ge of his own country. But
as to the Hartford Convention, Sir, allow me to say, that the
proceedings of that body seem now to be less read and studied in New
England than farther South. They appear to be looked to, not in New
England, but elsewhere, for the purpose of seeing how far they may serve
as a precedent. But they will not answer the purpose, they are quite too
tame. The latitude in which they originated was too cold. Other
conventions, of more recent existence, have gone a whole bar's length
beyond it. The learned doctors of Colleton and Abbeville have pushed
their commentaries on the Hartford collect so far, that the original
text-writers are thrown entirely into the shade. I have nothing to do,
Sir, with the Hartford Convention. Its journal, which the gentleman has
quoted, I never read. So far as the honorable member may discover in its
proceedings a spirit in any degree resembling that which was avowed and
justified in those other conventions to which I have alluded, or so far
as those proceedings can be shown to be disloyal to the Constitution, or
tending to disunion, so far I shall be as ready as any one to bestow on
them reprehension and censure.

Having dwelt long on this convention, and other occurrences of that day,
in the hope, probably, (which will not be gratified,) that I should
leave the course of this debate to follow him at length in those
excursions, the honorable member returned, and attempted another object.
He referred to a speech of mine in the other house, the same which I had
occasion to allude to myself, the other day; and has quoted a passage or
two from it, with a bold, though uneasy and laboring, air of confidence,
as if he had detected in me an inconsistency. Judging from the
gentleman's manner, a stranger to the course of the debate and to the
point in discussion would have imagined, from so triumphant a tone, that
the honorable member was about to overwhelm me with a manifest
contradiction. Any one who heard him, and who had not heard what I had,
in fact, previously said, must have thought me routed and discomfited,
as the gentleman had promised. Sir, a breath blows all this triumph
away. There is not the slightest difference in the purport of my remarks
on the two occasions. What I said here on Wednesday is in exact
accordance with the opinion expressed by me in the other house in 1825.
Though the gentleman had the metaphysics of Hudibras, though he were
able