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principles of representative government, which requires obedience to the
known will of the people, but also in conformity to the principles upon
which the proceeding against President Jackson was conducted when the
sentence against him was adopted. Then everything was done with especial
reference to the will of the people. Their impulsion was assumed to be
the sole motive to action; and to them the ultimate verdict was
expressly referred. The whole machinery of alarm and pressure--every
engine of political and moneyed power--was put in motion, and worked for
many months, to excite the people against the President; and to stir up
meetings, memorials, petitions, travelling committees, and distress
deputations against him; and each symptom of popular discontent was
hailed as an evidence of public will, and quoted here as proof that the
people demanded the condemnation of the President. Not only legislative
assemblies, and memorials from large assemblies, were then produced here
as evidence of public opinion, but the petitions of boys under age, the
remonstrances of a few signers, and the results of the most
inconsiderable elections were ostentatiously paraded and magnified, as
the evidence of the sovereign will of our constituents. Thus, sir, the
public voice was everything, while that voice, partially obtained
through political and pecuniary machinations, was adverse to the
President. Then the popular will was the shrine at which all worshipped.
Now, when that will is regularly, soberly, repeatedly, and almost
universally expressed through the ballot-boxes, at the various
elections, and turns out to be in favor of the President, certainly no
one can disregard it, nor otherwise look at it than as the solemn
verdict of the competent and ultimate tribunal upon an issue fairly made
up, fully argued, and duly submitted for decision. As such verdict, I
receive it. As the deliberate verdict of the sovereign people, I bow to
it. I am content. I do not mean to reopen the case nor to re-commence
the argument. I leave that work to others, if any others choose to
perform it. For myself, I am content; and, dispensing with further
argument, I shall call for judgment, and ask to have execution done,
upon that unhappy journal, which the verdict of millions of freemen
finds guilty of bearing on its face an untrue, illegal, and
unconstitutional sentence of condemnation against the approved President
of the Republic.

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