driving the one out," should be called "the
seceding of the others from that one," it would be exactly what the
seceders claim to do, unless, indeed, they make the point that the one,
because it is a minority, may rightfully do what the others, because