ne,--I can tell the
honorable member, once for all, that he is greatly mistaken, and that he
is dealing with one of whose temper and character he has yet much to
learn. Sir, I shall not allow myself, on this occasion, I hope on no
occasion, to be betrayed into any loss of temper; but if provoked, as I
trust I never shall be, into crimination and recrimination, the
honorable member may perhaps find, that, in that contest, there will be
blows to take as well as blows to give; that others can state
comparisons as significant, at least, as his own, and that his impunity
may possibly demand of him whatever powers of taunt and sarcasm he may
possess. I commend him to a prudent husbandry of his resources.

But, Sir, the Coalition! The Coalition! Ay, "the murdered Coalition!"
The gentleman asks, if I were led or frighted into this debate by the
spectre of the Coalition. "Was it the ghost of the murdered Coalition,"
he exclaims, "which haunted the member from Massachusetts; and which,
like the ghost of Banquo, would never down?" "The murdered Coalition!"
Sir, this charge of a coalition, in reference to the late
administration, is not original with the honorable member. It did not
spring up in the Senate. Whether as a fact, as an argument, or as an
embellishment, it is all borrowed. He adopts it, indeed, from a very low
origin, and a still lower present condition. It is one of the thousand
calumnies with which the press teemed, during an excited political
canvass. It was a charge, of which there was not only no proof or
probability, but which was in itself wholly impossible to be true. No
man of common information ever believed a syllable of it. Yet it was of
that class of falsehoods, which, by continued repetition, through all
the organs of detraction and abuse, are capable of misleading those who
are already far misled, and of further fanning passion already kindling
into flame. Doubtless it served in its day, and in greater or less
degree, the end designed by it. Having done that, it has sunk into the
general mass of stale and loathed calumnies. It is the very cast-off
slough of a polluted and shameless press. Incapable of further mischief,
it lies in the sewer, lifeless and despised. It is not now, Sir, in the
power of the honorable member to give it dignity or decency, by
attempting to elevate it, and to introduce it into the Senate. He cannot
change it from what it is, an object of general disgust and scorn. On
the contrary