Annulment

“ ARTICLE 150 — The right to introduce an annulment action directly to the Constitutional Court is consumated after ninety days beginning with the promul¬ gation of the contested law or By-laws in the Official Gazette. ”

“ I am now to prove to you, sir, that Nullification is the only mode in which the usurpations of the Federal Government may be resisted by the States, in accordance with the principles of our resolutions of 1798. Daring as you may consider this enterprise, I do not enter upon it with any fear, although I approach without flourish of trumpets or any other parade. I am a plain, practical man, and desire to state my opinions in a matter which other plain, practical men will understand. ”

“ Annul is used in a more general sense, denoting simply to make void; as, to annul a contract, to annul an agreement. Nullify is an old word revived in this country, and applied to the setting of things aside either by force or by total disregard; as, to nullify an act of Congress. Cancel is to strike out or annul, by a deliberate exercise of power, something which has operative force. ”

“ And its name is called Nullification; and behold it has great power and dominion over the hearts of men, for when it shall speak unto Andrew the King, he shall tremble with dread, and the ordinance, even the Tariff, shall straightway become null and void. ”

“ But I would not press the matter upon you too severely; the reparation shall be left to your own discretion; but you must decide upon what it is to be, before the Court break up.
LATITIA.
⁠Decide so soon! Will not to-morrow do, or the day after to-morrow, or the day after that?
BRIGHTLY.
⁠No, neither to-morrow nor any following morrow will do; you must pronounce your own sentence before the Court break up.
LATITIA (going about in a bewildered manner) .
⁠O, dear! what can I do? what can I say? how shall I decide? ”

“ And ye have been told by certain men, if ye will but take into your hands a cunning device called Nullification, ye will thereby be enabled to overthrow the power of the King, without peril to your lives or to the realm. ”

“ These, Men and Brethren, are the fruits of Nullification; and they were made manifest when Daniel and Edward broke the same in pieces, and held it up before the people, and those who made the cunning device have repented them of their work, and will peradventure confess the error of their ways. ”

“ The assertion having been repeatedly made, by various writers in the Consolidation journals of this city, and throughout the country, that the rightful and peaceable, though much vituperated, State remedy of Nullification had never been in reality recognized, vindicated, or enforced, by any of the States of this Union ”

“ The delay which is apparent in this case might seem injurious, but it will not be so—as it is not in the transactions of the Inquisition; for, after men have slept soundly, they are awakened by a very exemplary punishment. ”

“ To be held by my oath, an oath I was satisfied she would wish kept even at this crisis, yet knowing all the while she was drifting away into some evil that you, if you knew who she was, would give your life to avert from your honor if not from her innocent head! To see you cold, indifferent, absorbed in other things, while she, who would have perished any day for your happiness, was losing her life perhaps in the clutches of those horrible villains! ”

“ The men sat down.
"I sent for thee to mak' my will, Mr. Bonnithorne," said the old man.
The lawyer smiled.
"It is an old maxim that delay in affairs of law is a candle that burns in the daytime; when the night comes it is burned to the socket." ”

“ Pray let me entreat you, whether you take the one resolution or the other ultimately, not to delay nor put off one day a fixed resolution to use constant and sufficient exercise. I am sure any delay on that head is of a hundred times more consequence than all those which we have been lamenting. Nothing in the world could make up to you for the consequences which your omission in this respect (which I am grieved to learn from Hobart still continues) may bring upon you. ”

“ But James, who is surnamed "the deluded," and Robert the Nullifier, feared much, lest the eyes of William the just, should alight upon the graven image, Nullification, for they knew he would expose it to all the people. ”

“ But when concession is made, when tears of penitence are wept, and when, in moments of returning confidence, that luckless tendency of temper is candidly confessed, and sincerely bewailed; when all the different acts committed under its influence, are acknowledged to have been wrong, how complete ought to be the reconciliation thus begun, and how zealous our endeavours for the future to avert the consequences of this sad calamity! ”

“ And you will see, in a moment, the reason why I state my proposition in that way.
You have all heard of what, in the history of the country, has been called nullification, and you probably all understand very nearly what that is. ”

“ Inaction will be taken as conclusive evidence of abandonment, just as the failure to bring suit within the time allowed by a statute of limitation is evidence of the abandonment of an existing cause of action. ”

“ Until the oath is administered, you are at liberty to retire, and, blindfolded as you came, will be escorted to a place of safety to yourself and us, where we will leave you as we found you; but once you have taken upon yourself the obligations of the oath, all is fixed and immutable. ”

“ The present is no time for palliatives; action, prompt action, is required. A delay in Congress to prescribe or to recommend a distinct and practical proposition for conciliation may drive us to a point from which it will be almost impossible to recede. ”

“ Hours of penance for past errors may be employed to prevent others; and from the contents of that cabinet I shall learn whether I am, in this weighty matter, sacrificing my father's interests to my own half-desperate hopes. But of this I have little or no doubt. I can cause the deeds of resignation and transference to be drawn up here under my own direction, and arrange the execution of them when I return to Aix, which shall be the first moment after my penance is concluded. ”

“ In a message of November 27th, Governor Hamilton communicated to the legislature of the Commonwealth the Ordinance of Nullification and recommended the enactment of measures by that body for the execution of the Ordinance. ”

“ An Indulgence is a remission, granted out of the Sacrament of Penance, of that temporal punishment which, even after the sin is forgiven, we have yet to undergo, either here or in Purgatory.
85. How does the Church remit the punishment due to our sins? ”

“ The motion to adjourn takes precedence of every other, except when it has been moved and defeated, when it shall not be moved again until something else has been done. It cannot be moved while a member is speaking, or a vote being taken. But to be entitled to such precedence, it must be a simple motion to adjourn, without question of time or place. If these are added, it must take its regular turn. An adjournment without any time being fixed, is equivalent to a dissolution, unless this has been provided for by custom or especial rule. ”

“ If our passes had shared the common fate of those other passes in being annulled, if any one charged with authority had seen fit to halt us, if any one of a half dozen other things had or had not befallen us—we never should have gone where we did go. ”

“ The chief benefit of any process which admits of adjournments is, that it may afford means of fuller information and more mature deliberation. If neither of the parties have a strict right to it, yet the court or the jury, as the case may be, ought to demand it. ”

“ Your own best interest lays on you the obligation to face facts which may at present seem improbable, and to prepare yourselves without losing a day for meeting the gravest perils. As the situation now stands, a delay in making a decision may involve disastrous results. ”

“ If they do, I venture to tell them, they are mistaken The people never will consent. And do gentlemen consider the danger of delay, and the still greater danger of a rejection, not for a moment, but forever, of the plan which shall be proposed to them? ”

“ But the case of an indefinite suspension is different. Here no particular time has been appointed for the termination of the punishment. It may be continued during life, unless the court which has pronounced it think proper to give a determinate period to what was before indeterminate, and to declare that on such a day the suspension shall cease, and the offender be restored. In a case of this kind, action on the part of the lodge is necessary to effect a restoration. ”

“ Not many years ago one of the large cities of this country was shocked, for one twenty-four hours at least, by the news that a business man had shot his partners and himself, while at a consultation in which the affairs of the partnership were being settled up, after legal dissolution had taken place. ”

“ To push a case, to avoid delay, to secure delay, even to obtain a favourable decision, the letter or the personal intervention of a great man was powerful, the half-expressed desire of the King almost irresistible. ”

“ You will observe that these cursed delays have driven us so near the mark, that it will be impossible for me to hear from you again before the 21st. You will, therefore, send me your full determination on every point, and in every case that you can foresee. ”

“ Hence it must be granted that the condition of resignation and its gesture can have no significance for our own important problem, the problem of guilt, inasmuch as the innocent as well as the guilty may become resigned, or may reach the limit at which he permits everything to pass without his interference. In the essence and expression of resignation there is the abandonment of everything or of some particular thing, and in court, what is abandoned is the hope to show innocence, and as the latter may be real as well as merely pleaded, this gesture is a definite sign in certain cases. ”

“ Eusebius Amort, in 1735, admits the gravest differences of opinion; and the Bishop of Newport writes (p. 163) “to receive an Indulgence of a year, for example, is to have remitted to one so much temporal punishment as was represented by a year’s canonical penance. If you ask me to define the amount more accurately, I say that it cannot be done. No one knows how severe or how long a Purgatory was, or is, implied in a hundred days of canonical penance.” The rapid extension of these time-Indulgences is one of the most remarkable facts in the history of the subject. ”

“ A special form of this motion of still greater privilege is that fixing the time and place of adjournment.
When adjournment has been carried in a body that is meeting in continuous session, day after day, the business left unfinished comes up at once on reassembling, unless displaced by the order of the day. When a body has only a weekly or a monthly meeting, such business would be considered when unfinished business was reached in the regular order. ”

“ The nature of the particular case will point out what measures, on your part, would be the most for our interest, and to your discretion we must refer the taking such measures, without waiting for instructions, where circumstances would not admit of such a delay. A like necessity to act may arise on other occasions. ”

“ By all such Indulgences, all the temporal penalty is remitted to us which we owe to God for all those sins for which, though pardoned, we were still debtors, so that theologians teach us, that were we to die immediately after gaining worthily a Plenary Indulgence, we should go straight to heaven. ”

“ The defendant’s lawyer, an able fellow, secured an adjournment for three weeks.
[44]
On the announcement of this adjournment, the junior partner gave a loud groan. He leaped to his feet, and rushed out like one demented, shouting as he went:
Merciful heavens, then the sacrifice must still go on!
I don’t need to tell you how much business that firm did in the next three weeks.
Man, born of woman, is of a few days and no teeth. And, indeed, it would be money in his pocket sometimes if he had less of either. ”

“ Reynolds's fit of the gout.'
'Why, that's true, because of his will,' said her ladyship; 'but a will's soon made, is not it? That can't be much delay.'
'And then there must be settlements,' said Lord Clonbrony; 'they take time. Lovers, like all the rest of mankind, must submit to the law's delay. ”

“ It might have been done perforce, or under a misapprehension, or anything. And, in any case, the renunciation does not ensure your never wishing—or merely being willing if requested—to resume your rights.”
“Stuff, Cyril! Why should I wish to resume them?”
“Why should any one wish to be a king? ”

“ For rich men could provide Masses for their dead friends and for themselves after death, which it was quite out of the power of the poor to provide. [88]
p. 894. But a word also must be said about “Indulgences.” An Indulgence was an abatement or remission granted by the Church’s authority of some part of the temporal penance imposed by that authority upon an evil doer. ”

“ We plead guilty to a degree of sensitive annoyance—for the sake of the honor of our country, and its estimation in the public opinion of the world—which does not find even in satisfied conscience full consolation for the very necessity of seeking consolation there. ”