ff policy of the
federal government, can only be alluded to in the briefest manner. He
was opposed to the doctrine of nullification as expounded by the South
Carolina school of politicians, and did not regard it as a peaceful and
constitutional mode of redress; while he condemned the doctrines of the
Proclamation of Gen. Jackson as destructive of the rights of the States,
and as opposed to the true theory of our federal system. In a series of
numbers which appeared in the Norfolk Herald and were republished in the
Richmond Enquirer, he traced in the most elaborate of his compositions
extant the history of the formation of the present federal constitution,
and expounded its theory in a strain of argument as nearly approaching a
demonstration as topics of that nature allow. These articles were
published in pamphlet form at the time; and, with the exception of the
numbers of Senex which appeared in the Herald and Enquirer, and were
republished in pamphlet in England, and reviewed in the London
Quarterly, on the policy of Mr. Adams' administration respecting the
West India trade, are the only serial contributions, as far as I know,
he ever made to the periodical press.

The only one of the vexed questions which harassed the administration of
Gen. Jackson that Mr. Tazewell, after his retirement from the Senate,
discussed in public, was the removal of the deposits from the Bank of
the United States by the Treasury order of October, 1833. The reasons of
the Secretary of the Treasury for issuing that order were communicated
in detail to Congress on the 3d of December following; and his report
was discussed in both Houses for several months with an ability and
warmth never before displayed in a congressional discussion. The people
caught the excitement; and public meetings were held in all the
commercial cities; and memorials were forwarded to Congress urging the
immediate restoration of the deposits to the vaults of the bank. Each
memorial, as it was received by a Senator or Representative, was honored
with a speech from some master spirit. And now the most menacing
monetary crisis occurred which the country had ever seen. In a little
less or more than six months the Bank of the United States had shortened
its line of discounts ten millions of dollars; and all the State banks
in self-defence were compelled to follow the example of that great
institution. Confidence ceased to exist. No man in business could look
ahead a single d