| 546 as fit subjects for the kingdom of fallen greatness; vox reprobi, vox diaboli! In your late addresses to the people of South Carolina, where rebellion budded but could not blossom, you "renounced ultraism," "high tariff," and almost banished your "banking system," for the more certain standard of "public opinion." This is all very well, and marks the intention of a politician, the calculations of a demagogue, and the allowance for leeings of a shrewd manager, just as truly as the weather cock does the wind when it turns upon the spire. Hustings for the south, barbacues [barbecues] for the west, confidential letters for the north, and "American system" for the east:
"Lull-a-by baby upon the tree top,
And when the wind blows the cradle will rock."
Suppose you should also, taking your "whole life, character and conduct," into consideration, and as many hands make light work, stir up the old 'Clay party," the "National Republican party," "High Protective Tariff party," and the late coon skin party, with all their parapheralia [paraphernalia], ultraism, ne plus ultraism,-sine qua non, which have grown with your growth, strengthened with your strength, and shrunk with your shrinkage, and ask the people of this enlightened Republic, what they think of your powers and policy as a statesman; for verily it would seem, from all past remains of parties, politics, projects and pictures, that you are the Clay, and the people the potter; and as some vessels are marred in the hands of the potter, the natural conclusion is, that you are a vessel of dishonor.
You may complain that a close examination of your "whole life, character and conduct," places you as a Kentuckian would pleasantly term it, "in a bad fix," but, Sir, when the nation has sunk deeper in the mud, at every turn of the great wheels of the union, while you have acted as one of the principle drivers, it becomes the bounden duty of the whole community, as one man, to whisper you on every point of government, to uncover every act of your, life, and enquire [inquire] what mighty acts you have done to benefit the nation; how much you have tithed the mint to gratify your lust; and why the fragments of your raiment hang upon the thorns by the path, as signals to beware!
But your shrinkage is truly wonderful! Not only your banking system, and high tariff project, have vanished from your mind "like the baseless fabric of a vision,' but the 'annexation of Texas' has touched your pathetic sensibilities of national pride so acutely, that the poor Texians [Texans], your own brethren, may fall back into the ferocity of Mexico, or be sold at auction to British stock jobbers, and all is well, for "I", the old senator from Kentucky, am fearful it would militate against my interest in the north, to enlarge the borders of the union in the south.-Truly a poor wise child is better than an old foolish king, who will be no longer admonished. Who ever heard of a nation that had too much territory? Was it ever bad policy to make friends? Has any people ever become too good to do good? No never; but the ambition and vanity of some men have flown away with their wisdom and judgment, and left a creaking skeleton to occupy the place of a noble soul.
Why, Sir, the conditions of the whole earth is lamentable. Texas dreads the teeth and toe nails of Mexico. Oregon has the rheumatism, brought on by a horrid exposure to the heat and cold of British and American trappers; Canada has caught a bad cold from extreme fatigue in the patriot war; South America has the headache, caused by bumps against the beams of Catholicity and Spanish sovereignty Spain has the gripes from age and inquisition; France trembles and wastes under the effects of contagious diseases; England groans with the gout, and wiggles with wine; Italy and the German states are pale with the consumption;-Prussia, Poland, and the little contigiuous [contiguous] dynasties, dutchies, and domains, have the mumps so severely, that 'the whole head is sick, and the whole heart is faint;' Russia has the cramp by lineage; Turkey has the numb palsy; Africa, from the curse of God, has lost the use of her limbs; China is ruined by the Queens evil, and the rest of Asia fearfully exposed to the smallpox, the natural way from British pedlars [peddlers]; the islands of the sea are almost dead with the scurvy; the Indians are blind and lame, and the United States, which ought to be the good physician with 'balm from Gilead,' and an 'asylum for the oppressed,' has boosted, and is boosting up into the council chamber of the government, a clique of political gamblers, to play for the old clothes and old shoes of a sick world, and 'no pledge, no promise to any particular portion of the people' that the rightful heirs will ever receive a cent of their Fathers' legacy! Away with such self important, self agrandising [aggrandizing], and self willed demagogues! their friendship is colder than polar ice; and their professions meaner than the damnation of hell.
Oh! man! when such a great dilemma of the globe, such a tremendous convulsion of kingdoms, shakes the earth from center to circumference; when castles, prison houses, and cells, raise a cry to God against the cruelty of man;
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