good sense of the whole community. It has been supposed, however, by a majority of Congress that it was most expedient either not to receive the petitions at all, or, if formally received, not to act definitively upon them. There is no substantial difference between these opposite opinions, since both look to an absolute rejection of the prayer of the petitioners. But there is a great difference in the form of proceeding; and, Mr. President, some experience in the conduct of human affairs has taught me to believe that a neglect to observe established forms is often attended with more mischievous consequences than the infliction of a positive injury. We all know that, even in private life, a violation of the existing usages and ceremonies of society cannot take place without serious prejudice. I fear, sir, that the abolitionists have acquired a considerable apparent force by blending with the object which they have in view a collateral and totally different question arising out of an alleged violation of the right of petition. I know full well, and take great pleasure in testifying, that nothing was remoter from the intention of the majority of the Senate, from which I differed, than to violate the right of petition in any case in which, according to its judgment, that right could be constitutionally exercised, or where the object of the petition could be safely or properly granted. Still, it must be owned that the abolitionists have seized hold of the fact of the treatment which their petitions have received in Congress, and made injurious impressions upon the minds of a large portion of the community. This, I think, might have been avoided by the course which I should have been glad to have seen pursued. "And I desire now, Mr. President, to advert to some of those topics which I think might have been usefully embodied in a report by a committee of the Senate, and which, I am persuaded, would have checked the progress, if it had not altogether arrested the efforts of abolition. I am sensible, sir, that this work would have been accomplished with much greater ability, and with much happier effect, under the auspices of a committee, than it can be by me. But, anxious as I always am to contribute whatever is in my power to the harmony, concord, and happiness of this great people, I feel myself irresistibly impelled to do whatever is in my power, incompetent as I feel myself to be, to dissuade the public from continuing to agitate a subject fraught with the most direful consequences. "There are three classes of persons opposed, or apparently opposed, to the continued existence of slavery in the United States. The first are those who, from sentiments of philanthropy and humanity, are conscientiously opposed to the existence of slavery, but who are no less opposed, at the same time, to any disturbance of the peace and tranquillity of the Union, or the infringement of the powers of the States composing the confederacy. In this class may be comprehended that peaceful and exemplary society of 'Friends,' one of whose established maxims is, an abhorrence of war in all its forms, and the cultivation of peace and goodwill amongst mankind. The next class consists of apparent abolitionists-that is, those who, having been persuaded that the right of petition has been violated by Congress, co-operate with the abolitionists for the sole purpose of asserting and vindicating that right. And the third class are the real ultra-abolitionists, who are resolved to persevere in the pursuit of their object at all hazards, and without regard to any consequences, however calamitous they may be. With them the rights of property are nothing; the deficiency of the powers of the general goverment is nothing; the acknowledged and incontestable powers of the States are nothing; civil war, a dissolution of the Union, and the overthrow of a government in which are concentrated the fondest hopes of the civilized world, are nothing. A single idea has taken possession of their minds, and onward they pursue it, overlooking all barriers, reckless and regardless of all consequences. With this class, the immediate abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia, and in the territory of Florida, the prohibition of the removal of slaves from State to State, and the refusal to admit any new State, comprising within its limits the institution of domestic slavery, are but so many means conducing to the accomplishment of the ultimate but perilous end at which they avowedly and boldly aim; are but so many short stages in the long and bloody road to the distant goal at which they would finally arrive. Their purpose is abolition, universal abolition, peaceably if it can, forcibly if it must. Their object is no longer concealed by the thinnest veil; it is avowed and proclaimed. Utterly destitute of constitutional or other rightful power, living in totally distinct communities, as alien to the communities in which the subject on which they would operate resides, so far as concerns political power over that subject, as if they lived in Africa or Asia, they nevertheless promulgate to the world their purpose to be to manumit forthwith, and without compensation, and without moral preparation, three millions of negro slaves, under jurisdictions altogether separated from those under which they live. "I have said that immediate abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia and in the territory of Florida, and the exclusion of new States, were only means towards the attainment of a much more important end. Unfortunately, they are not the only means. Another, and much more lamentable one is that which this class is endeavoring to employ, of arraying one portion against another portion of the Union. With that view, in all their leading prints and publications, the alleged horrors of slavery are depicted in the most glowing and exaggerated colors, to excite the imaginations and stimulate cause political, and have appealed to the ballot box, that I am induced, upon this occasion, to address you. "There have been three epochs in the history of our country at which the spirit of abolition displayed itself. The first was immediately after the formation of the present federal government. When the constitution was about going into operation, its powers were not well understood by the community at large, and rein-mained to be accurately interpreted and defined. At that period numerous abolition societies were formed, comprising not merely the Society of Friends, but many other good men. Petitions were presented to Congress, praying for the abolition of slavery. They were received without serious opposition, referred, and reported upon by a committee. The report stated that the general government had no power to abolish slavery as it existed in the several States, and that these States themselves had exclusive jurisdiction over the subject. The report was generally acquiesced in, and satisfaction and tranquillity ensued; the abolition societies thereafter limiting their exertions, in respect to the black population, to offices of humanity within the scope of existing laws. the rage of the people in the free States against the people in the slave States. The slaveholder is held up and represented as the most atrocious of human beings. Advertisements of fugitive slaves to be sold are carefully collected and blazoned forth, to infuse a spirit of detestation and hatred against one entire and the largest section of the Union. And like a notorious agitator upon another theatre (Mr. Daniel O'Connell), they would hunt down and proscribe from the pale of civilized society the habitants of that entire section. Allow me, Mr. President, to say, that whilst I recognize in the justly wounded feelings of the Minister of the United States at the court of St. James much to excuse the notice which he was provoked to take of that agitator, in my humble opinion, he would better have consulted the dignity of his station and of his country in treating him with contemptuous silence. That agitator would exclude us from European society-he who himself can only obtain a contraband admission, and is received with scornful repugnance into it! If he be no more desirous of our society than we are of his, he may rest assured that a state of eternal non-intercourse will exist between us. Yes, sir, I think the American Minister would have best pursued the dictates of true dignity by regarding the language of that member of the British House of Commons as the malignant ravings of the plunderer of his own country, and the libeller of a foreign and kindred people. "But the means to which I have already adverted are not the only ones which this third class of ultra-Abolitionists are employing to effect their ultimate end. They began their operations by professing to employ only persuasive means in appealing to the humanity, and enlightening the understandings, of the slaveholding portion of the Union. If there were some kindness in this avowed motive, it must be acknowledged that there was rather a presumptuous display also of an assumed superiority in intelligence and knowledge. For some time they continued to make these appeals to our duty and our interest; but impatient with the slow influence of their logic upon our stupid minds, they recently resolved to change their system of action. To the agency of their powers of persuasion, they now propose to substitute the powers of the ballot box; and he must be blind to what is passing before us, who does not perceive that the inevitable tendency of their proceedings is, if these should be found insufficient, to invoke, finally, the more potent powers of the bayonet. "Mr. President, it is at this alarming stage of the proceedings of the ultra-Abolitionists that I would seriously invite every considerate man in the country solemnly to pause, and deliberately to reflect, not merely on our existing posture, but upon that dreadful precipice down which they would hurry us. It is because these ultraAbolitionists have ceased to employ the instruments of reason and persuasion, have made their "The next period when the subject of slavery and abolition, incidentally, was brought into notice and discussion, was on the memorable occasion of the admission of the State of Missouri into the Union. The struggle was long, strenuous, and fearful. It is too recent to make it necessary to do more than merely advert to it, and to say, that it was finally composed by one of those compromises characteristic of our institutions, and of which the constitution itself is the most signal instance. "The third is that in which we now find ourselves, and to which various causes have contributed. The principal one, perhaps, is British emancipation in the islands adjacent to our continent. Confounding the totally different cases of the powers of the British Parliament and those of our Congress, and the totally different conditions of the slaves in the British West India Islands and the slaves in the sovereign and independent States of this confederacy, superficial men have inferred from the undecided British experiment the practicability of the abolition of slavery in these States. All these are different. The powers of the British Parliament are unlimited, and often described to be omnipotent. The powers of the American Congress, on the contrary, are few, cautiously limited, scrupulously excluding all that are not granted, and above all, carefully and absolutely excluding all power over the existence or continuance of slavery in the several States. The slaves, too, upon which British legislation operated, were not in the bosom of the kingdom, but in remote and feeble colonies, having no voice in Parliament. The West India slaveholder was neither representative, or represented in that Parliament. And while I most fervently If wish complete success to the British experiment of the West India emancipation, I confess that I have fearful forebodings of a disastrous termination. Whatever it may be, I think it must be admitted that, if the British Parliament treated the West India slaves as freemen, it also treated the West India freemen as slaves. instead of these slaves being separated by a wide ocean from the parent country, three or four millions of African negro slaves had been dispersed over England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland, and their owners had been members of the British Parliament a case which would have presented some analogy to our own country-does any one believe that it would have been expedient or practical to have emancipated them, leaving them to remain, with all their embittered feelings, in the United kingdom, boundless as the powers of the British govern ment are? "Other causes have conspired with the British example to produce the existing excitement from abolition. I say it with profound regret, and with no intention to occasion irritation here or elsewhere, that there are persons in both parts of the Union who have sought to mingle abolition with politics, and to array one portion of the Union against the other. It is the misfortune of free countries that, in high party times, a disposition too often prevails to seize hold of every thing which can strengthen the one side or weaken the other. Prior to the late election of the present President of the United States, he was charged with being an abolitionist, and abolition designs were imputed to many of his supporters. Much as I was opposed to his election, and am to his administration, I neither shared in making or believing the truth of the charge. He was scarcely installed in office before the same charge was directed against those who opposed his election. CHAPTER XXXVIII. BANK OF THE UNITED STATES: RESIGNATION ON the first of January of this year this Bank On the 30th of March following Mr. Biddle resigned his place as president of the Bank, giving as a reason for it that, "the affairs of the institution were in a state of great prosperity, and no longer needed his services." On the same day the board of directors in accepting the resignation, passed a resolve declaring that the President Biddle had left the institution "prosperous in all its relations, strong in its ability to promote the interest of the community, cordial with other banks, and secure in the esteem and respect of all connected with it at home or abroad." On the 9th of October the Bank closed her doors upon her creditors, under the mild name of suspension-never to open them again. In the month of April preceding, when leaving Washington to return to Missouri, I told the President there would be another suspension, headed by the Bank of the United States, before we met again: at my return in November it was his first expression to remind me of that conversation; and to say it was the second time I had foreseen these suspensions, and warned him of them. He then jocularly said, don't predict so any more. I answered I should not ; for it was the last time this Bank would suspend. "It is not true-I rejoice that it is not true -that either of the two great parties in this country has any design or aim at abolition. I should deeply lament if it were true. I should consider, if it were true, that the danger to the stability of our system would be infinitely greater than any which does, I hope, actually exist. Whilst neither party can be, I think, justly accused of any abolition tendency or purpose, both have profited, and both been injured, in particular localities, by the accession or abstraction of abolition support. If the account Still dominating over the moneyed systems were fairly stated, I believe the party to which of the South and West, this former colossal instiI am opposed has profited much more, and been injured much less, than that to which I belong. tution was yet able to carry along with her nearBut I am far, for that reason, from being dis-ly all the banks of one-half of the Union and osed to accuse our adversaries of abolitionism." using her irredeemable paper against the solid currency of the New York and other Northern banks, and selling fictitious bills on Europe, she was able to run them hard for specie―curtail their operations—and make panic and distress in the money market. At the same time by OHIO.-William Allen, Benjamin Tappan. derson. LOUISIANA.-Robert C. Nicholas, Alexander Mouton. ILLINOIS.-John M. Robinson, Richard M. Young. ALABAMA.-Clement C. Clay, Wm. Rufus King. MISSOURI.—Thomas H. Benton, Lewis F. Linn. making an imposing exhibition of her assets, CHAPTER XXXIX. Sevier. ARKANSAS.-William S. Fulton, Ambrose Members of the House of Representatives. MAINE. Hugh J. Anderson, Nathan Clifford, Thomas Davee, George Evans, Joshua A. Lowell, Virgil D. Parris, Benjamin Randall, Albert Smith. NEW HAMPSHIRE.-Charles G. Atherton, Edmund Burke, Ira A. Eastman, Tristram Shaw, Jared W. Williams. CONNECTICUT.-Joseph Trumbull, William L. Storrs, Thomas W. Williams, Thomas B. Osborne, Truman Smith, John H. Brockway. VERMONT.-Hiland Hall, William Slade, FIRST SESSION TWENTY-SIXTH CONGRESS: MEM- Horace Everett, John Smith, Isaac Fletcher. BERS: ORGANIZATION: POLITICAL MAP OF THE Members of the Senate. NEW HAMPSHIRE.-Henry Hubbard, Franklin MAINE.-John Ruggles, Reuel Williams. ster. VERMONT.-Sam'l Prentiss, Sam'l S. Phelps. RHODE ISLAND.-Nehemiah R. Knight, N. F. Dixon. CONNECTICUT. Smith. -Thaddeus Betts, NEW YORK.-Silas Wright, N. P. Tallmadge. PENNSYLVANIA.—James Buchanan, Daniel Sturgeon. DELAWARE.-Thomas Clayton. MASSACHUSETTS.-Abbot Lawrence, Leverett Saltonstall, Caleb Cushing, William Parmenter, Levi Lincoln, [Vacancy,] George N. Briggs, William B. Calhoun, William S. Hastings, Henry Williams, John Reed, John Quincy Adams. RHODE ISLAND.-Chosen by general ticket. Joseph L. Tillinghast, Robert B. Cranston. NEW YORK.-Thomas B. Jackson, James de la Montayne, Ogden Hoffman, Edward Curtis, Moses H. Grinnell, James Monroe, Gouverneur Kemble, Charles Johnson, Nathaniel Jones, Rufus Palen, Aaron Vanderpoel, John Ely, Hiram P. Hunt, Daniel D. Barnard, Anson Brown, David Russell, Augustus C. Hand, John Fine, Peter J. Wagoner, Andrew W. Doig, John G. Floyd, David P. Brewster, Thomas C. Crittenden, John H. Prentiss, Judson Allen, John C. Clark, S. B. Leonard, Amasa Dana, Edward Rogers, Nehemiah H. Earl, Christopher Morgan, Theron R. Strong, Francis P. Granger, Meredith Mallory, Seth M. Gates, Luther C. MARYLAND.-John S. Spence, Wm. D. Mer- Peck, Richard P. Marvin, Millard Fillmore, Lemuel Paynter, David Petrikin, William S. VIRGINIA.-Linn Banks, Andrew Beirne, NORTH CAROLINA.-Jesse A. Bynum, Henry W. Connor, Edmund Deberry, Charles Fisher, James Graham, Micajah T. Hawkins, John Hill, James J. McKay, William Montgomery, Kenneth Rayner, Charles Shepard, Edward Stanly, Lewis Williams. SOUTH CAROLINA.-Sampson H. Butler, John Campbell, John K. Griffin, Isaac E. Holmes, Francis W. Pickens, R. Barnwell Rhett, James Rogers, Thomas B. Sumter, Waddy Thompson, jr. GEORGIA.-Julius C. Alford, Edward J. Black, Walter T. Colquitt, Mark A. Cooper, William C. Dawson, Richard W. Habersham, Thomas B. King, Eugenius A. Nisbet, Lott Warren. ILLINOIS.-John Reynolds, Zadok Casey, John T. Stuart. The organization of the House was delayed for many days by a case of closely and earnestly contested election from the State of New Jersey. Five citizens, to wit: John B. Aycrigg, John B. Maxwell, William Halsted, Thomas C. Stratton, Thomas Jones Yorke, had received the governor's certificate as duly elected: five other citizens, to wit: Philemon Dickerson, Peter D. Vroom, Daniel B. Ryall, William R. Cooper, John Kille, claimed to have received a majority of the lawful votes given in the election: and each set demanded admission as representatives. No case of contested election was ever more warmly disputed in the House. The two sets of claimants were of opposite political parties: the House was nearly divided: five from one side and added to the other would make a difference of ten votes: and these ten might determine its character. The first struggle was on the part of the members holding the certificates claiming to be admitted, and to act as members, until the question of right should be decided; and as this would give them a right to vote for speaker, it might have had the effect of deciding that important election: and for this point a great struggle was made by the whig party. The democracy could not ask for the immediate admission of the five democratic claimants, as they only presented a case which required to be examined before it could be decided. Their course was to exclude both sets, and send them equally before the committee of contested elections; and in the mean time, a resolution to proceed with the organization of the House was adopted after an arduous and protracted struggle, in which every variety of parliamentary motion was exhausted by each side to accomplish its purpose; and, at the end of three months it was referred to the committee to report which five of the ten contestants had received the greatest number OHIO.-Alexander Duncan, John B. Weller, of legal votes. This was putting the issue on the Patrick G. Goode, Thomas Corwin, William rights of the voters-on the broad and popular Doane, Calvary Morris, William K. Bond, Jo- ground of choice by the people: and was equivseph Ridgway, William Medill, Samson Mason, Isaac Parish, Jonathan Taylor, D. P. Lead-alent to deciding the question in favor of the better, George Sweeny, John W. Allen, Joshua democratic contestants, who held the certificate R. Giddings, John Hastings, D. A. Starkweather, Henry Swearingen. ALABAMA.-R. H. Chapman, David Hubbard, George W. Crabb, Dixon H. Lewis, James Dil lett. LOUISIANA.-Edward D. White, Edward MISSISSIPPI.-A. G. Brown, J. Thompson. TENNESSEE.-William B. Carter, Abraham Williams. KENTUCKY.-Linn Boyd, Philip Triplett, Joseph Underwood, Sherrod Williams, Simeon W. Anderson, Willis Green, John Pope, William J. Graves, John White, Richard Hawes, L. W. Andrews, Garret Davis, William O. Butler. MICHIGAN. Isaac E. Crary. of the Secretary of State that the majority of votes returned to his office was in their favor,— counting the votes of some precincts which the governor and council had rejected for illegality in holding the elections. As the constitutional |