the Constitution, having always an eye to the welfare of the whole.
"Assuming this principle," said he, "does any one doubt that if New
York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, and the Western
States constituted an independent nation, it would immediately
protect the important interests in question? And is it not to be
feared that, if protection is not to be found for vital interests,
from the existing systems, in great parts of the confederacy, those
parts will ultimately seek to establish a system that will afford
the requisite protection?" [Footnote: Clay, Works, IV., 81, 82;
Annals of Cong., 18 Cong., 1 Sess., II., 1997, 2423.]

While the most prominent western statesman thus expressed his
conviction that national affairs were to be conducted through
combinations between sections on the basis of peculiar interests,
Calhoun, at first a nationalist, later the leader of the south,
changed his policy to a similar system of adjustments between the
rival sections. John Quincy Adams, in 1819, said of Calhoun: "he is
above all sectional and factious prejudices more than any other
statesman of this union with whom I have ever acted." [Footnote:
Adams, Memoirs, V., 361, VI., 75.] But Calhoun, by the close of the
decade, was not only complaining that the protective policy of
certain sections set a dangerous example "of separate
representation, and association of great Geographical interests to
promote their prosperity at the expense of other interests," but he
was also convinced that a great defect in our system was that the
separate geographical interests were not sufficiently guarded.
[Footnote: Am. Hist. Assoc., Report 1899, II., 250.] Speaking, in
1831, of the three great interests of the nation--the north, the
south, and the west--he declared that they had been struggling in a
fierce war with one another, and that the period was approaching