administration are more interested in the recovery of the money than the rest of us, we should commit the management of this inquiry to them; it is, in the first place, founded upon a gratuitous assumption, and is, moreover, a most illogical conclusion, even from a false premise. I deny that any party in this House is really more interested than another in restoring so considerable a sum to the common treasury of the country. I am sure it would be a boon for which both Charleston and Pensacola would be most grateful to you, if it were laid out in those places upon the establishments we were speaking of a few days ago. But, even conceding what is thus taken for granted, the reasoning of the gentleman from Maryland is surely most extraordinary. Says the gentleman, the friends of the administration in this House should be employed in recovering the money. Why? Because the administration lost it. This House, by its committee, is to recover what was lost through the carelessness or unskilfulness of the head of the Treasury; and that, it seems, is to exonerate that officer from every imputation of neglect of duty! Was there ever a stranger confusion of ideas? Why, what sort of connection is there between the recovery of the money by the Legislature and the loss of it by the Executive; and how are the merits of our committee to be imputed, by this most anomalous relation back, to him, who, for the purposes of this argument, must be presumed to have incurred a just censure, for a most culpable remissness or incapacity? And, above all, what satisfaction would it be to the country, justly alarmed at peculations and abuses so unprecedented and enormous, naturally expecting of this House that it should take measures at once to visit with its vindictive justice those who have been, directly or indirectly, engaged in them, and to prevent, as far as possible, the recurrence of them in future-what satisfaction would it be to the American people to hear that, having recovered their property, we had agreed to stop the prosecution, and hush up the whole matter? And is this the only argument which the friends of the administration have to urge why they should have the control, through the Speaker's appointment, of this extraordinary inquiry? Even so, sir.

But the gentleman from Maryland, (Mr. Thomas,) apologizing for "the pressure" under which he was obliged to speak, added a few observations to those which I have just examined. By his first argument he admitted that the "friends of the administration" were responsible for the safe keeping of the money; and it was because they were so responsible that he thought them entitled to a majority in the committee. As the "friends of the administration," however, could only be responsible through the administration itself, to which the custody of the money was exclusively confided, the gentleman, very naturally, went into an

other argument, to show that the Executive was not, in fact, to be blamed for the offences of Swartwout. How these two positions are to be reconciled, or whether they can be reconciled at all, is no business of mine; certain it is, however, that the gentleman from Maryland thought it perfectly consistent in himself, first to claim a privilege for the friends of the administration on the ground of their being answerable for the consequences of this embezzlement, and then to deny that any blame whatever attached, or could attach, to the administration itself, for the impunity with which these peculations were carried on for years together? And why? Because, forsooth, many whigs and many conservatives thought the man innocent, until he was found to be guilty and it could even be proved, by credible witnesses, that he had presided over some public meetings held by citizens of New-York, belonging to one or other of those parties! Why, sir, this is really too much. A public officer, repeatedly appointed to one of the most important trusts in the country, and acquitting himself of its duties, as the public were led to believe, by his continuance in office, with perfect fidelity, is treated by the community in which he lives with the respect due to his high station; and this makes them as much responsible for what he does as the Government, whose confidence in him it was that enabled him to deceive that community. The merchants of New-York, who had nothing to do with his accounts, who had no means of knowing what was his official conduct, who took it for granted, good easy men, that the agents of the people here at Washington, when they told them all was well, knew what they said to be true, as they were bound to know it, believed Swartwout no defaulter. And, therefore, it is not for them, nor for us, now to ask those very agents why they made or countenanced these false reports, by which we have all been misled so much to our cost! The gentleman went on to adduce other proofs of the high credit which Swartwout enjoyed, and then, suddenly taking a turn in his argument, stated, by way of exculpating the administration, that many of its friends used their influence with the Senate, when the second appointment of this man was under consideration in 1834, to have him rejected. The present President of the United States is expressly named among those who endeavored to prevent the confirmation of this unfortunate choice. Sir, I wish to say nothing unnecessarily unkind of that heroic old man, now retired forever from the stage of public life. He certainly erred in making this nomination; but why did not his friends go to him with their objections to it, instead of whispering suspicions into the ears of the Senate? The difference between the power that appoints and the power that confirms or rejects, is that the action of the former is perfectly untrammelled, whereas it is incumbent upon the latter to show some reason for

its dissent. Had the Senate rejected Swartwout upon vague rumors, who doubts but their conduct, especially at that particular juncture, would have been denounced as factions and arbitrary? That the friends of the administration, therefore, endeavored to prevent the confirming of a nomination, of which they seem to have taken no measures to prevent the making, no more exonerates them from all responsibility for it than it proves that the Senate were as much to blame for it as the Executive. But, if this whole argument fails to prove what the gentleman desires to make out, there is at least one purpose which it does very effectually answer. It shows that every possible circumstance combined to point Swartwout out to his official superiors as an object of most vigilant suspicion; it shows conclusively that they cannot plead surprise or ignorance; it still further inflames all the presumptions arising out of the other circumstances of the case, and justifies this House, triumphantly, in its visible determination to give to this whole subject a most severe and searching examination, through a committee of its own choosing.

One word, sir, as to the proposal to vote viva voce. I understand gentlemen to insist upon this deviation from the express rules of the House, on grounds most offensive to its dignity. They treat us as if, instead of an assembly of gentlemen, representatives of a great nation, we were a gang of crouching slaves, urged to the performance of our duties only by the lash, and skulking, whenever we find an opportunity, from the eye of our masters. Sir, there was a time when such insinuations, now become so familiar to us as to be mere words of course, would have kindled a flame of generous indignation in the bosoms of parties in this House. That day, I am sorry to say, seems to be past forever, and I suppose the proudest of us must submit, with what grace we may, to our destiny. Some of us, at least, have nothing to fear-the gentleman from New-York, (Mr. Cambreleng,) for instance, and myself.

"Duncan is in his grave;
After life's fitful fever, he sleeps well."

the matter; but, fear it would be However, if we

I can feel, personally, no interest at all in having no experience in the vote viva voce, I found inconvenient in such an election as this. must comply with the condition of publicity on the grounds upon which it is exacted-if we must submit to such humiliating terms, let every member write his name upon the ballot he gives. Would not that answer the purpose?

Before I take my seat, sir, I cannot refuse myself the privilege of saying a few words in reference to the observations that fell from my colleague, (Mr. Pickens,) who happens now to be near

me. Sir, I listened to him with an interest which I am unable to express; and, when he avowed his belief that the honour of the country called for this enquiry, and his readiness to go into it in the manner best fitted to accomplish its objects, I felt my bosom awakened as with the sound of a trumpet. I heard once more the voice of South-Carolina as she was of yore. I rejoiced with a patriotic cry-I exulted with an honest haughtiness at the thought that she was restored to her old and her true place here. For, sir, without meaning to intimate in the most distant manner any thing offensive or unkind to my colleague, he will permit me to confess that I had looked with a painfully anxious interest to the course which he and his friends were going to pursue in this matter-not that I distrusted their honor and integrity, but I did not know how far the fatal sophistry of party had triumphed over their naturally clear heads and elevated characters-that sophistry which is rooting itself so deeply in our political practice, and perverting so fearfully the opinions of the wisest and best among us, as to threaten nothing less than an entire revolution in the genius and character of our institutions. Sir, my colleague has spoken without reserve on this subject-he scruples not to declare that there has been foul corruption in the conduct of our affairs. I do not go so far-probably because I know less of these things than he does. But I do say that these strange portents and prodigies of fraud-these spectral terrors of official profligacy, almost unheard of in our previous history, but which have so often of late "visited the glimpses of the moon," make me fear that "something is rotten in the state of Denmark." It is time, sir, that we should all be roused up; and most heartily do I felicitate the country on the prospect that the South, at this important juncture, will be brought back to her proper position in our federal politics. That position. is necessarily defensive and conservative. We have nothing to desire or to hope from innovation or abuse of any kind. only salvation is in the constitution as it was formed by our fathers, honestly carried out in all its principles, and in its true spirit. The sceptre is departed from us. The axes and fasces, consulships and dictatorships, are not for us None of us, it is probable, will ever more lead the pomp of the triumph up the steep of this Capitol. But we have still our power and our mission, and if we execute them with courage and constancy, we shall entitle ourselves to the gratitude of the country and of posterity. We have the Tribunitian veto to restrain Power. We have the Censorial authority to rebuke and to chastise Corruption. Standing, as we ought, aloof from the perverse influences of ambition, it should be our aim, as it is undoubtedly within our power, to maintain that high public morality which is worth

more than all constitutions, and without which all constitutions, be they what they may, are a mere mockery. No language can characterize the baseness and folly of the Southern man who would sacrifice the independence, the elevation, and the controlling advantages of such a position to the slavish discipline and low ends of faction. I repeat it. I rejoice, from the bottom of my heart, in the hope that my colleague and his friends are still ready to lay bare their right arms in defence of the good cause; and never, let me assure them, never was a prouder post assigned to brave men in a mighty battle than will be theirs, if they but will it so.

VOL. I.-45