Thomas Hart Bentons Remarks to the Senate | Page 4

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
recommence 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.
But, while declining to reopen the argument of this question, and
refusing to tread over again the ground already traversed, there is
another and a different task to perform; one which the approaching
termination of President Jackson's administration makes peculiarly
proper at this time, and which it is my privilege, and perhaps my duty,
to execute, as being the suitable conclusion to the arduous contest in
which we have been so long engaged. I allude to the general tenor of
his administration, and to its effect, for good or for evil, upon the
condition of his country. This is the proper time for such a view to be
taken. The political existence of this great man now draws to a close. In
little more than forty days he ceases to be an object of political hope to
any, and should cease to be an object of political hate, or envy, to all.
Whatever of motive the servile and time-serving might have found in
his exalted station for raising the altar of adulation, and burning the
incense of praise before him, that motive can no longer exist. The
dispenser of the patronage of an empire, the chief of this great

confederacy of States, is soon to be a private individual, stripped of all
power to reward, or to punish. His own thoughts, as he has shown us in
the concluding paragraph of that message which is to be the last of its
kind that we shall ever receive from him, are directed to that beloved
retirement from which he was drawn by the voice of millions of
freemen, and to which he now looks for that interval of repose which
age and infirmities require. Under these circumstances, he ceases to be
a subject for the ebullition of the passions, and passes into a character
for the contemplation of history. Historically, then, shall I view him;
and limiting this view to his civil administration, I demand, where is
there a Chief Magistrate of whom so much evil has been predicted, and
from whom so much good has come? Never has any man entered upon
the Chief Magistracy of a country under such appalling predictions of
ruin and woe! never has any one been so pursued with direful
prognostications! never has any one been so beset and impeded by a
powerful combination of political and moneyed confederates! never has
any one in any country where the administration of justice has risen
above the knife or the bowstring, been so lawlessly and shamelessly
tried and condemned by rivals and enemies, without hearing, without
defence, without the forms of law and justice! History has been
ransacked to find examples of tyrants sufficiently odious to illustrate
him by comparison. Language has been tortured to find epithets
sufficiently strong to paint him in description. Imagination has been
exhausted in her efforts to deck him with revolting and inhuman
attributes. Tyrant, despot, usurper; destroyer of the liberties of his
country; rash, ignorant, imbecile; endangering the public peace with all
foreign nations; destroying domestic prosperity at home; ruining all
industry, all commerce, all manufactures; annihilating confidence
between man and man; delivering up the streets of populous cities to
grass and weeds, and the wharves of commercial towns to the
encumbrance of decaying vessels; depriving labor of all reward;
depriving industry of all employment;