those who vote for him and support his administration. The man who is most abject and servile in his flatteries succeeds best. The vile sycophant is preferred to the honest and honorable man; high-minded men withdraw into retirement, impressed with the solemn truth, that "When vice prevails, and impious men bear sway, The post of honor is the private station.' "This practice of letting men know, when they come to the polls, that they vote under the fear of punishment on the one hand, and the hope of reward on the other, will undermine this government, shake it to its center, and finally prostrate it on the earth. It must be stopped, or we are an undone people. To come to the polls, like horse jockeys into a race-field, and inquire into the characters, keepers, and managers of the candidates. before we vote, and then to vote for the one that is most likely to win the race, is a deplorable state of things. "Mr. Speaker, when we look at the present, and then review the past, and put them together, what is the prospect before us? A proud, haughty, ambitious military man, who has charmed the imaginations of the people by the brilliancy of his victories, and won their affections by their admiration of his renown in arms, has, by their misplaced affection, been elevated to the first office of this Government, to the head of affairs. What has been his conduct in this high office? Let facts speak, and not myself. They speak louder than words in this hall. They speak to the understanding and hearts of the people. "He has increased the expenditures of this Government to an enormous sum which was unknown to former times. He has multiplied offices, employments, and agencies, to get his friends quartered on Government, in a manner unheard of before. He has invaded the liberty of the press, by bribing its conductors with lucrative offices and rich rewards. He has stabbed the free exercise of the right of suffrage to the heart, by punishing men for exercising it, and by rewarding others for prostituting it. He has invaded the independence of this House and the Senate chamber by coming into them to select all the high officers of the Government. He has attacked the reputa tion of the judiciary, and endeavored to injure their standing with the peo ple, by imputing to them corruption. He has abused and attempted to degrade a portion of this House and the Senate, by charging them with having been bought up and fee'd' by the bank. He has seized the purse and sword of the nation, and arrogantly claims to be 'the Government itself.' He has, following the example set by usurpers of former days, endeavored to make the people believe that the other two departments of the Government are inimical to their interest and welfare, and that he alone is their friend. He has engrossed all power, and is as absolute as any crowned head in Europe. He only differs with them in the name. "Let us see the means he has adopted to perpetuate his power and rivet our chains of slavery. All the officers of this government are a disciplined corps, with but few exceptions. The post-office department, including postmasters, clerks, mail contractors, and their dependents, furnishes thirty thousand. The other departments supply about an equal number, making something like sixty thousand, scattered all over the United States, receiving and disbursing twenty-five millions of dollars a year. What an appalling phalanx this is for the people to encounter! how dangerous to liberty! And if he can only add to this powerful body the whole of the additional forces which the pet banks bring to his aid when united, this army of dependents and retainers will be resistless. He has chosen his successor the last act of royalty. He has shown the young Cæsar to the Praetorian guards at the seat of government, and last fall made the tour of the North with him to show him the distant legions. All the office-holders and office-hunters already begin to acknowledge his power, and recognize his right divine to the succession. They are making daily efforts to get the rays of his countenance to beam upon them; but, as yet, through affected humility, he keeps his eyes on the ground, and will look no man in the face.* "What a dreary prospect we have now before us! How desperate appears the cause of the people and of liberty! The mariner, when lost in the wide and almost boundless Pacific, tossed by storms and driven by adverse currents, his water and provisions nearly exhausted, now and then is cheered with a green island rearing its head out of the waste of waters. So with the lost and wayworn traveler over the great desert of Sahara; nothing but a wide and almost illimitable ocean of sand around him; from above, the sun parching his head, the sand blistering his feet beneath; he, in this gloomy situation, occasionally meets with a well of water and a grove of refreshing trees, which has escaped the baneful and withering sirocco, to gladden his heart. But what, Mr. Speaker, have we before us in this wide. waste, ruin, and desolation of all our rights, civil, political, and religious? I answer, nothing but hope and the justice of our cause are left to us. Hope, almost alone, sustained Washington frequently in the revolutionary war; and why should we, as yet, despair? No; let us not give up the ship; relief is coming. The people are breaking the chains that kept them spellbound. They are awakening everywhere. New York has manifested a disposition to be free. Virginia has erected the standard of liberty, and not only her own sons, but the nation, will rally around it. Kentucky will know the banner-it was once her own-and, in this great contest, will be found combating by the side of her parent. The Senate is with us. The greatest men in the nation are there. Let us make one mighty effort, and burst asunder, as the strong man of old did, the cords that bind us. "I have, sir, been speaking of General Jackson and his administration politically, and considered what has been done during his administration as Mr. Van Buren is alluded to. done by himself; for the effect upon the nation is the same. It is due to that distinguished individual, although his official conduct is ruining our country and prostrating its best and dearest interests, to say, before I resume my seat, that I believe he is an honest and truthful man, and will not stoop to disguise his actions, however arbitrary and despotic they may be. His greatest fault is the strength and violence of his passions, which, instead of checking, he cherishes, feeds, and blows into a flame. He has a laudable love of glory, but he loves it to excess; and hence he mistakes the selfish voice of flattery for the unbought sound of the trumpet of fame. He courts the applause of the world and posterity. Alas! his ears hear nothing but the servile adulations and praise of the vile miscreants who surround him. He, from his habits as a general of our armies, has been taught to command, and is impatient of control; the wretches who fatten upon the spoils of the nation avail themselves of his former education to keep the honest, honorable, and high-minded men, who rallied around him originally, from having any influence over him; nay, nearly the whole of them are excluded from his presence, and proscribed by the cabal that influence his conduct and direct his actions. But behold and see his most powerful friends when he came into power. Who are they? Calhoun, McDuffie, and Hamilton, in the South, and in the West, Bibb, Wickliffe, Chilton, Rowan, and Daniel. And where are they now? In the ranks of his opponents. How has this been done? Because a 'malign influence' has driven him from his course, and made him depart from his principles. They went in for principle, and not for men. "I have one more remark, Mr. Speaker, and then I have done: I once heard a good and pious man, who had long ministered at the altar of God, say, in finishing a sermon, that if he had made one convert, nay, brought one man who heard him to seriously think upon the great truths he had been delivering, he would consider himself amply rewarded for all his labor and all his toils on that day, because such was his conviction of the great truths of Christianity and the true religion of God, that a seeker would soon become a convert; so with myself, comparing small things with great, the matters of this world with the things to come hereafter; if I have made one convert, nay, brought one man to think seriously upon the political truths I have attempted to deliver, I shall feel amply compensated for all my labor. But, Mr. Speaker, whatever may be the result, I thank my God for this opportunity and health sufficient (although lately greatly afflicted) to do my duty to my constituents and country; and into the hands and safe-keeping of the Almighty, as far as I am concerned, do I commit the cause and destinies of the American people." The President was unshaken and undismayed by all denunciations and all clamor. The efforts of the bank and its friends, or as Mr. Benton had it the unhallowed combination between the moneyed IVF THE END OF THE SESSION. 229 and a political power," to recover from the blow of the removal of the despots was in vain. "King" Jackson (as Hardin called him on the "stump") had dealt his enemy a mortal blow for which there was, as it proved, no remedy in political pharmacy. On May 16, 1834, Mr. Boon, of Indiana, called up a resolution previously offered by him fixing June 16th as the day for adjournment. Mr. Hardin moved to strike out and insert "July 2d," and said that "he presumed the honorable member was not more solicitous than he to return to the bosom of his family, his business, both professional and private, calling upon him (Mr. Hardin) as urgently and as imperiously as did that of any other honorable member." After giving in detail various reasons why adjournment should not occur at so early a day as proposed, he closed by saying "he hoped he would get credit for the assertion that his anxiety to return to his home was as great as that of any man, feeling with Cowper, in the beautiful lines he attributes to Selkirk "When I think of my own native land, In a moment I seem to be there; But, alas! recollection at hand June 2d, Mr. Stevenson resigned as speaker, having been nominated by the President as minister to the English court. A lively contest for the vacancy ensued. Ten ballots occurred before any one received the requisite majority. On the first, second, and third ballots Richard H. Wilde, of Georgia, received the highest vote (Mr. Hardin receiving one on the second ballot). On the fourth, fifth, and sixth James K. Polk received a plurality. On the seventh, eighth, ninth, and tenth John Bell led Mr. Polk, and having a majority on the last ballot was chosen speaker. To the union of the enemies of Mr. Van Buren in the administration party and to the opposition the new speaker owed success. June 30th Congress adjourned, Mr. Hardin remaining until the closing hours of the session. CHAPTER XIX. A SOJOURNER. [E who looked upon the meagerness of Washington City fifty years ago little dreamed that within a lifetime the beauty and magnificence of to-day would be realized. If Mr. Hardin sometimes spoke of it disrespectfully, it must be remembered that in his day the national capital had few admirers. "A national capital," writes Mary Clemmer Ames, "could only be fitly built by the nation. For many years the Congress of the United States refused to do this to any fit degree, and the result for more than one generation was the most forlorn city in Christendom." * It was during the period of Mr. Hardin's service in Congress that the well-known English traveler and writer, Miss Harriet Martineau, visited America. She spent some time at Washington, and her references to her experience and observations there are extremely graphic. "The city is a grand mistake," she writes. "Its only attraction is the seat of government, and it is thought it will not long continue to be so. The far western States begin to demand a more central seat for Congress, and the Cincinnati people are already speculating upon which of their hills or tablelands is to be the site of the new capital. Whenever this takes place all will be over with Washington; thorns shall come up in her palaces, and the owl and the raven shall dwell in it,' while her sister cities of the East will be still spreading as fast as hands can be found to build them. * * * * "The city itself is unlike any other that ever was seen, straggling out hither and thither, with a small house or two a quarter of a mile from any other; so that in making calls in the city we had to cross ditches and stiles, and walk alternately on grass and pavement, and strike across a field to reach a street. * X Then there was the society singularly compounded from the largest variety of elements-foreign embassadors, the American government, members of Congress from Clay and Webster down to Davy Crockett; Benton, of Missouri, and Cuthbert, with the fresh Irish brogue, from Georgia; flippant young belles, and pious wives, dutifully attending their husbands and groaning over the frivolities of the place; grave judges, saucy travelers, pert newspaper reporters, melancholy Indian chiefs, and timid New England ladies, trembling on the verge of the vortex. Ten Years in Washington, by Mary Cleminer Ames, page 67. All |