ally to the
results of the negotiation in which I have been recently engaged. I
hope, fellow-citizens, that something has been done which may prove
permanently useful to the public. I have endeavored to do something, and
I hope my endeavors have not been in vain. I have had a hard summer's
work, it is true, but I am not wholly unused to hard work. I have had
some anxious days, I have spent some sleepless nights; but if the
results of my efforts shall be approved by the community, I am richly
compensated. My other days will be the happier, and my other nights will
be given to a sweeter repose.

It was an object of the highest national importance, no doubt, to
disperse the clouds which threatened a storm between England and
America. For several years past there has been a class of questions open
between the two countries, which have not always threatened war, but
which have prevented the people from being assured of permanent peace.

His Honor the Mayor has paid a just tribute to that lamented personage,
by whom, in 1841, I was called to the place I now occupy; and although,
Gentlemen, I know it is in very bad taste to speak much of one's self,
yet here, among my friends and neighbors, I wish to say a word or two on
subjects in which I am concerned. With the late President Harrison I had
contracted an acquaintance while we were both members of Congress, and I
had an opportunity of renewing it afterwards in his own house, and
elsewhere. I have made no exhibition or boast of the confidence which it
was his pleasure to repose in me; but circumstances, hardly worthy of
serious notice, have rendered it not improper for me to say on this
occasion, that as soon as President Harrison was elected, without, of
course, one word from me, he wrote to me inviting me to take a place in
his Cabinet, leaving to me the choice of that place, and asking my
advice as to the persons that should fill every other place in it. He
expressed rather a wish that I should take the administration of the
treasury, because, as he was pleased to say, I had devoted myself with
success to the examination of the questions of currency and finance, and
he felt that the wants of the country,--the necessities of the country,
on the great subjects of currency and finance,--were moving causes that
produced the revolution which had placed him in the presidential chair.

It so happened, Gentlemen, that my preference was for another
place,--for that which I have no