posed to shrink from any just or necessary act of legislation, for fear of misconstruction, or to save appearances. But on a mere amateur proceeding of this sort, I would give no vote which can be so misconstrued. "A thousand false eyes are stuck upon us." Let us not again gratify their malicious gaze. Let us disappoint, for once, their eager search for subjects of mystification and perversion. For myself, Sir, as I have already intimated, if a vote is insisted upon, I shall vote against the resolution; both because I am opposed to the policy and propriety of such a proceeding, and because I am unwilling to foreclose all direct consideration of the subject, and to cut myself off from voting for the whole or any part of the Exchequer plan, now or hereafter. I shall give such a vote with the less reluctance, from the consideration that, in differing from great numbers of my political friends, I shall differ from, perhaps, an equal number of my political opponents. There were no party lines on this resolution in committee, and it is plain that there will be none in the House.

Mr. Speaker, I cannot feel justified in resigning the floor, as my hour has not quite yet expired, without alluding to a course of remark which has been persisted in, for some weeks past, in relation to the supposed author of this Exchequer plan. I am not here, sir, as the champion of the Secretary of State. Heaven help him, if he has not a more tried and trustworthy arm than mine to look to, if he shall ever require any other than his own! He will, doubtless, say amen to this aspiration; for I have no idea that he will thank me for many of the remarks which I have already made, or for many of those which I am about to make. He is, indeed, one of my most distinguished constituents. I might appeal, however, to the gentleman from Kentucky, (Mr. Marshall,) who counts among his constituents the great and gallant statesman of the West, to bear witness with me, that such a relation does not necessarily involve any thing of peculiar cordiality or confidence; though, certainly, it cannot imply any thing of the reverse. But, at any rate, holding, as I do, that great injustice has been done to Mr. Webster, on more than one occasion, by gentlemen who have gone out of their way to introduce his name into the debate, no fear, either of personal imputation or of political misconstruction, shall make me shrink

from saying so. I should be unworthy of sitting here as the Representative of Faneuil Hall, and should hardly dare to look those who are accustomed to meet there in the face, were I to listen longer, without a word of protest, to the wholesale reproaches which have been cast upon one, who has so long been associated with their fortunes and their fame.

Sir, I was not at Faneuil Hall when Mr. Webster made the speech which has been the subject of such frequent allusion. I have read that speech, however, more than once; and, as I do not intend to be charged with any non-committal or concealment, I have no hesitation in saying that it contains many opinions which I deeply regret were ever expressed, and from which I entirely dissent. The idea, which seems to be implied in one part of the speech, that the Whigs of Massachusetts, in declaring "a full and final separation" from President Tyler, designed to commit themselves to an indiscriminate opposition to all the measures of his administration, good, bad, and indifferent, was certainly unwarranted by any thing which they had ever done at home, or which their representatives had ever done here. The opinion which seems to be conveyed in another part of the speech, that the Whig party in Congress deserved no particular credit for the recent passage of a protecting tariff; that, because twenty or thirty Whigs, in one branch or the other, voted against the tariff, and ten or a dozen of their opponents voted for it, while the great body of the Whigs had, from first to last, devoted their most strenuous efforts to its adoption, and the great body of the Van Buren party had labored incessantly to defeat and reject it; that, therefore, there was no party element in the proceeding, and no party credit for the result, was, to my mind, equally indefensible. It was confounding the rule and the exception, and placing both upon equal terms. The denial of the authority of the State Convention, also, to act upon matters which every Massachusetts Whig Convention, for ten years before, had been accustomed to act upon without qualification or question, was any thing but reasonable. But, Sir, there are other passages of this speech, upon which constructions have been put, which are utterly ungenerous and unjust. The idea, which has more than once been advanced in this House, that Mr. Webster's exclamation on that occasion,

"where do they mean to place me? where am I to fall?" instead of being applied, as it was, simply and solely to his relations to the Whigs of Massachusetts, with whom he had stood so long on terms of confidence and respect, such as few other men ever before enjoyed—was an expression of a corrupt, base, unprincipled lust for office, or of an abject, craven, cringing fear of being turned out of office, is as unfounded as it is gross. It is wholly unsustained by the spirit or by the letter of the speech. The very next sentence to that in which these questions are contained, destroys all apology for such a construction. "If I choose to remain in the President's councils, do these gentlemen mean to say that I cease to be a Massachusetts Whig?"— This is the sum and substance of both the interrogatories which have been rung through these halls with so much scorn, and which have formed the foundation of this infamous charge of servility and corruption. The question, as to the collectors, attorneys, postmasters and marshals, is fairly susceptible of no other interpretation. And so, also, with that in relation to my excellent and distinguished friend, (Mr. Everett,) the present Minister to England. The inquiry, as to all of them, was whether, by this full and final separation from Mr. Tyler, the Whigs of Massachusetts meant to say that they intended to discard and denounce so many of their eminent brother Whigs who then were holding office, unless they either resigned or were turned out. And this is "the detestable doctrine" which has so disgraced Daniel Webster, and so desecrated Faneuil Hall! The questions may all have been uncalled for; but if they imply a love for any thing, it is a love of party and not of place; if a fear of any thing, it is a fear of being abandoned by friends, rather than of being turned out of office.

Sir, it would have been better, far better, for all concerned, if this little family jar in Massachusetts had not been meddled with by strangers, and if the parties to it had been left to scold it out among themselves. But I utterly protest against such an exaggeration of its details and history, and such a misrepresentation of the language which was used on the occasion. As to Mr. Webster's love of office, there is no evidence that this love is stronger in him than in many other gentlemen who are justly esteemed and honored in the land. He retained office, indeed,

when other gentlemen, his colleagues in the cabinet, retired. But there was as little reason in charging him with having held on to his commission from the mere love of office, as there would be in charging them with having resigned for the mere hate of office. These gentlemen, for whom I have always entertained and expressed the highest possible regard and respect, felt that it was due to their own honor to withdraw from the cabinet. They did so. And, though there were some of their friends who would have preferred that they should have remained, and put the President to his removing power, if he desired to get rid of them, yet all, all, acquiesced in their decision, and in their own right to make that decision for themselves. Mr. Webster, on the contrary, felt it consistent with his honor to stay, and carry on that great work of negotiation with Great Britain, upon which he had just entered. My venerable colleague (Mr. Adams) has recently told his constituents and the country that he advised him to stay, at least until that negotiation was concluded. "Thinking I was in a post where I was in the service of the country," says Mr. Webster, himself, in this Faneuil Hall speech, "and could do it good, I staid there. I leave it to you, to-day, to say, I leave it to my country to say, whether the country would have been better off if I had left also. I have no attachment to office. I have tasted of its sweets, but I have tasted of its bitterness. I am content with what I have achieved; I am more ready to rest satisfied with what is gained than to run the risk of doubtful efforts for new acquisitions." Who doubts, Sir, that Mr. Webster has tasted of the bitterness of office as well as of its sweets? Who doubts that he has had his perplexities and provocations, during the political hurly-burly of the last two years, as well as we ours? And who denies that, amid them all, he has discharged the peculiar and most responsible duties of his post, with unsurpassed ability and success? He has rendered great services to his country,-services which will prevent the present administration, unfortunate and odious as it may have been in many respects, from being quite so mere a parenthesis on the page of history as was at one time suggested. The treaty of Washington can never be passed over, in the future perusal of our annals," without destroying the sense."

It

may not catch the eye of the cursory reader, indeed, so quickly, as if it were written in letters of blood; nor may it occupy so large a space as the dread alternative it has averted; but it will be inscribed in characters which will rivet, as with a charm, the attention and admiration of every thoughtful patriot and every true philanthropist, and which will continually acquire fresh lustre with the advancing progress of civilization and Christianity. The light which flashes from the sword of the successful warrior may dazzle for a day, or even for an age; but a far more enduring radiance will encircle the names of those who have reconciled the proud and angry spirits of two mighty nations, and have honorably secured for them both the unspeakable blessing of Peace.

Mr. Webster has been charged with great and glaring inconsistencies on the subject of the currency and the Constitution; and this Exchequer project is declared to be in direct contradiction to the doctrines of his whole previous political life. Now, Sir, I am not going to argue this point. I have no idea that I could argue it to anybody's satisfaction, if I should try. I will not pretend to say that this plan does not, in my own opinion, contain provisions which Mr. Webster has opposed and condemned in other connections, and under other circumstances. But this I will say, that the great and leading idea of almost all his speeches against the Sub-Treasury system was, that it was an entire abandonment of the power and duty of the General Government to regulate the currency and the exchanges. Wherever he addressed the people, in Wall street or in State street, at Saratoga or at Bunker Hill, this was the burden of his argument. And, so far as this argument is concerned, he is entirely consistent in advocating the Exchequer plan. But if it were not so, Mr. Speaker, I confess that I have yet to see evidence that, when arraigned, in reference to this project, on the mere score of consistency, Mr. Webster might not avail himself of the answer of an Athenian orator on a similar occasion, and say, "I may have acted contrary to myself, but I have not acted contrary to the Republic." The merits of this measure, if it has any, are certainly independent of any man's consistency. It has been devised under circumstances unlike any which ever