word
of the country. Myriads of dependants and partisans, scattered over
the land, are ever ready to sing hosannas to him, and to laud to the
skies whatever he does. He has swept over the government, during the
last eight years, like a tropical tornado. Every department exhibits
traces of the ravages of the storm. Take as one example the Bank of
the United States. No institution could have been more popular with
the people, with Congress, and with State Legislatures. None ever
better fulfilled the great purposes of its establishment. But it
unfortunately incurred the displeasure of the President; he spoke, and
the bank lies prostrate. And those who were loudest in its praise are
now loudest in its condemnation. What object of his ambition is
unsatisfied? When disabled from age any longer to hold the sceptre of
power, he designates his successor, and transmits it to his favorite!
What more does he want? Must we blot, deface, and mutilate the records
of the country, to punish the presumptuousness of expressing an opinion
contrary to his own? What patriotic purpose is to be accomplished by
this Expunging resolution? Can you make that not to be which has been?
Can you eradicate from memory and from history the fact that in March,
1834, a majority of the Senate of the United States passed the
resolution which excites your enmity? Is it your vain and wicked
object to arrogate to yourselves that power of annihilating the past
which has been denied to Omnipotence itself? Do you intend to thrust
your hands into our hearts, and to pluck out the deeply rooted
convictions which are there? Or is it your design merely to stigmatize
us? You cannot stigmatize us.

"Ne'er yet did base dishonor blur our name."

Standing securely upon our conscious rectitude, and bearing aloft the
shield of the Constitution of our country, your puny efforts are
impotent; and we defy all your power. Put the majority of 1834 in one
scale, and that by which this Expunging resolution is to be carried in
the other, and let truth and justice, in heaven above and on earth
below, and liberty and patriotism, decide the preponderance.

What patriotic purpose is to be accomplished by the Expunging
resolution? Is it to appease the wrath and to heal the wounded pride
of the Chief Magistrate? If he be really the hero that his friends
represent him, he must despise all mean condescension, all grovelling
sycophancy, all self-degradation and se