FEB. 11, 1830.]

Mr. Foot's Resolution.

[SENATE.

splendid Autocrat of a rapidly consolidating empire; and was just as conspicuous throughout this sectional and unhis east room as a gorgeous palace, more suitable to the hallowed debate; and has been at length consummated by Autocrat of all the Russias, than to a republican Presi- the renunciation of the American System, and the wedding dent; and offensive to the old fashioned republicans of the itself; which I shall duly celebrate when I arrive at the represent day, who never fail to measure three inches of de- nunciation lying just ahead of me. This notorious courtmocratic fat upon the ribs, provided they can get their ship in the South, and attack in the East, drew from the hands upon the means of fattening! The unknown author is Senator from Massachusetts the remark, that if the West of the very class of mischief doing demagogues, of whom desired new, allies, let her go and seek them. So say I; Washington warned us. Do you say that letter was too and seek a new inember too, as Missouri will probably do notoriously false to do any harin? I answer, non sequitur, without any prompting, in my place, if that system is to sir; that by no means follows. Did we not behold our be abandoned: for I shall adhere to it. And this remark country divided into two grand parties, of a personal or of the Senator from Massachusetts drew from the Ajax rather of a sectional character, without regard to political Telemon of "the West" the awkward attempt to receive principles; and the impassable gulf of political animosity the palpable hit on the shield of that exclamation! Esop and prejudice, malice, hatred, uncharitableness, and civil has a simple and beautiful fable to this effect: "A prairie discord, yawning between them? Neither party would wolf was ambitious of being considered the rival, or, if read the refutations of the other; or, if they did, they possible, the conqueror, of a neighboring buffalo bull! affected to disbelieve them. We know the East Room Let-One day the wolf walked over, uninvited, into the doter was false. The members of Congress went to the mains of the bull, and, in his own mode of warfare, snappalace, and saw with their eyes it was false! The citizens ped at his tail or flew at his throat! The buffalo took the of the District of Columbia and of the metropolis of the assailant upon his horns, and tossed him sky high! The nation went to the President's, and saw it was false! The moment he touched the ground again, he limped off upon visitants from the extremities of the republic went to see a broken limb, and exclaimed, Heaven defend me from the President, and saw it was false! The foreigners visit such an alliance!""

·

ing our country, and the ambassadors and ministers of The St. Louis Enquirer-not then edited by the public emperors, kings, and republics, of the Eastern and West-printer--accused the ex-President Adams of attempting, ern hemispheres, visited the President, and saw it was at Ghent, to bargain the Mississippi for some fishing prifalse! The naked walls and unfurnished interior of the east vilege at the Northeast; and after impressing and riveting room itself, proclaimed it false! But what of all that? the calumny upon the public mind, refused even to pubCan truth fly as fast as falsehood? or the antidote always lish his triumphant refutation! No, sir. Truth has not keep pace with the bane?

"On eagles' wings immortal scandals fly;
"While noble actions are but born, and die!”

yet even discovered the author of the East Room Letter! His place of residence became an object of as much curiosity and inquiry as the birth place of Homer! Some loWill the pamphlet speech of the Senator from Massa-cated him at Richmond, Virginia. Some elsewhere. Pubchusetts, with which I hope he will favor us, ever over-lic curiosity was on the alert. Our frank huntsmen of the take that fleet little telegraphic despatch, giving a wilfully West, lovers of Washington, and of holy truth-that false statement of this debate, and of the principles and daughter of Heaven, sent on earth to cement and hold todoctrines of that Senator, avowed on this floor? Never: gether civil society among men--say (to use their parlance, and, for its own honor, it should not desire to overtake and draw my figures from my own country, and the scenes such company. of my own country) that they tracked this prowler for hu

To see the Press, once the boasted palladium of liberty, man reputation and civil discord to a deep and dark resunk, subsidized, and corrupted, into a mere engine of cess, amidst the vast prairies of the magnificent valley of party slander, is lamentable, indeed! To behold it wield-the Mississippi; that they fired the prairies, and ran their line ed to misrepresent and destroy the characters of minori- of fire into his retreat, until it scorched his very nose, and ties--for whose protection written constitutions were in-enveloped him in smoke: and still he lay sullen, and silent, vented-is alarming for the liberties of the country! But and concealed! And they had given up the hunt, until he to see such an engine, endowed by the public treasury, walked forth again upon the prowl for human reputation shielded under the known popular jealousy of all that and civil discord, in the darkness of night, under the mask savors of muzzling the press, set up here under official of "Americanus," and committed an outrage more flagiauthority, to falsify the debates of the United States' tious than the first! He will be hunted again. It is pro Senate, is intolerable to freemen! And for me, who nev-bono publico that such calumniators and Catilines should er knew any political standard but that of constitutional be known--ay, and impaled on high-high as a Roman democracy, under which I was born and educated, to be- cross or American pillory could place them, as a warning hold the printer to the Senate, who, during the days of to our young men to beware of the fate of a convicted cahis honester private life, was known by me in Missouri, lumniator! Beware of the fate of an American Catiline! where we both resided, only as a federalist, now turned Next, I specify the attempts to excite disaffection in the eleventh hour democrat to retrieve a broken fortune in the West, because of real or supposed inequalities of the pubgreat lottery or raffling match of a modern presidential elec-lic expenditures, in the various sections of the Union. It tion, denouncing the supporters of the late administration must be so, from the nature of things and the formation as federalists, and attempting to damn them, politically, of the earth. The Great Father of the Universe thought by such a charge! as if all those who were in favor of proper to make the maritime frontier along the maritime adopting the Federal constitution were not federalists! coast of the continent, instead of in the interior. We have Will the exclamation, on this floor, by the Senator from no formidable enemies in the interior, or along our WestMissouri--"Heaven defend the West from such an alli-ern frontier. The rapidly expiring remains of the aboriance"-to which so much eclat has been given in the party ginal race are more fit subjects for philanthropical socieprints of the day, ever be overtaken by the simple truth ties, or individuals, to meet and mourn over, than for expensive and powerful war measures of offence or defence; The fact of an open and conspicuous wooing, billing, and our demagogues are not yet formidable enough to reHence all the expensive and cooing, on the part of this guardian of the West, who quire interior fortifications. arrogantly presumes to speak for the whole West, towards works, such as Fortress Monroe, Fortress Calhoun, Fort the outre nymph, the river Roanoke, and all the South, Adams, or Brenton's Point, whether for war or for comAs well might has been notorious here for four or five years; ever since merce, must be where they are needed. the combination to pull down the last administration; and the demagogues and orators of Great Britain incite inter

of that matter?

SENATE.]

Mr. Foot's Resolution.

[FEB. 11, 1830.

fine and imprisonment for cutting a public twig! Some have gone the length of claiming all the lands in the new States by virtue of the acts of their admission. Others have accused the General Government of having usurped powers in relation to the public lead mines!

nal disaffection, because her fortifications and expen- The last specification, of historical notoriety, of the presive works of defence and commerce are around the vailing violations of the injunctions of the Farewell Adcoast of her island. Who would expect the public ex-dress, with which I shall now trouble the Senate, is the penditures of a government to fall like a snow of equal popular excitements and agitations in the West respectdepth over the whole surface of the ground throughout ing our national domains. It has been but too common the extent of the snow storm? The people of the in-there to represent the Union as a heard hearted and grindterior, and West, have surely more common sense and ing tyranny-a cruel step mother-subjecting citizens to patriotism than to become dissaffected from such causes. But the most surprising extravagance of all this broad farce-this intoxicating victory over us, is the declaration made by the Senator from Missouri, that "roads, and canals, and railways, across the Alleghanies, are injurious to the West, and especially to the navigation of the West!" I do not stand alone among the Western members in This is the consummation of the wedding with the Roanoke! denying both the charges and the claims thus preferred. This is tantamount to setting up the West for itself: The Government of the Union has been kind, parental, and corresponds well with the known opinion in that and indulgent to the West; rather gorging than starving quarter, that no new State should be admitted, nor the her--rather surfeiting than stinting her. So far as migraWest be annexed to the Union! Washington laid special tion has been checked or suspended, or the settlements stress upon this very topic. He foretold that such views of the wild lands and growth of the West have been of the interests of those two great sections would, in time, injuriously retarded or prevented, they have been owbe presented, and warned us against their influences. ing to our own acts, in holding up to public view the In his Farewell Address he entered at length into this prospect of a kind of millennium about to be ushered in identical subject; and showed how the cis-Alleghanian and upon them, when lands may be had for nothing, and the trans-Alleghanian countries would mutually aid each all the good things of life shall court their acceptance; other--as agriculture, and manufactures, and commerce, and thus producing a suspension of purchase settlement, mutually sustain each other; or as brethren of different and growth. occupations might mutually aid, enrich, and ʼprotect each The real fruits which such representations and schemes other. But it would seem that a greater than Washington have borne, are a general alarm in the old States for the is here! The Senator from Maine [Mr. SPRAGUE] gave safety of their common property in the new, and a disquite a laconic Yankee answer to all this, by saying, "a position to distribute the public lands, or their proceeds, single maritime war would seal up the mouth of your magnificent Mississippi!" He also said, a man and his wife might as well quarrel because of their different organization, as the different sections of the Union adopt such Missouri notions as these! And, like a long-sided Yankee, gathering fodder in September, the Penobscot be- The whole spirit of this debate, from the moment it gan at the tassel, and, with one sweep, left not a green abandoned the resolution before the Senate, and assumed flag fluttering in the air. But it is not to the wedding it-a party character, is reprehensible. After ten minutes self that I object; let that go on. When young people attention to the resolution, it suddenly abandoned the fall in love, it is better to let them marry. If you oppose living, and taking the back line of the illustrious dead of them, they will love the more; and even jump out of the New England, found the graves, and then the bones, of window, and run away. Omnia vincit amor, et nos ceda- the fathers of New England, and called them from their mus amori―let the lovers marry. But, jointly with others graves to answer at the heated and sinister bar of party from the West, I enter my protest against this renuncia-spirit for the deeds done in the body; and profanely drawtion of our great fundamental principles of national policy: ing down their motives from the high chancery of Heaven, Internal Improvements, by the only power that can well presumed to blacken them with the darkest hues! make them; and the domestic arts, to make us indepen- I must approach that neglected resolution, should I dent of our enemies, and keep our backs warm. Let the even do no more than follow the examples before me, of bridegroom go, if he will; but let him not take with him stooping to it as an eagle to his prey, barely touching our favorite national policy, and our magnificent valley of the feathers on the back, and then, ascending, fly all the Mississippi, as an appanage to please his bride. To around the firmanent until brought down again by mere that we shall not submit; but will follow the example of fatigue and exhaustion! another hated and proscribed name--the example of Duncan McArthur, when, in a fit of patriotic indignation, he broke his sword, and refused to submit to the capitulation of Detroit: one of the many results of the want of preparation in peace for a state of war.

among the States, according to their present representative numbers—a measure that we think would be very injurious to our young and sparsely populated States; and weaken the bonds of the Union." And they who have wounded us are of our own household."

But before I go there, let me shrive myself like a penitent sinner, and confess my real situation in relation to questions of the public lands. I stand here under the instructions of my Mecenas and my Minerva--my instructor and my guide; passed through the digestive organs of As matter of curiosity, I should be pleased to see the Legislature of Missouri, without either decomposition the Prince Royal to be born of this marriage-the lineal or change! They look to the past, the present, and the and legitimate heir--poised across the back bone of our continent: his Eastern half squalling, No West! No West! No State in the West! And his Western half vociferating, The West! The West! My own imperial West! He must be an animal more rare than a black swan.

future, and all around, to every point of the compass wherever land can be found belonging to the United States upon this terraqueous globe. They instruct me to vote for all such amendments as may be offered by my instructor, to one certain graduation bill, pending before It has been objected, in this debate, that societies meet, the Senate! So that, if the label over the door be "an deliberate, and petition, or remonstrate, respecting the Almshouse," and upon entering you find your mistake present condition of the red and black races of men on by a full display of smiling Cyprian beauty, it is an Almsour borders, or among us, as of schemes to consolidate house still: for that is proved by the label! Or if the the republic into a single empire! One would have thought label be "Reform," and you meet at the threshold a the present condition of both races a fit subject for the picket of the palace guard, and hear the reveillé beating philanthropy of Christendom; and especially that, under for the whole guard to turn out, and put down your inour institutions, citizens might do so without their motives, quiry by dashing out all your lights around you, it is opinions and views, being misrepresented into designs reform still, as proved by the label! Thus, you see, I hostile to the republic.

FEB. 11, 1830.]

Mr. Foot's Resolution.

[SENATE.

am bound to the triple alternative-to follow the indica-homet, nor even as Judas Iscariot, Esquire, but reformed tive leads of my Mentor, as an obedient Telemachus; or and transferred beyond the confines of Missouri-promotto show good cause, at home, why I cannot; or to be ed to the Consulate! The President must have been imtreated by my masters in Missouri, as Queen Elizabeth posed upon there, as well as in other cases; and might treated her Cardinal, when she exclaimed, "I frock'd well exclaim, "save me from my friends, and I will guard you, sir! and by G-d I'll unfrock you!" Her Majes- against my enemies!” ty must have been angry: for I learn that ladies never swear but when a little excited.

But this resolution: No sooner was its birth heard of, than the Senator from Missouri, like a modern Herod or Pharoah, breathed slaughter and destruction against it! He declared it to be "big with the fate of Cæsar and of Rome!"-" to be an occasion on which a son of the West (meaning a lineal one, I presume) ought to die with as much alacrity as on the field of battle, in defence of his country!" He even raised the war-cry of the Spanish General Palafox, and declared "war to the knife, and the knife to the hilt!" against that harmless Connecticut babe! And all this to prevent excitement at home! to keep the good people of Missouri quiet!

In these uncharitable times, the motives of myself, the Senator from Alabama, [Mr. MCKINLEY] and others disposed to let this inquiry go on, have been questioned by the author of this debate. It has been alleged that this resolution has been impaled on high--held up to the indignation of the West! and that, taking the alarm, we are disposed to avail ourselves of the tact of our Captain General from Massachusetts, to extricate us from the dilemmna, by his motion for indefinite postponement! It was even suggested that, if consulted at an earlier stage of the campaign, he might have saved us from the dilem- It seems to me a singular mode to keep the people ma! We are above harboring prejudices against such a quiet, to make them believe such a struggle is going on Captain General; but we decline the motives imputed to here by their valorous Senator against those aboriginal us, although not at all surprised at the imputation of them. enemies, the Picts and Scots of the Northeast, who, from Common charity might have suggested such motives as the accounts we have had of them, may be descended those avowed by the Senator from Maryland, [Gen. from King Philip, of Mount Hope, or Miantonimoh, or SMITH] who declared he would not, at the very com- the Penobscots and Narragansetts! mencement of the administration, set such a precedent of Suppose my neighbors, the Royal Pawnees, should send suppressing inquiry into Executive discretion: for, over a Pawnee minister to some pass of the Rocky Mountains, these surveys and sales, we know, the President possesses to see what the Red Skins are doing beyond; and he there absolute discretion, as the laws now are. But after what beholds a solitary Red Stick applying his skinning knife we have experienced of the organization, discipline, and upon the carcass of a dead deer! He sends back a repower, of a late Opposition, we are not surprised to find port that a million of Red Skins, armed, painted, and feathese idea of a Military Chieftain uppermost in the imagi-thered for the war, are passing the Cordilleras, to bear nation on that side of the chamber: No, nor would we be, down, like a deluge, upon the Pawnee lodges! How if the orator, in making this imputation, had even imagin- calm it would make the Royal Pawnees, and especially ed he felt the wire of the "Great Magician" up yonder, the squaws and papooses! How very quiet they would twitching at his elbow-like the master of a puppet show rest! And then comes a bulletin announcing his victory, setting Punch, and the others, in a true partisan dance! with his naked knife-blade to the hilt, and by the prowess Why did not the accuser remember that Magna Char- of his own "red right arm," over the whole invading ta--not of Runny Mead, but of Goose Creek-of the 4th host! Every body knows, the moment that minister reday of March, Anno Domini 1829, guarantying this right turns, the grateful Pawnees will make him principal War of reform to us? Are not the means of enjoying that Chief. But the misfortune will be, that, when they discoright, such as free ingress, egress, and regress, of the ver the gross imposture of the stratagem, they will “ungreat mansion of the public domains, included in the frock him"--yes, unchief him! grant? Why was not the old common law, as it was before the great Goose Creek charter, thought of? or at least the report of May, 1826, saying "the uncontrollable exercise of Executive discretion makes a President a Monarch! Names are nothing!"

I dislike to see religion brought into disrepute by hypocritical pretences to it, when we do not feel its influence. So I should dislike to see the true gravity and dignity of this Senate brought into disrespect, by affecting to feel them when such broad farce is reigning all around us. The Senator from Connecticut is known as a friend in Whenever I hear such extravagant declarations as Missouri. He now disavows all sectional hostility in pro-those--witness such a gigantic overstriding of all the moposing this inquiry. Let him have it. It will satisfy Con-desties of nature, and the propriety and fitness of the ocnecticut, and do us no harm in the West. The Commis-casion--or see

"Old Ocean into tempest toss'd,

"To waft a feather, or to drown a fly,"

sioner of the General Land Office, in his annual report, points out some reform, in this subject, as necessary. Then comes the Senator, with the modesty and economy of a true son of Connecticut, and asks only "a farthing I shall not affect much gravity. Such mock courage rush light" to look beyond that point, to see if more be makes me smile. If the Senator mean that he intends to die in neither necessary; and if so, where to begin, how far to go, and where to stop. This inquiry he would make through the the defence of this inquiry nor of his country, that is inCommittee on Public Lands, every man of whom comes telligible. If he mean that the West might spare as on withfrom the new States, supposed to be most interested in the out any of that tear-falling scene which he enacted across question-fresh with the clods of your public domain al-this chamber at the Senator from Maine, [Mr. HOLMES] most sticking around them! The President will be glad in relation to the second Missouri question, then silence to see this unassuming son of the Pilgrims comparing his becomes my instructed condition, until after the funeral; humble rush-light with the brilliant chandeliers that illu- when every good man would rejoice that matters were But if he mean that this resolution is a fit ocminate the President's way. There is no Yankee trick no worse. intended, to go back into some remote apartment of this casion to die on, without waiting to see if his country may mansion of the public lands, and draw thence your con-not need him in case of actual invasion, and will die in sul to Mexico, with all his trump-the-trick and faro-bank spite of my dissuasions, then I hope he will die like a apparatus about him, to make you blush for your adminis- lineal son of the West, in imitation of the ancients! Let tration! No, he has been translated, after warring with him take Palafox's naked knife-blade, drawn; go over the police officers and Judiciary of St. Louis for some those distant hills beyond the Potomac, (so as to die years; he has been translated—not as Elijah, nor Ma- on Virginia ground) and there, in the vicinity of Wash

SENATE.]

Mr. Foot's Resolution.

[FEB. 11, 1830. ington's relative, fall upon its point, and die like Cato! we think, a down-stream business. They have only to emOr, if he dislike cold iron and steel in the middle of bark on the bosom of the constitution and the fundamenwinter, let him not forget the illustrious exit of that il-tal principles of our liberties, and they will be with us in a lustrious ancient who betrayed his Lord! moment. But for us to pass to you is, as we think, im

With

I should like to see this question in mathematics figur- possible. For going in that direction there lies between ed out in the rule of three, and the quotient fairly stated. us the vast abyss that may be supposed to exist, if the If the low water mark or zero line of the Senator's valor, whole constitution and liberties of the country were anniwhen peace is in all our borders, and not a war speck in hilated! the sky, that I can see, be equal to that of Palafox in the Another of your speeches [Mr. BENTON's] gave sociepasses of the Pyrennees, guarding his native Spain against ty the old horizontal cut, and threw all the gentlemen up the invading legions of Napoleon Bonaparte; or of Leoni- into the garret or gallery! These gentlemen are the das, with his three hundred Spartans, at the Straits of same spoken and written of by the elder Adams; and Thermopyla, guarding Sparta and all Greece against the therefore they ought all to be d-d! Now transfer to million of myrmidons of Xerxes, the King of Persia and of us, also, all the gentlemen in your ranks, and they can't Kings; what would be the spring flood height, or boiling be many, or you would not proscribe them so. degree of his rage, if placed in the Pine-spur-gap of our these reinforcements from your ranks in this body, withown Alleghanies, with his naked war knife drawn, to out disturbing your Executive departments, or other guard the magnificent valley of the Mississippi against offices, we can, and will, make all proper inquiries into the invasive Yankees; and upon lifting up his eyes and the exercise of Executive will, and especially into the looking over the plains below, towards the Northeast, he causes of those removals that have made the free born should behold the universal Yankee nation, armed cap-a-sons of this republic feel like slaves! It is to be regretpie, with drums beating and banners flying, coming to ted that you, the majority, to whom the ten talents have invade us, and lay our valley under one sheet of fire, from been committed, with the power of doing so much good the Lake of the Woods to the Balize, and from the for our country, should not have attempted, by example, sources of the Missouri to the aforesaid Pine-spur-gap! or otherwise, to fix some bounds beyond which sectional and to carry away into captivity the brightest portion of prejudice and strife should not be permitted to run. our mulatto beauties! Figures cannot count it. Poets ses established the term of fifty years as a jubilee, when cannot sing it. Homer did his best in Achilles' wrath the Jews might, at least for some purposes, rub out, and about the loss of his sweet-heart, and while chasing Hec-begin again. The modern politicians have established a tor around the walls of Troy; and that barely came up to much shorter term of jubilee. Some ten, twelve, or the zero line of the Senator's valor! And Cervantes is twenty-four hours, suffice to bring together personal enedead! A propos! Cervantes was the man for this sort of mies, hostile as the Kilkenny cats; and men of political valor! It all rushes on the mind like a flood of coming principles, opposite as the poles; and to cause them to light!" All is not right in the capital! There is more march together, at least so long as the bounty bag will occasion, now, for Dr. Cutbush, or Dr. Cutscull, than jingle, or the prospects of "booty" remain pretty good! for any military hero to guard us against the Yankees! But how long, how far beyond even the Jewish term Those mental illusions have afflicted the frail sons of of jubilee, sectional prejudices are to run, I can no more Adam in other countries, and in climates better than our tell, than I can tell when the "time propitious to the enMy honorable friend Don Quixotte de la Mancha, largement of the powers of the people," and to the cura countryman of Palafox, had a long spell of them! On tailing of Executive patronage, and putting bounds to one occasion he attacked, as he supposed, an army of Executive will, shall arrive; or how long, after a chase of steel-clad knights, which turned out to be a flock of harm-a Northern buck has been cut in upon by a new pack, less merinoes! Then a funeral procession, and wounded a and the game taken and eaten, some unfortunate Ringfriar! Again, a wind-mill and a fulling-mill, imagining wood of the original chase, with a bad olfactory and worse them colossal, enchanted giants, more terrible than sop's judgment, may continue to trail, and cry around the old buffalo bull! But why recount his freaks, when all these hunting ground.

own!

Mo

honorable Senators have read Cervantes? and they who But we are told of exceptions in all these attacks upon hope for missions to Spain, South America, or Mexico, New England. I will not go back to the dead, and dishave, doubtless, read him in the original! turb old differences about great principles of government,

But if the legal right to this inquiry will not be admit-long since laid to rest. I will only turn around to my conted, I offer a compromise. Not a coalition," gentle- temporaries, to the modern tribes of office hunters, of all men of the majority, for we know you loathe that; nor political parties, who crowded around the President, of a "bargain, intrigue, and management," for that also you late, in ranks of some ten thousand deep-to that class abhor; nor even a "combination," for that we believe who, after following "the Civil Lamb, singing eulogies you in possession of already, and upon it I have said all I intend to say at present; but a bona fide agreeing together on the way, before we enter the vortex of unprofitable litigation about legal rights. Here it is.

as the

and praises, hosannas and hallelujahs, to his name, so long as the prospects of immediate glory were bright; but who deserted suddenly to the Military Lion, so soon as those prospects were dimmed or obscured; or so soon One of your best speeches [Mr. HAYNE's] sufficiently thirty pieces of silver were heard jingling in the bag-proved that the "Federalists," of all countries and climes, even before the money was poured out and counted, or languages and forms of Government, by whatever name the eyes were blessed with the impress of the Roman called, are, and have been, the identical "few," to whom emperors, the Spanish kings, or the American eagles." the motto on your banner (the Telegraph) says “ power When such are mentioned as exceptions, I always think of is always stealing from the many;" that they have always the exceptions made by his Satanic majesty, when he been the power-grasping gentry, who stand and pull on anathematizes the twelve disciples-always excepting the the power already stealing to them! In Europe they bright and faithful Judas, whose virtues alone would be have been called Aristocrats and Ultras; in our old war, sufficient, in the opinion of his majesty, to redeem the Tories, more recently National Republicans; but they are twelve; or of such as the Duke of Wellington might be Federalists still. Now Irropose that you transfer to us supposed to make, were he to take it into his gracious all the Federalists in your ranks. They cannot be many, head to curse all the inhabitants of the peninsula of Spainor you would not proscribe them thus. With us, names always excepting, of course, the faith-keeping Portugal! are nothing, and if they practise our principles we shall I will not trample on the graves of the illustrious dead be glad of their company and aid. Their passage to us is, of New England, of either of the old parties. There

FEB. 11, 1830.]

that reason.

sleep the remains of the fathers of New England! I will tions and other duties. And what has this Secretary become only remember them as the fathers of New England--the now? Some duties of detail have been imposed by statute fathers of the Revolution-the compatriots of Washington, occasionally; but this servant at will, like other servants and the great Northern Light! Yes, sir, however un- deprived of liberty, has contrived to make his fortune palatable that may be in the uncharitableness of party times, rather out of the line of his original destination. Availing they were the great Northern Light, whose beams pene- himself of the faux pas of Aaron Burr in the Vice Presitrated the gloom of our Western and Southern forests, to dency, he has shuffled himself into the direct line of sucthe farthermost verges of the republic! And if they did cession, and now ranks, in public estimation, in the United go there in the humble forms of pedagogues and school States, with the Prince Royal of Sweden--the Prince of masters, preceptors of academies, and presidents of col- Wales of England--or the Dauphin of France!--ex offileges, they were not the less beneficial to the country for cio candidate for the Presidency. And were the mere I will hold up only their virtues and their pageantry of this new rank all, I would not notice the patriotism to the view of Missouri; and if I can excite in circumstance. But this is not all. Consequences of the her youths an emulation of such virtues and such patriotism, deepest import to the permanency and purity of our liberI shall have done much for the generation in which I live. ties are involved in this great metamorphosis! And if there be any here who can declare they owe them no debt of gratitude for those benefits, I shall not dispute the sincerity of their declarations. It is not my case, however humble my debt may be. And if there be any here surrounded with Egyptian darkness, except so far as illuminated by the glimmering lights of extracts from the works of those same fathers of New England, or other authors, compiled extract upon extract, and light upon light, until they rise up high as a modern "light house in the skies!" I have only to say, that 'I admire the industry, although I may not emulate the labor of erecting such anti-republican and super royal structures!

And as to all those early settlements, under Daniel Boone, or other pioneers, pushed forward, either north or south of the Ohio, beyond the pale of the law; and the physical and pecuniary means of this embryo republic to protect them, when it was struggling for existence on this Atlantic coast, under all the obstacles arising from war and consequent poverty and exhaustion; and as to all the administration of Washington, I will cast the same mantle of charity over these epochs, which I have extended over the graves of the fathers of New England; and this is the only answer I shall attempt to all that has been said by the Senator from Missouri about the battles of Bluelick and Nicajack.

But, sir, I must conclude these remarks. To know when to stop, is among the most agreeable talents of a public speaker.

The downward tendency of our countrymen to a spirit of universal office hunting, servility, and corruption-the prelude to the downfal of nations-has been remarked, with patriotic regret, by such men as Leigh, and Mercer, and others, in the late Virginia convention, and by thousands of others in our country. I appeal to all our contemporaries for the truth of such remarks. And has not the adulterated state of our Presidential elections, within the last ten years, since the race of Revolutionary worthies was exhausted, had but too much to do in this sad fall of our countrymen from that high estate of virtue and patriotism in which the fathers of the Revolution left the last generation of our men!

No sooner is the premier warm in his Department, than he begins to scent the gale all around him for votes to make himself President at some future day! Custom has devolved the power and patronage of the Department upon him. Custom has made him prime minister of the cabinet council; and standing thus, with a foot on the first step of the throne, and an eye upon the highest seat in the nation, he immediately begins to play Absalom at the gate, before all Israel! to wield the power and patronage of his Department to repress, obscure, and diminish his opponents, and to raise, cherish, and multiply his adherents, with a view to reign President himself, some day!

You have only to imagine all the other Departments, including the General Post Office of the United States, subservient to the "party discipline" of the premier department, and all co-operating to one main end--whether that be the re-election of a President as a stepping stone, or the election of a prime minister himself; and the story of the loss of our liberties will be sad reality!

And is there no proof of this subserviency in the other Departments? There is a volume of proof! and that volume consists in the simple annunciation--"John McLean is no longer Postmaster General of the United States!" And why is he not? Because he would not prostitute himself, and the Department under his charge, to the low and corrupt party discipline and vote auctioneering of the new dynasty. The ouster of Judge McLean, to render the General Post Office subservient to the main design, and the almost indiscriminate removal of every high-minded and honorable man from office for the exercise of the elective franchise, or for a worse reason, was the declaration of war against our liberties!

And the Press! that once proud Palladium of Liberty, is subsidized and bought--sunk to a mere party engine, stationed on this floor, to misrepresent and destroy the minority! And that was the passage of the Pruth!

The United States' Senate! once the great barrier of public safety, is to be sunk to the mere corrupt and servile register of Executive edicts! And that will be the passage of the Danube!

In this view, contemplate the metamorphosis of the Se- The Supreme Court of the United States, as yet the cretary of State, since the year 1789. In contemplating sheet-anchor of the ship of constitutional liberty! that this, we almost involuntarily fall into a recitation of our is to be destroyed, either by direct assault, as the Russians school-boy lessons: "In nova fert animus mutatas dicere, would advance upon Shumla, or by throwing a dark cloud formas, corpora"--and so on. The metamorphosis has of suspicion over it, and rendering it useless, and worse than been almost complete in only forty years! And the change useless, as a common tribunal of the States; and some other has been from small harmless things, to things great and men, or some other tribunal established in its place, as a formidable. In July, 1789, that officer was created, a mere party engine, like the corrupt courts in the worst days of assistant to the President--a mere grey goose quill in his Great Britain, for the destruction of opponents!--a mere hands to write with--liable to be split, nibbed, pointed, bro-grand guillotine, to cut off the heads of the minorities! ken, or thrown away by the President at will and pleasure; And that will be the passage of the Balkan! being not to perform separate duties of his own, but to And then "farewell! a long farewell! to all our greatfacilitate the President in performing those duties devolv-ness"--until some other revolution shall restore us to ed on him by the constitution, as a distinct department of our pristine elevation, under the protection of Union and the Government; subject to the personal orders of the Liberty, and the guidance of the Farewell Address of the President, and bound to write down just such words, sen- Father of his Country. tences, and phrases, as he should dictate in all his negotia

[Here the debate closed for this day.]