Besides, what is all this to the present purpose?  It has nothing to do with the public lands, in regard to which the attack was begun; and it has nothing to do with those sentiments and opinions which, I have thought, tend to disunion and all of which the honorable member seems to have adopted himself, and undertaken to defend.  New England has, at times, so argues the gentleman, held opinions as dangerous as those which he now holds.  Suppose this were so; why should he therefore abuse New England?  If he finds himself countenanced by acts of hers, how is it that, while he relies on these acts, he covers, or seeks to cover, their authors with reproach?  But, Sir, if, in the course of forty years, there have been undue effervescences of party in New England, has the same thing happened nowhere else?  Party animosity and party outrage, not in New England, but elsewhere, denounced President Washington, not only as a Federalist, but as a Tory, a British agent, a man who, in his high office, sanctioned corruption.  But does the honorable member suppose, if I had a tender here who should put such an effusion of wickedness and folly into my hand, that I would stand up and read it against the South?  Parties ran into great heats again in 1799 and 1800.  What was said, Sir, or rather what was not said, in those years, against John Adams, one of the committee that drafted the Declaration of Independence, and its admitted ablest defender on the floor of Congress?  If the gentleman wishes to increase his stores of party abuse and frothy violence, if he has a determined proclivity to such pursuits, there are treasures of that sort south of the Potomac, much to his taste, yet untouched.  I shall not touch them.

The parties which divided the country at the commencement of the late war were violent.  But then there was violence on both sides, and violence in every State.  Minorities and majorities were equally violent.  There was no more violence against the war in New England, than in other States; nor any more appearance of violence, except that, owing to a dense population, greater facility of assembling, and more presses, there may have been more in quantity spoken and printed there than in some other places.  In the article of sermons, too, New England is somewhat more abundant than South Carolina; and for that reason the chance of finding here and there an exceptionable one may be greater.  I hope, too, there are more good ones.  Opposition may have been more formidable in New England, as it embraced a larger portion of the whole population; but it was no more unrestrained in principle, or violent in manner.  The minorities dealt quite as harshly with their own State governments as the majorities dealt with the administration here.  There were presses on both sides, popular meetings on both sides, ay, and pulpits on both sides also.  The gentleman’s purveyors have only catered for him among the productions of one side.  I certainly shall not supply the deficiency by furnishing samples of the other.  I leave to him, and to them, the whole concern.