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this question. Doubtless there were many exceptions. Still, the triumphant election of the candidate who had expressed himself in the terms just quoted, and who was, besides, the personal and political friend of President Jackson, and the avowed approver of his administration, must be admitted to a place among the proofs in this case, and ranked among the high concurring evidences of the public sentiment in favor of the motion which I make.

Assuming, then, that we have ascertained the will of the people on this great question, the inquiry presents itself, how far the expression of that will ought to be conclusive of our action here. I hold that it ought to be binding and obligatory upon us; and that, not only upon the principles of representative government, which require obedience to the known will of the people, but also in conformity to the principles upon which the proceeding against President Jackson was conducted, when the sentence against him was adopted. Then, everything was done with special reference to the will of the people. Their impulsion was assumed to be the sole motive to action, and to them the ultimate verdict was expressly referred. The whole machin

ery of alarm and pressure, every engine of political and moneyed power was put in motion, and worked for many months, to excite the people against the President, and to stir up meetings, memorials, petitions, traveling committees, and distress deputations against him; and each symptom of popular discontent was hailed as an evidence of public will, and quoted here as proof that the people demanded the condemnation of the President. Not only legislative assemblies and memorials from large assemblies were then produced here as evidence of public opinion, but the petitions of boys under age, the remonstrances of a few signers, and the results of the most inconsiderable elections, were ostentatiously paraded and magnified as the evidence of the sovereign will of our constituents. Thus, sir, the public voice was everything, while that voice partially obtained through political and pecuniary machinations was adverse to the President. Then the popular will was the shrine at which all worshiped. Now, when that will is regularly, soberly, repeatedly, and almost universally expressed through the ballot boxes, at the various elections, and turns out to be in favor of the President, certainly no one can disregard it, nor otherwise look at it than as the solemn verdict of the competent and ultimate tribunal, upon an issue

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fairly made up, fully argued, and duly submitted for decision. As such verdict I receive it. As the deliberate verdict of the

sovereign people I bow to it. I am content. I do not mean to reopen the case, nor to recommence the argument. I leave that work to others, if any others choose to perform it. For myself, I am content; and, dispensing with further argument, I shall call for judgment, and ask to have execution done upon that unhappy journal, which the verdict of millions of freemen finds guilty of bearing on its face an untrue, illegal, and unconstitutional sentence of condemnation against the approved President of the republic.

But, while declining to reopen the argument of this question, and refusing to tread over again the ground already traversed, there is another and a different task to perform; one which the approaching termination of President Jackson's administration makes peculiarly proper at this time, and which it is my privilege, and perhaps my duty, to execute, as being the suitable conclusion to the arduous contest in which we have been so long engaged. I allude to the general tenor of his administration, and to its effect, for good or for evil, upon the condition of his country. This is the proper time for such a view to be taken. The political existence of this great man now draws to a close. In little more than forty days he ceases to be a public character. In a few brief weeks he ceases to be an object of political hope to any, and should cease to be an object of political hate or envy to all. Whatever of motive the servile and time-serving might have found in his exalted station for raising the altar of adulation, and burning the incense of praise before him, that motive can no longer exist. The dispenser of the patronage of an empire- the chief of this great confederacy of States-is soon to be a private individual, stripped of all power to reward or to punish. His own thoughts, as he has shown us in the concluding paragraph of that message, which is to be the last of its kind that we shall ever receive from him, are directed to that beloved retirement from which he was drawn by the voice of millions of freemen, and to which he now looks for that interval of repose which age and infirmities require. Under these circumstances he ceases to be a subject for the ebullition of the passions, and passes into a character for the contemplation of history. Historically, then, shall I view him; and, limiting this view to his civil administration, I demand where is there a chief

magistrate of whom so much evil has been predicted, and from whom so much good has come ? Never has any man entered upon the chief magistracy of a country under such appalling predictions of ruin and woe! Never has any one been so pursued with direful prognostications! Never has any one been so beset and impeded by a powerful combination of political and moneyed confederates! Never has any one in any country, where the administration of justice has risen above the knife or the bowstring, been so lawlessly and shamelessly tried and condemned by rivals and enemies, without hearing, without defense, without the forms of law or justice! History has been ransacked to find examples of tyrants sufficiently odious to illustrate him by comparison. Language has been tortured to find epithets sufficiently strong to paint him in description. Imagination has been exhausted in her efforts to deck him with revolting and inhuman attributes. Tyrant, despot, usurper; destroyer of the liberties of his country; rash, ignorant, imbecile; endangering the public peace with all foreign nations; destroying domestic prosperity at home; ruining all industry, all commerce, all manufactories; annihilating confidence between man and man; delivering up the streets of populous cities to grass and weeds, and the wharves of commercial towns to the incumbrance of decaying vessels; depriving labor of all reward; depriving industry of all employment; destroying the currency; plunging an innocent and happy people from the summit of felicity to the depths of misery, want, and despair. Such is the faint outline, followed up by actual condemnation, of the appalling denunciations daily uttered against this one man, from the moment he became an object of political competition, down to the concluding moment of his political existence.

The sacred voice of inspiration has told us that there is a time for all things. There certainly has been a time for every evil that human nature admits of to be vaticinated of President Jackson's administration; equally certain the time has now come for all rational and well-disposed people to compare the predictions with the facts, and to ask themselves if these calamitous prognostications have been verified by events. Have we peace,

or war, with foreign nations? Certainly, we have peace! peace with all the world! peace with all its benign and felicitous and beneficent influences! Are we respected or despised abroad? Certainly the American name never was more honored throughout the four quarters of the globe than in this very moment.

Do

we hear of indignity or outrage in any quarter, of merchants robbed in foreign ports, of vessels searched on the high seas, of American citizens impressed into foreign service, of the national flag insulted anywhere? On the contrary, we see former wrongs repaired; no new ones inflicted. France pays twenty-five millions of francs for spoliations committed thirty years ago; Naples pays two millions one hundred thousand ducats for wrongs of the same date; Denmark pays six hundred and fifty thousand rixdollars for wrongs done a quarter of a century ago; Spain engages to pay twelve millions of reals velon for injuries of fifteen years' date; and Portugal, the last in the list of former aggressors, admits her liability, and only waits the adjustment of details to close her account by adequate indemnity. So far from war, insult, contempt, and spoliation from abroad, this denounced administration has been the season of peace and good will, and the auspicious era of universal reparation. So far from suffering injury at the hands of foreign powers, our merchants have received indemnities for all former injuries. It has been the day of accounting, of settlement, and of retribution. The long list of arrearages, extending through four successive previous administrations, has been closed and settled up. The wrongs done to commerce for thirty years back, and under so many different Presidents, and indemnities withheld from all, have been repaired and paid over under the beneficent and glorious administration of President Jackson. But one single instance of outrage has occurred, and that at the extremities of the world, and by a piratical horde, amenable to no law but the law of force. The Malays of Sumatra committed a robbery and massacre upon an American vessel. Wretches! they did not then know that Jackson was President of the United States, and that no distance, no time, no idle ceremonial of treating with robbers and assas sins, was to hold back the arm of justice. Commodore Downes went out. His cannon and his bayonets struck the outlaws in their den. They paid in terror and in blood for the outrage which was committed; and the great lesson was taught to these distant pirates-to our antipodes themselves-that not even the entire diameter of this globe could protect them, and that the name of American citizen, like that of Roman citizen in the great days of the republic and of the empire, was to be the inviolable passport of all that wore it throughout the whole extent of the habitable world.

At home the most gratifying picture presents itself to the view: the public debt paid off; taxes reduced one-half; the completion of the public defenses systematically commenced; the compact with Georgia, uncomplied with since 1802, now carried into effect, and her soil ready to be freed, as her jurisdiction has been delivered from the presence and incumbrance of an Indian population. Mississippi and Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee, and North Carolina, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, and Arkansasin a word, all the States incumbered with an Indian population — have been relieved from that incumbrance; and the Indians themselves have been transferred to new and permanent homes, every way better adapted to the enjoyment of their existence, the preservation of their rights, and the improvement of their condition.

The currency is not ruined! On the contrary, seventy-five millions of specie in the country is a spectacle never seen before, and is the barrier of the people against the designs of any banks which may attempt to suspend payments and to force a dishonored paper currency upon the community. These seventyfive millions are the security of the people against the dangers of a depreciated and inconvertible paper money. Gold, after a disappearance of thirty years, is restored to our country. All Europe beholds with admiration the success of our efforts, in three years, to supply ourselves with the currency which our Constitution guarantees, and which the example of France and Holland shows to be so easily attainable, and of such incalculable value to industry, morals, economy, and solid wealth. The success of these efforts is styled, in the best London papers, not merely a reformation, but a revolution, in the currency-a revolution by which our America is now regaining from Europe the gold and silver which she has been sending to them for thirty years past.

Domestic industry is not paralyzed; confidence is not destroyed; factories are not stopped; workmen are not mendicants for bread and employment; credit is not extinguished; prices have not sunk; grass is not growing in the streets of populous cities; the wharves are not lumbered with decaying vessels; columns of curses, rising from the bosoms of a ruined and agonized people, are not ascending to heaven against the destroyer of a nation's felicity and prosperity. On the contrary, the reverse of all this is true, and true to a degree that astonishes and bewilders the

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