e
centre; it is thus that a citizen of the West will read the news of
Boston still moist from the press."

But on the power of Congress to make internal improvements, ay, Sir, on
the power of Congress, hear him! What were then his rules of
construction and interpretation? How did he at that time read and
understand the Constitution? Why, Sir, he said that "he was no advocate
for refined arguments on the Constitution. The instrument was not
intended as a thesis for the logician to exercise his ingenuity on. It
ought to be construed with plain good-sense." This is all very just, I
think, Sir; and he said much more in the same strain. He quoted many
instances of laws passed, as he contended, on similar principles, and
then added, that "he introduced these instances to prove the uniform
sense of Congress and of the country (for they had not been objected to)
as to our powers; and surely," said he, "they furnish better evidence of
the true interpretation of the Constitution than the most refined and
subtile arguments."

Here you see, Mr. President, how little original I am. You have heard me
again and again contending in my place here for the stability of that
which has been long settled; you have heard me, till I dare say you have
been tired, insisting that the sense of Congress, so often expressed,
and the sense of the country, so fully shown and so firmly established,
ought to be regarded as having decided finally certain constitutional
questions. You see now, Sir, what authority I have for this mode of
argument. But while the scholar is learning, the teacher renounces. Will
he apply his old doctrine now--I sincerely wish he would--to the
question of the bank, to the question of the receiving of bank-notes by
government, to the power of Congress over the paper currency? Will he
admit that these questions ought to be regarded as decided by the
settled sense of Congress and of the country? O, no! Far otherwise. From
these rules of judgment, and from the influence of all considerations of
this practical nature, the honorable member now takes these questions
with him into the upper heights of metaphysics, into the regions of
those refinements and subtile arguments which he rejected with so much
decision in 1817, as appears by this speech. He quits his old ground of
common-sense, experience, and the general understanding of the country,
for a flight among theories and ethereal abstractions.

And now, Sir, let me ask, when d