Richmond Enquirer

Debates in Congress.

FRAGMENTS

Of a Speech of Mr. RANDOLPH, delivered in the Senate during the last Session of Congress.

[Our Reporter for the Senate, when engaged in preparing the Sketches of Mr. Randolph's Speeches, which we had promised to our readers, was taken suddenly ill, on the 8th of June, and left this city the following morning, in the hope of procuring, by travelling, an alleviation of his menacing complaint. When he went away, he left amongst his papers the following unfinished sketch of one of Mr. R's. Speeches. Having waited thus long in the hope, equally vain, of two events—the hearing from Mr. Randolph himself, or the return of our Reporter, we discharge ourselves of our pledge to the Public, as far as lies in our power, by publishing this Sketch. We do not vouch for exact accuracy in the report, though we have expunged from it whatever appeared to us doubtful, marking the omissions where they have exceeded the extent of a single line.]

The question being on the amendment reported by the Judiciary Committee to the bill for adding to the number of Circuit Judges—

Mr. RANDOLPH addressed the Senate. He began by saying, that, in regard to all measures in which the State of Virginia was not particularly concerned, and where the Constitution of the U. States permitted him, he had ever felt, and he trusted he always should feel, a strong disposition to vote with his friend from Missouri. After glancing at the bald Latin of the times, principia non homines, to which he had no objection if expressed in better Latin, Mr. R. said he should vote with the gentlemen from Illinois and Missouri on this amendment—not only for the reasons which had been given so clearly, so succinctly, and so distinctly too, by both these gentlemen, but for reasons which they had not given. I agree with my friend from Missouri, in all cases of distance, where the legislature or the judicature is separated by any long interval of space, an interval in practice, not an interval in distance—I count as the German store wagoners do, by hours, not by miles—wherever a legislature, or judicature, or any other functionary, not military—for he has no discretion; he must go as the centurion orders him to go, and come when he orders him to come. I wish we had a Judiciary under some Military Government, or we shall come to have judges de facto and judges de jure—as they had for several generations in old England—a King de facto of the House of Hanover, and a King whom they toasted as a King, as they toasted Church and State, Bible and Crown—Church and Bible always first, not State and Crown—whereas the whigs always toasted the Constitution, Church and State—I don't say which side of the toast I am—I agree with my friend, in this case, that the difficulty is not by any means in direct ratio of distance; it is as the squares of the distances; I should not be far wrong if I should say it was as the cube—it is like the misery of wearing spectacles and taking care of a spectacle case—it is as the square of the diameters.

But whilst I vote with my friend from Missouri, on this question, I wish to hold him when we shall come to another question—whether it be the Dismal Swamp Canal bill, or the Potomac and Ohio Canal bill, or some other of these Gerrymanderings of the States into Districts by canals and roads, for the purpose as my friend says, of pleasing men, and not for doing good to the public—for the purpose of making a job—for the purpose of providing for some worthy—our Secretaryships of Legation, and other things having run out, our District Attorneyships having gone through—all the other cows in our pen having ceased to give any milk—that we shall have to build lighthouses in the skies, and to construct roads as they do in Ireland, where they have the finest roads in the world. They were not intended for the benefit of the Irish: they were not intended for the benefit of the people who travel over them. they are, as Miss Edgeworth says, jobs—taxes imposed on the poor Irish. What is it to them, whether there are roads or not, who go with naked feet? They would rather go on the bogs, they are by vocation, as well as by name, bog-trotters. Now, sir, when that shall come up, let me put my friend in mind that he for once in his life—the first time, and I believe the last time—took a leaf out of my book. But I must claim my property where I can find it, even in possession of a friend: he is welcome to the use of it without the ceremony of asking leave, as he is to any thing I have.

On a certain bill in another place, when I had the misfortune—for this is a serious subject—to differ from my friend from Missouri, I took that very ground, on which my friend from Missouri, now maintains this amendment. This magnificent Ohio, this Belle Riviere of the French—this Ohio or Fair River of the English, has been, in point of fact, of late years, since the country became cleared—it was not so formerly—great changes are going on the face of this continent, and no greater than in that portion of it where I live—gullies have destroyed our land, gullies have destroyed our Springs, the washings down of the hills have caused the water that formerly ran into the streams to go off by absorption and evaporation on the naked surface of the old miserable worn out fields. I have known two streams running parallel to each other, and very small streams they were—affected, if I may use the expression; no not so—supplied by the same thunder shower, the one turbid, loathsome, overflowing its banks, sufficient to give one a bilious fever to look at in: the other pure, calm, or clear—the one rap

theo' woodland, and the other thro' naked worn out gullied channels. The same rain fell in both—there was no difference in the quality, except one land let the rain off directly, and left the bare torrid soil to repel the clouds like the great Zahara does. When once the drought sets in, the difficulty is to get the first rain—to get the earth to act as a condensor, not as a repeller and evaporator—c'est le premier pas qui coute—then, sir, it never rains—but it pours. During the discussion of this famous bill, the tariff bill, with which we Southerners have been tarified—it is a provincial expression, used in the Southern country, and by very good people, too, for scarified—as "ambition" is used to express malice—an ambitious man means in common parlance a vindictive man; when that Tariff bill was under discussion I said this famous Ohio, which was to float the manufactures of Zanesville, and all the other villes in the Western country, would be found on trial to fail, and the difficulties would go on increasing as the country should be more thickly settled that this magnificent river—not the Mississippi, sir—yet I believe I might apply it to the Mississippi in one sense—would be found to be unnavigable all the summer, from lowness of water, and that it would be frozen up all the winter.—My friend has taken a leaf out of my book to serve his purpose now, which is to get this arrangement of Districts to suit him. Let me request him, when we come to discuss the propriety of doing—what? Making a Canal to the Youghiogheny—the most preposterous scheme ever thought of—which, if it were completed tomorrow, would be of no sort of use—it never could be put to any—if we could have the Canal cut tomorrow, though it should not cost one shilling—if we could borrow the serfs of our good allies Caesarovitch or the other vitch: if we could borrow all the serfs of our umpire & pattern the glass in which we dress ourselves—and all the paper money of that great potentate and power whom we are about to imitate—about, did I say? No—that we have imitated all the time—I mean England—if we had all the serfs of Russia and Poland, all the miserable slavery of every sort and degree in Spanish America, and the paper money of England, and were to cut this canal, it would be of no service. It is like the Canal, in which a gentleman I see in my eye has an interest, as I have—I mean the Roanoke Canal. We took it into our heads we wanted a canal round the Falls, to make the produce of our lands accessible to the markets. We forgot one thing. It was just before the great blow up of 1818, when I thought I had so much money I did not know what to do with it, and in two years I was in danger of being sued, and it was only owing to the forbearance of a creditor that I was not sued. Some gentlemen took the liberty of taking my property, and giving me what is called an insolvency in return. It never occurred to us, that the people who lived below this canal, and whom nobody could hinder from going to Halifax or to Norfolk, those very people do not use the river below the canal. We cut the most beautiful canal I ever saw in my life, in order that we might put ourselves on a footing with the people below the falls, and after we had paid I don't know how many instalments upon it, the planters turned their backs on the river, and Halifax and Norfolk, and went to Petersburg with their produce. What I am now saying is of very great importance to the vital interest of this country. It is this: Whenever any proposition shall be got up to create expense here, there will always be some very plausible reasons urged for going into that expense—because somebody will always have to furnish the materiel. Suppose it is a turnpike road, somebody will have to superintend that road, with a better salary than the Governor of a State. Such projects, Mr. R. said, would be voted for, whether conducive to the public interest or not.

Here, said Mr. R. we are to take our measures for man as he is—not the creature he is described to be in romances, in Eutopias, Atlantids, or in romances of any sort, whether of the circulating library, of the deeper reveries of philosophers. Do you believe that, if the tanner is applied to, to fortify the town, there is any material so good as leather? If we leave it with the carpenter, is there any thing so good as wood? They will make out their case. Leave it to a committee of carpenters, and a bill will be brought in to fortify the city with wood: leave it to the tanner, and it will be leather: leave it to the stone mason, and it will be stone. Then comes this bog-trotter, with his spade on his shoulder, and his wheelbarrow in his hand, and says, there is nothing, my dear sir, like turf—all fortifications should be made of turf. Pat is right, and I am very glad he is in a country where he can cut the soil without having a middle-man to hold the scourge over him—and why? I find I have fallen into a bad habit, when addressing the Senate, of saying too much—ne quid nimis—but, when we agree to take stock in the Ohio and Chesapeake canal—not Potomac—no, we don't go for any thing less than Chesapeake—my friend will recollect that he has read a leaf out of my own speech, delivered 2 years ago, showing that the fair Ohio river is, during part of the year, unmanageable from drought, and during part of the year, unmanageable from ice, running or standing.

Again, I hope my friend will recollect, that even the Mississippi itself, the Father of Floods, is, at St. Louis, and as low down as the Chickasaw Bluffs, ridged, with ice in the Winter—which proves what has been often said, and what Drake, of Cincinnati has asserted, that the climate West of the Alleghany Mountains, under the same parallel of latitude is not so mild in Winter as on this side—there never was such a degree of cold, in the same parallel of latitude East of the Mountains as to bridge such a river as the Mississippi at the Chickasaw Bluff.

Now, I hope my friend from Missouri will agree that the money of my constituents shall not be taken, in the shape of taxes on the salt, the iron, the coarse goods, the pewter sleeve buttons, the commodities, as my friend from North Carolina said the other day—I wish he could have been heard—the only things the People consume—and who are the People? They who are now turning the furrow, and whistling—I hope they have the heart to whistle—while their corn is putting in the ground, and they are giving it the first working—out of whose corn houses the horses and asses of Washington are to be fatted—the articles consumed by the People, the bulky articles, the cheap articles, which they are obliged to have, and have they must—the coarse woollens, which they can do without after a sort, as the Waverley man said—being asked how he served the King, being in favor of the Pretender, he replied, he served him after a sort—so they can do, after a sort—without these things but how? Some of them, who are good managers, may save their rags, and make blankets out of them—in a small family, there will not be rags enough, there will where there are plenty of negroes—but in a small family of white folks, they will have to buy the blankets and how are they taxed—how are they tarified—and how are the People lying under them tarified with cold? It is great injustice to the Southern population to suppose that it consists of nabobs, with legions of black slaves waiting their commands, and, as I have seen them pictured, lying on a sofa, having one slave at their head and one at their feet, to keep off the flies, drinking cool lemonade all day, and hardly walking a hundred yards in the twenty-four hours.

There is less luxury in the Southern country—there is not a family in the State of Virginia, who, in point of furniture, fine mahogany furniture, Turkey carpets, expensive wine, great show—I grant it is a miserable sort of thing but there is not one family within my knowledge who maintain a style of expense equal to that, I won't say of a Chief Clerk, but a secondary Clerk in our Departments here—equal to that which, when I was in the habit of going about at night—which I have long left off—they did maintain—and I do not hear that they have fallen off in any respect, because I understand they generally pay by the same summary process. The first thing which recommended Wm. H. Crawford to me, for the Presidency, was his giving me to understand, that, if he came in, all those who paid their debts by smacking the calf-skin should go out—there is not a family in Virginia, within the course of my acquaintance, that lives in such a style of expense, luxury and grandeur

—and the more negroes they have, the worse they are off. We are the trustees for our slaves, and they receive a much larger portion of the proceeds of the soil than the laborer of any other country under the sun that I have ever seen, except in the new States—and that has arisen from the local causes to which my friend has alluded, and which must change as those new States progress. I have no hesitation in saying, slavery is a curse to the master—I have been held up—as any man will be who speaks his mind fairly and boldly, without any qualification—as a blackish sort of a white, and a whitish sort of a black—as an advocate for slavery in the abstract. The other day, I saw what the spirit of fanaticism will effectuate: A Captain in the British Navy was cashiered for buying a slave, not an adult either, from some place on the Coast of Africa. For the naked fact of buying a slave he is cashiered—turned out. What should we have said to the British Government, if they had persecuted the benevolent Mr. Willshire, for buying Riley and his companions? There was the fact. He bought so many American slaves from their Arab masters—not Arab but Bedouin—half Arab and half Negro—I speak of the African Moor, and not of the People of the Arabian Peninsula—why was he not cashiered? Every body knows. There were no printing presses—there were no hireling writers—there were no saints, to misrepresent the state of those American and English persons. To buy them was well enough. Was not that slave trade? Is it not buying slaves? I have been wanting to get at this thing a good while, and I am glad I am got at it now. I wish I knew this gallant British Captain, and he should be welcome to my bed, my board, and to every thing I have for the rest of his days. This slave jumped overboard and swam ashore, and why? Because the slave had been led to believe the white man meant to eat him, and he escaped, as any wild animal will, from man—as the fox cub will run away or bite you, as the hawk or the eagle will strike at you while writhing under the pain of a gun shot wound; but no sooner has he tasted the water you offer him, but he acts like—[Here some words are deficient]—And I would rather take a lesson from the shepherd in the fable, than from the Philosopher in the School.—And what did this Captain endeavor to save him from? Very probably from domestic servitude; because, according to Mungo Park—he travelled in Africa—he was the advocate of the slave trade himself, though his book was under the hands of a redacteur, whose opinions turned the other way, and it has been softened as much as possible on that subject. This British Captain would have preserved this slave from domestic servitude; from political and civil servitude. What would he have done with him? The worst thing would have been to have brought him to some colony or country where he might have been brought up—not to England—it would have done him an injury. Suppose he had brought him to this country; who does not remember the old African negro, more like a baboon than a man—they have been brought here, and in two generations they are almost on a par with the whites. If you take the upper classes of the blacks and the lower classes of the whites, the former is the most moral, virtuous, and intelligent man—I mean to confine myself to the slaves, and not the free blacks. Mr. Malthus' famous check of vice and want does not prevent them from keeping up their numbers, without the slave trade. These mal-treated, half starved, cart-whipped negroes, (as they are represented to be) go on increasing in a frightful arithmetical, almost geometrical progression. We cannot find bread for them—we are forced to send them to the Western Country, and sometimes to run away from them. It is only such lands as the alluvial lands near the rivers that will bear negro cultivation, and there it is that the condition of the laborer is equal to the condition of the laborer any where on earth. [Some lines wanting.]

Any man who takes me for the advocate of slavery in the abstract, mistakes me altogether; but I don't get up a head of popularity by declaiming against the slavery of a black man. I will take Jefferson's practice, as a slaveholder to this day, against his Notes on Virginia, as I will take practice any where against theory.

Our ancestors, did, what I am afraid their posterity are now doing. They thought what a fine nice thing it was to get a black fellow to work for nothing—they gave 20, or 30, or 40 pounds sterling, and said, instead of paying wages by the day or year, we will have him, like a horse, to work for nothing. But you forget—you may make a horse work, you may feed him in the stable, or turn him out to grass, but here you have a moral agent to deal with, and I defy you, with all your machinery, to get half the work out of any black man or white that you can get out of the same man by the action and reaction, the elevation and depression of the piston of loans, paper money, and taxation. This is the same thing that drives John Bull to work ten hours a day—another loan eleven hours—another loan, more victories, more Trafalgars, more heroes. They are most expensive characters like race horses, they eat off their own heads—lay them by on the shelf to come out at the next war, and you find that ten years' peace has unheroed them, and you have to get a new set.

Our forefathers did, what I am very sorry to see some of their posterity are now doing—they substituted cunning for wisdom: they thought it a fine thing to get a man's labor, and pay little or nothing for it: but they should have remembered the maxim, "do as you would be done by." Every man who leaves that great high road, will have the chalice, which he himself has poisoned—the chalice of justice, even-handed justice, put to his own lips by the God of nature, who does not require abolition societies to carry his purpose into execution. Our fathers eat the grapes, our teeth have been set on edge—our land is worn out—our country is a desert. What do we hear? What it pains me to hear—it is owing to slavery there is no longer any hospitality in our country. The only hospitality you find is in the alluvial country—not so high up as where I live—we cannot afford it. The only hospitality is geometrically true: as the squares of the number of the slaves, just in that proportion is the hospitality. The other day I heard with great sorrow, because it came from the lips of a man whom I had not seen for forty years, and whom when I last saw, I reverenced—it was at a Lafayette dinner in a neighboring county—he too having, no doubt, substituted meadows, and beautiful green fields, and wheat, for ugly black tobacco stalks and corn stalks—he, too, chimed into the song.—Let a man have your ear every day and in process of time he is your master. It comes from the North—all genius comes from the North—he had heard this thing said till he began to believe it, that we were in a state of the most abject bondage, till the French, our good allies, came—would to God they had not come to our assistance (in the war of the Revolution)—would to God they had staid away, and left us to work out our salvation, not with fear and trembling—that will do for individuals—but in the only way we could do it, by action. We should have saved ourselves much trouble by prolonging the war, for a new generation would have grown up—we should have been a new People, and in that respect, the Spanish American People have the advantage of us—they beat us all hollow—they will have worked out their own salvation, if they succeed, by their own arms. This person descanted—he comes from an eloquent family—they have an hereditary predisposition to eloquence—on our independence, and drew a vivid picture of the improvement that had taken place since that event throughout the country. I should like to have asked him whether the lower Northern neck of Virginia had also improved. I should like to have asked, what had become of those large hospitable mansions on both sides of the Rappahannock and Potomac, the seats once of hospitality, inhabited by men fit to take their stations in the councils of any nation. I would have asked him if he thought there had been any improvement there, either in the country or in the race of men. I have, sir, declaimed too long—I am sorry for it—I wanted to get this thing out—to shew, that the condition of our slaves, badly treated as they may be, is far above that of the peasantry of England. England had once a yeomanry; she has none now, except the yeomanry cavalry that cut

down the cotton spinners at Manchester—and that work is supported by the very saints who cannot endure there should be slavery in Jamaica. Men are whipped to death at Charing-Cross, while drums and trumpets sound to drown their cries, within the near shot of these saints, and it disturbs not their rest. But the overseer, who, stung to madness by the machinations of these very men, shall chastise a slave beyond the point, the press is set to work and it is spread on every table. Who hears about men being whipped to death at Charing Cross? If it appears in the press, it is denied. Would to God that the press was, in this country, as in England. It is not there that the King, and a few foreign Ministers, and one or two of the inhabitants, have all the dinners to give: it is not there that they give the tone to the fashion. There is Devonshire House, at which I had the entree, where there are weekly concerts, that would put Carlton House in the dark. There is Spencer House, where the nobility and gentry assemble—and the question is whether a man is of an old family and landed estate. Mr. Coke is as much a Peer as if he sat in the House of Peers; and the new mushroom Lords are as much Commoners as—[Here some lines are wanting. in the course of which Mr. R. adverted to the political history of Lord Londonderry and Lord Castlereagh. He then added what follows.] Lord Londonderry was the manager of the House of Commons; he discharged the functions there, which a gentleman, whom I don't now see, but whom I did see this morning, discharged somewhere else. They could not spare Lord Londonderry from the House of Commons. Lord Liverpool was obliged to be in the House of Peers, and his sagacity and experience, for he was born and bred a Minister, as Washington said of Lee as a soldier—he came from his mother's womb a minister. He studied at the feet of Gamaliel, and that Gamaliel was his father—better known to us as Lord Hawkesbury; but, when he died, he was compelled to take his seat in the House of Peers. Lord Londonderry could not sit in Parliament as an Irish Commoner from the county of Down, but he could come in as an English Commoner. Lord Londonderry, to the day of his death, was not exempt from the ca sa of the Sheriff of Middlesex. He would have been an English Peer, but he could not afford it. He came in for a borough, and he continued the management of the House of Commons; they could not afford to lose him.

Crede experto, &c. He was the most dexterous—the most acute, tactician, as manager of that House, I ever saw, or had any conception of. I must except Lord Liverpool in the other House, but it does not require the same sort of talents to conduct the House of Peers, as to conduct the House of Commons. Lord Londonderry, who has been libelled by Tom Moore, and other wits, was one of the most perfect gentlemen, extremely dignified, wary, prudent, and sagacious—his loss was a most severe loss to the English—so severe that it compelled Lord Liverpool to insist, the Chancellor, and something greater, notwithstanding, that Mr. Canning must come in, or he would resign. The sagacity, the ability, the instinctive sagacity, foresight, and prudence, of Lord Liverpool, his weight of character, his calmness—his having no children to provide for—no bevy of relations and hangers-on to provide for, out of the public crib—to put into the public sty—his superiority to every suspicion of sinister motives—has been the mainbrace, to speak nautically, of the British Constitution. Yes, sir, Lord Liverpool, mark my words! who had the good sense to feel his way experimentally, instead of rushing onward, like a rash young man, just come to his estate—put a beggar on horseback and he will ride to the devil—instead of acting like a spendthrift who has got a prize of a hundred thousand dollars, and who spends, and thinks he cannot get rid of it quick enough, and instead of ten years, finds it does not last two—Lord Liverpool, feeling his way, as every wise statesman and physician does—a physician will make himself acquainted with the patient, and the history of the disease, and every thing connected with it—he will stay by his bedside for days and weeks if it is a chronic case—unless it is a case that requires a degree of urgency—supposing it a chronic case—a Panama case—he will sit by the bed-side for weeks—he will acquaint himself with the disease, he will give the medicine, and wait and see its operation before he goes further. A man who should lay aside Indian corn and plant potatoes on his whole estate, by way of experiment, would stand a chance of being ruined—but there is nothing to prevent his planting an acre this year, and an acre and a half next year, to establish the feasibility of the plan by actual experiment. What is the Baconian philosophy? A philosophy of induction—of severe reasoning founded on severe experiment—founded not on one experiment—Sir Joseph Banks made but one experiment to make the fleas into lobsters, according to Pindar, but they would not become lobsters, damn their souls—How do you know, if he had made another experiment, but he would have succeeded—perhaps the want of some acid or alkali prevented it—Give me a man, a white man or a black man, of this country or that country, of this situation or that situation, give me a jury-trial man, a habeas-corpus man, let him be a voting-supplies man, an assembly-man—I can tell you whether I can make a free Constitution out of him or not—I will not make an extreme medicine of the Constitution—I will not put him on a diet of mineral or vegetable poison. This Lord Londonderry, so grossly belied, was the most dignified man I ever beheld—I have nothing to say about his principles—I have nothing to say about Ireland—I have attempted to portray, with a feeble pencil and timid hand, the misery of Ireland—it must be seen, felt, heard, and understood—it must be more than all this—it must be smelt—for you wind it as far as you would a cat, a chat of our desert—a pole cat—I never was on board a white slave-ship, but I have heard descriptions of them far exceeding in nauseousness those of the black slave-ships. I never was on board a black slave-ship but once, and that was at Charleston, and that was as clean and sweet a ship as ever I was on board of in my life—the People were well and healthy, hearty and contented, eating rice out of wooden bowls with much gout. I am not defending the slave trade—[Two or three lines wanting.]—If you will promise the money first, wherewith to get the thing you want, you will find your expenses are diminished 66 2/3 per cent. Two shillings Virginia money will go as far, in ready money, as one dollar will go on credit, except at the door of a theatre, or for luxuries that may be well dispensed with. If, instead of suffering the account to be raised against you, and lying over for payment, my word for it, if you pay in ten days after purchase, you will have to pay 25 per cent. additional—in sixty days, you will have to pay more—if twelve months, double—and if you put it off, and it comes to law, you will have a thousand per cent. to pay. I go by actual experiment, in my own person, who have seen and wept over friends by my side going into the Gulf of Bankruptcy with their eyes wide open, unable to practise the least self-denial.

Mr. R. next adverted to the operations and arguments of the sentimentalists on the subject of slavery, and the treatment of slaves, who, he said, care no more about a man being whipped to death, than a pig being whipped to death, as in England, to make brawn. When I was in Yorkshire last, (said he,) in the East Riding, in the town of Hull, the native town of Mr. Wilberforce, a British soldier was whipped to death. He was lacerated—cut to pieces under the lashes of the drummer, secundum legem—no, sir, not according to law—he had no trial by his peers—he was that mere machine, a murderer—a mercenary soldier—a thing I have always looked at with abhorrence: he is to cut your throat—he is the familiar of the grand inquisitor. I saw one of them with his regimentals on, mounted on his charger, prancing over the field. He is a hero. I said then to my friend, I now see your Executive Government—it is the bayonets; it is not the king and chief justice. This is the true ultima ratio regum—this is what backed the Lord Chief Justice's warrant, in the case of the Cato street conspirators. These machines, pompous as they look in the field, are what I never will tolerate. I never voted for one, and I never will. When I see him in the person of

the Lord Lieutenant of the county—when I see him as a volunteer, turning out without waiting to be drafted, my heart bows down; but when I see him in another sort of person, my heart does not bow down, &c. After some further remarks, adverse to the claims of soldiers by profession to particular respect, he went on to discriminate between them and volunteer soldiers—adding as follows: I shall vote for Andrew Jackson at the next election, whoever else shall be nominated. He is the man who is the first military man in the country, and the man by whom the present incompetent, insufficient, self sufficient, all-sufficient, Administration can be put out. If he were not the man he is—if he were not a man of irreproachable moral honesty—if he were a profligate, instead of being what he is, I should support him on the same principle that I would have marched with Aaron Burr to Point Levi to put out Sir Guy Carleton. Arnold and Burr put themselves out, and saved us the trouble—as every man will do in this country, whose inordinate ambition and vanity shall prompt him to seize on that with left-handed wisdom—by trick, bargain, barter, sale, bribed press, hireling writers—why do I talk about a bribed press? The press is at this moment bribed—it is in the hands of some of the most profligate men of this country. The administration have almost avowed the principle of buying up men. I never read a certain paper but once, and then a very good-natured friend brought it me to show me something in which my name had been introduced. Abuse in the newspapers, and anonymous letters, I never read.

I agree with a gentleman, who does not sit far from me, that nauseous, fulsome adulation and praise is as much worse than its abuse, as rancid train oil is worse to get off the clothes than mud in the kennel—grease, as my friend from North Carolina calls this stuff. As regards the letters, I docket them—that I may, by similarity of hand writing, detect the assassin. Any man who will write an anonymous letter, or who will write an anonymous piece in the newspaper which he is afraid to own, would, if you would give him the opportunity, put poison in your drink. I will go farther, and say, that any man base enough—there I come back to viva voce vote and freehold suffrage, stable as the foundations of the earth—any man who puts a ballot in, leaving Mr. A. B., a federal gentleman, to infer that he has voted for him, and Mr. C. D., a Republican, to infer he has voted for him, and Mr. E. F., a Federal Republican, to infer that he has voted for him—I say that man, so far as free suffrage may be referred to, to maintain him in his independence, cannot be made independent—you are making him a scoundrel greater than he was—you are fomenting this very vice under pretence of thus making him independent. That fellow, the moment he claims the privilege of doubling up a paper and putting it in the box, he says, "man, you are my master," and hurls defiance at the Most High—and this is called defending the independence and privileges of a citizen. If Governments deal with averages, Governments have nothing but averages to depend on. You must fix on some average, say, taking one man with another—communibus hominibus, that twenty-one is the age to vote. Fix it where you will, you will take many that are incapable, and you will exclude many that are more fit—you are dealing not with abstractions and perfections, but with man as he is. If you have a field to plow, you must plow the part that is stony, and the part that is good—you must plow and plant the whole.

[Here our reporter's pen failed him, from illness which caused him to leave the city in search of health, and the remainder of his sketch of this Speech and of other Speeches are in characters of which he alone has the key. Whether he will ever be able to return to his vocation, is a question which we wish we were able to answer in the affirmative.]