remission.  He may even obtain an indulgence, if he be desirous of repeating the same transgression.  It is an affair of no difficulty to get into this same right line of patriotic descent.  A man now-a-days is at liberty to choose his political parentage.  He may elect his own father.  Federalist or not, he may, if he choose, claim to belong to the favored stock, and his claim will be allowed.  He may carry back his pretensions just as far as the honorable gentleman himself; nay, he may make himself out the honorable gentleman’s cousin, and prove, satisfactorily, that he is descended from the same political great-grandfather.  All this is allowable.  We all know a process, Sir, by which the whole Essex Junto could, in one hour, be all washed white from their ancient Federalism, and come out, every one of them, original Democrats, dyed in the wool!  Some of them have actually undergone the operation, and they say it is quite easy.  The only inconvenience it occasions, as they tell us, is a slight tendency of the blood to the face, a soft suffusion, which, however, is very transient, since nothing is said by those whom they join calculated to deepen the red on the cheek, but a prudent silence is observed in regard to all the past.  Indeed, Sir, some smiles of approbation have been bestowed, and some crumbs of comfort have fallen, not a thousand miles from the door of the Hartford Convention itself.  And if the author of the Ordinance of 1787 possessed the other requisite qualifications, there is no knowing, notwithstanding his Federalism, to what heights of favor he might not yet attain.

Mr. President, in carrying his warfare, such as it is, into New England, the honorable gentleman all along professes to be acting on the defensive.  He chooses to consider me as having assailed South Carolina, and insists that he comes forth only as her champion, and in her defence.  Sir, I do not admit that I made any attack whatever on South Carolina.  Nothing like it.  The honorable member, in his first speech, expressed opinions, in regard to revenue and some other topics, which I heard both with pain and with surprise.  I told the gentleman I was aware that such sentiments were entertained out of the government, but had not expected to find them advanced in it; that I knew there were persons in the South who speak of our Union with indifference or doubt, taking pains to magnify its evils, and to say nothing of its benefits; that the honorable member himself, I was sure, could never be one of these; and I regretted the expression of such opinions as he had avowed, because I thought their obvious tendency was to encourage feelings of disrespect to the Union, and to impair its strength.  This, Sir, is the sum and substance of all I said on the subject.  And this constitutes the attack which called on the chivalry of the gentleman, in his own opinion, to harry us with such a foray among the party pamphlets and party proceedings of Massachusetts!  If he