Professing to be provoked by what he chose to consider a charge made by me against South Carolina, the honorable member, Mr. President, has taken up a new crusade against New England.  Leaving altogether the subject of the public lands, in which his success, perhaps, had been neither distinguished nor satisfactory, and letting go, also, of the topic of the tariff, he sallied forth in a general assault on the opinions, politics, and parties of New England, as they have been exhibited in the last thirty years.  This is natural.  The “narrow policy” of the public lands had proved a legal settlement in South Carolina, and was not to be removed.  The “accursed policy” of the tariff, also, had established the fact of its birth and parentage in the same State.  No wonder, therefore, the gentleman wished to carry the war, as he expressed it, into the enemy’s country.  Prudently willing to quit these subjects, he was, doubtless, desirous of fastening on others, which could not be transferred south of Mason and Dixon’s line.  The politics of New England became his theme; and it was in this part of his speech, I think, that he menaced me with such sore discomfiture.  Discomfiture!  Why, Sir, when he attacks any thing which I maintain, and overthrows it, when he turns the right or left of any position which I take up, when he drives me from any ground I choose to occupy, he may then talk of discomfiture, but not till that distant day.  What has he done?  Has he maintained his own charges?  Has he proved what he alleged?  Has he sustained himself in his attack on the government, and on the history of the North, in the matter of the public lands?  Has he disproved a fact, refuted a proposition, weakened an argument, maintained by me?  Has he come within beat of drum of any position of mine?  O, no; but he has “carried the war into the enemy’s country”!  Carried the war into the enemy’s country!  Yes, Sir, and what sort of a war has he made of it?  Why, Sir, he has stretched a drag-net over the whole surface of perished pamphlets, indiscreet sermons, frothy paragraphs, and fuming popular addresses,—­over whatever the pulpit in its moments of alarm, the press in its heats, and parties in their extravagance, have severally thrown off in times of general excitement and violence.  He has thus swept together a mass of such things as, but that they are now old and cold, the public health would have required him rather to leave in their state of dispersion.  For a good long hour or two, we had the unbroken pleasure of listening to the honorable member, while he recited with his usual grace and spirit, and with evident high gusto, speeches, pamphlets, addresses, and all the et caeteras of the political press, such as warm heads produce in warm times; and such as it would be “discomfiture” indeed for any one, whose taste did not delight in that sort of reading, to be obliged to peruse.  This is his war.  This it is to carry war into the enemy’s country.  It is in an invasion of this sort, that he flatters himself with the expectation of gaining laurels fit to adorn a Senator’s brow!