ve no
right to tax America. I rejoice that America has resisted.

"Let the sovereign authority of this country over the colonies be
asserted in as strong terms as can be devised, and be made to extend
to every point of legislation whatever, so that we may bind their
trade, confine their manufactures, and exercise every power, except
that of taking money out of their own pockets without their
consent."

It was reserved for the latter half of the nineteenth century, and
for the Congress of a Republic of free men, to witness the willing
abnegation of all power, save that of exacting tribute. What
Imperial Britain, with the haughtiest pretensions of unlimited power
over dependent colonies, could not even attempt without the vehement
protest of her greatest statesmen, is to be enforced in aggravated
form, if you can enforce it, against independent States.

Good God, sir! since when has the necessity arisen of recalling to
American legislators the lessons of freedom taught in lisping
childhood by loving mothers; that pervade the atmosphere we have
breathed from infancy; that so form part of our very being, that in
their absence we would lose the consciousness of our own identity?
Heaven be praised that not all have forgotten them; that when we
shall have left these familiar halls, and when force bills,
blockades, armies, navies, and all the accustomed coercive
appliances of despots shall be proposed and advocated, voices shall
be heard from this side of the chamber that will make its very roof
resound with the indignant clamor of outraged freedom. Methinks I
still hear ringing in my ears the appeal of the eloquent
Representative [Hon. George H. Pendleton, of Ohio], whose Northern
home looks down on Kentucky's fertile borders: "Armies, money, blood
cannot maintain this Union; justice, reason, peace may."

And now to you, Mr. President, and to my brother Senators, on all
sides of this chamber, I bid a respectful farewell; with many of
those from whom I have been radically separated in political
sentiment, my personal relations have been kindly, and have inspired
me with a respect and esteem that I shall not willingly forget; with
those around me from the Southern States I part as men part from
brothers on the eve of a temporary absence, with a cordial pressure
of the hand and a smiling assurance of the speedy renewal of sweet
intercourse around the family hearth. But to you, noble and
generous friends, who, born bene