ut
the petitions of boys under age, the remonstrances of a few signers,
and the results of the most inconsiderable elections were
ostentatiously paraded and magnified, as the evidence of the sovereign
will of our constituents. Thus, sir, the public voice was everything,
while that voice, partially obtained through political and pecuniary
machinations, was adverse to the President. Then the popular will was
the shrine at which all worshipped. Now, when that will is regularly,
soberly, repeatedly, and almost universally expressed through the
ballot-boxes, at the various elections, and turns out to be in favor of
the President, certainly no one can disregard it, nor otherwise look at
it than as the solemn verdict of the competent and ultimate tribunal
upon an issue fairly made up, fully argued, and duly submitted for
decision. As such verdict, I receive it. As the deliberate verdict of
the sovereign people, I bow to it. I am content. I do not mean to
reopen the case nor to recommence the argument. I leave that work to
others, if any others choose to perform it. For myself, I am content;
and, dispensing with further argument, I shall call for judgment, and
ask to have execution done, upon that unhappy journal, which the
verdict of millions of freemen finds guilty of bearing on its face an
untrue, illegal, and unconstitutional sentence of condemnation against
the approved President of the Republic.

But, while declining to reopen the argument of this question, and
refusing to tread over again the ground already traversed, there is
another and a different task to perform; one which the approaching
termination of President Jackson's administration makes peculiarly
proper at this time, and which it is my privilege, and perhaps my duty,
to execute, as being the suitable conclusion to the arduous contest in
which we have been so long engaged. I allude to the general tenor of
his administration, and to its effect, for good or for evil, upon the
condition of his country. This is the proper time for such a view to
be taken. The political existence of this great man now draws to a
close. In little more than forty days he ceases to be an object of
political hope to any, and should cease to be an object of political
hate, or envy, to all. Whatever of motive the servile and time-serving
might have found in his exalted station for raising the altar of
adulation, and burning the incense of praise before him, that motive
can