drift and tenor of his speech; unless he means by
not attacking, that he did not commence hostilities, but that another
had preceded him in the attack. He, in the first place, disapproved of
the whole course of the government, for forty years, in regard to its
disposition of the public lands; and then, turning northward and
eastward, and fancying he had found a cause for alleged narrowness and
niggardliness in the "accursed policy of the tariff", to which he
represented the people of New England as wedded, he went on for a full
hour with remarks, the whole scope of which was to exhibit the results
of this policy, in feelings and in measures unfavorable to the West. I
thought his opinions unfounded and erroneous, as to the general course
of the government, and ventured to reply to them.

The gentleman had remarked on the analogy of other cases, and quoted the
conduct of European governments towards their own subjects settling on
this continent, as in point, to show that we had been harsh and rigid in
selling, when we should have given the public lands to settlers without
price. I thought the honorable member had suffered his judgment to be
betrayed by a false analogy; that he was struck with an appearance of
resemblance where there was no real similitude. I think so still. The
first settlers of North America were enterprising spirits, engaged in
private adventure, or fleeing from tyranny at home. When arrived here,
they were forgotten by the mother country, or remembered only to be
oppressed. Carried away again by the appearance of analogy, or struck
with the eloquence of the passage, the honorable member yesterday
observed, that the conduct of government towards the Western emigrants,
or my representation of it, brought to his mind a celebrated speech in
the British Parliament. It was, Sir, the speech of Colonel Barre. On the
question of the stamp act, or tea tax, I forget which, Colonel Barre had
heard a member on the treasury bench argue, that the people of the
United States, being British colonists, planted by the maternal care,
nourished by the indulgence, and protected by the arms of England, would
not grudge their mite to relieve the mother country from the heavy
burden under which she groaned. The language of Colonel Barre, in reply
to this, was: "They planted by your care? Your oppression planted them
in America. They fled from your tyranny, and grew by your neglect of
them. So soon as you began to care for them,