Wheelocks, your Belknaps, your Buckminsters, your Abbots? How, especially, can I forget him, whose decease not yet a twelvemonth ago filled the whole land with sorrow, while, in the sublime language of your fellow-citizen, the President of the United States, "the great heart of the nation beat heavily at the portals of his tomb." He was the offspring of your soil, he and his fathers. His infancy was cradled in the hardships of your frontier settlements; he was taught and trained in your schools, your academy, and your college. You sent him forth in the panoply of his youthful strength to the service of his country, and after the labors and the conflicts of life you rose up as one man to welcome him, when but two years ago, on this anniversary, he came back, melting with tenderness and veneration, to revisit his native State.

Mr. Everett concluded with a renewal of his acknowledg ments to the company.

VICE-PRESIDENT KING.*

MR. PRESIDENT:

I HAVE been requested to second the motion which has just been made by the senator from Virginia. I do so with great cheerfulness. It was my good fortune to enjoy the acquaintance of the late Vice-President, I hope, even some portion of his friendly regard, for a longer period, probably, than most of those within the sound of my voice, a period of nearly thirty years. I feel as if I ought not to remain silent at this last moment, when our relations to him as members of this Senate are, by the performance of this day's melancholy duty, to be closed for ever.

There is an ancient maxim, sir, founded at once in justice and right feeling, which bids us "say nothing but what is good of the dead." I can obey this rule, in reference to the late Vice-President, without violating the most scrupulous dictates of sincerity. I can say nothing but what is good of him, for I have never seen or heard any thing but good of him for thirty years that I have known him personally and by reputation.

It would hardly be expected of me, to attempt to detail the incidents of the private life or the public career of the late Vice-President. That duty belongs to others, by whom it has been, or will no doubt be, appropriately performed. I regret, particularly, on this occasion, the unavoidable absence of our colleagues from Alabama. It is the province of those

* Remarks in the Senate of the United States on the 8th of December, 1853, on seconding a motion of Mr. Hunter, one of the Senators from Virginia, in honor of the late Vice-President King.

of us, not connected with him by political associations, especially of those inhabiting remote parts of our common country, to express their cordial concurrence in the affectionate praises, pronounced by his fellow-citizens and neighbors.

Few of the public men of the day had been so intimately associated with the Senate as the late Vice-President. I think he had been a member of the body for more years than any person now belonging to it. Besides this, a relation of a different kind had grown up between him and the Senate. The federal constitution devolves upon the people, through the medium of the electoral colleges, the choice of the presiding officer of this body. But whenever the Senate was called to supply the place temporarily, for a long course of years, and till he ceased to belong to it, it turned spontaneously to him.

He undoubtedly owed this honor to distinguished qualifications for the chair. He possessed, in an eminent degree, that quickness of perception, that promptness of decision, that familiarity with the now somewhat complicated rules of congressional proceedings, and that urbanity of manner, which are required in a presiding officer. Not claiming, although an acute and forcible debater, to rank with his illus trious contemporaries, whom now, alas! we can mention only to deplore, with Calhoun, with Clay, and with Webster, (I name them alphabetically, and who will presume to arrange them on any other principle,) whose unmatched eloquence so often shook the walls of this Senate, the late Vice-President possessed the rare and the highly important talent of controlling, with impartiality, the storm of debate, and moderating between mighty spirits, whose ardent conflicts at times seemed to threaten the stability of the republic.

In fact, sir, he was highly endowed with what Cicero beautifully commends as the boni Senatoris prudentia, the "wisdom of a good Senator;" and in his accurate study and ready application of the rules of parliamentary law, he rendered a service to the country, not perhaps of the most brilliant kind, but assuredly of no secondary importance. There is nothing which more distinguishes the great national race

to which we belong, than its aptitude for government by deliberative assemblies; its willingness, while it asserts the largest liberty of parliamentary right, to respect what the senator from Virginia (Mr. Hunter) in another connection has called the self-imposed restrictions of parliamentary order; and I do not think it an exaggeration to say, that there is no trait in its character which has proved more conducive to the despatch of the public business, to the freedom of debate, to the honor of the country, I will say, even which has done more to establish and perpetuate constitutional liberty.

The long and faithful senatorial career of the late VicePresident received at last its appropriate reward. The people of the United States, having often witnessed the disposition of the Senate to place him at their head, and the dignified and acceptable manner in which he bore himself in that capacity, conferred upon him, a twelvemonth since, that office, which is shown by repeated and recent experience to be above the second, if not actually the first, in their gift; the office which placed him constitutionally and permanently, during its continuance, in the chair of the Senate.

A mysterious dispensation of Providence has nipped these crowning honors in the bud. A disease, for which the perpetual summer and perfumed breezes of the tropics afforded no balm, overtook him at an age when he might, in the course of nature, have reasonably looked forward to still many years of active service. Clothed by a special and remarkable act of Congress, even while under a foreign jurisdiction, with the last constitutional qualification to enter upon the high office to which he had been elected, he returned, not to exercise its functions, but to seek his muchloved home, and there to die.

Thus, sir, he has left us to chase for a little while longer the shadows which he has exchanged for unutterable realities. He has left us prematurely for every thing but his spotless name, and his entrance on the well-earned honors of his unambitious career. And we, senators, for all the interchange of kindness, for all the cordial intercourse of private life, for

all the acts of coöperation in the public service, to which, for at least four years, the Senate was looking forward in its connection with him, have nothing left to offer to his friends and his memory, but the unavailing tribute of this last mournful farewell.

Mr. President, I second the resolutions of the Senator from Virginia.