contributed to fill these avenues and crowd these halls. At a moment of
difficulty, and of much alarm, you come here as Whigs of New York, to
meet one whom you believe to be bound to you by common principles and
common sentiments, and pursuing, with you, a common object. Gentlemen, I
am proud to admit this community of our principles, and this identity of
our objects. You are for the Constitution of the country; so am I. You
are for the Union of the States; so am I. You are for equal laws, for
the equal rights of all men, for constitutional and just restraints on
power, for the substance and not the shadowy image only of popular
institutions, for a government which has liberty for its spirit and
soul, as well as in its forms; and so am I. You feel that if, in warm
party times, the executive power is in hands distinguished for boldness,
for great success, for perseverance, and other qualities which strike
men's minds strongly, there is danger of derangement of the powers of
government, danger of a new division of those powers, in which the
executive is likely to obtain the lion's part; and danger of a state of
things in which the more popular branches of the government, instead of
being guards and sentinels against any encroachments from the executive,
seek, rather, support from its patronage, safety against the complaints
of the people in its ample and all-protecting favor, and refuge in its
power; and so I feel, and so I have felt for eight long and anxious
years.

You believe that a very efficient and powerful cause in the production
of the evils which now fall on the industrious and commercial classes
of the community, is the derangement of the currency, the destruction of
the exchanges, and the unnatural and unnecessary _misplacement_ of the
specie of the country, by unauthorized and illegal treasury orders. So
do I believe. I predicted all this from the beginning, and from before
the beginning. I predicted it all, last spring, when that was attempted
to be done by law which was afterwards done by executive authority; and
from the moment of the exercise of that executive authority to the
present time, I have both foreseen and seen the regular progress of
things under it, from inconvenience and embarrassment, to pressure, loss
of confidence, disorder, and bankruptcies.

Gentlemen, I mean, on this occasion, to speak my sentiments freely on
the great topics of the day. I have nothing to conceal, and shall
therefore c