the challenge of debate at no man’s feet.  But then, Sir, since the honorable member has put the question in a manner that calls for an answer, I will give him an answer; and I tell him, that, holding myself to be the humblest of the members here, I yet know nothing in the arm of his friend from Missouri, either alone or when aided by the arm of his friend from South Carolina, that need deter even me from espousing whatever opinions I may choose to espouse, from debating whenever I may choose to debate, or from speaking whatever I may see fit to say, on the floor of the Senate.  Sir, when uttered as matter of commendation or compliment, I should dissent from nothing which the honorable member might say of his friend.  Still less do I put forth any pretensions of my own.  But when put to me as matter of taunt, I throw it back, and say to the gentleman, that he could possibly say nothing less likely than such a comparison to wound my pride of personal character.  The anger of its tone rescued the remark from intentional irony, which otherwise, probably, would have been its general acceptation.  But, Sir, if it be imagined that by this mutual quotation and commendation; if it be supposed that, by casting the characters of the drama assigning to each his part, to one the attack, to another the cry of onset; or if it be thought that, by a loud and empty vaunt of anticipated victory, any laurels are to be won here; if it be imagined, especially, that any or all these things will shake any purpose of mine,—­I can tell the honorable member, once for all, that he is greatly mistaken, and that he is dealing with one of whose temper and character he has yet much to learn.  Sir, I shall not allow myself, on this occasion, I hope on no occasion, to be betrayed into any loss of temper; but if provoked, as I trust I never shall be, into crimination and recrimination, the honorable member may perhaps find, that, in that contest, there will be blows to take as well as blows to give; that others can state comparisons as significant, at least, as his own, and that his impunity may possibly demand of him whatever powers of taunt and sarcasm he may possess.  I commend him to a prudent husbandry of his resources.

But, Sir, the Coalition!  The Coalition!  Ay, “the murdered Coalition!” The gentleman asks, if I were led or frighted into this debate by the spectre of the Coalition.  “Was it the ghost of the murdered Coalition,” he exclaims, “which haunted the member from Massachusetts; and which, like the ghost of Banquo, would never down?” “The murdered Coalition!” Sir, this charge of a coalition, in reference to the late administration, is not original with the honorable member.  It did not spring up in the Senate.  Whether as a fact, as an argument, or as an embellishment, it is all borrowed.  He adopts it, indeed, from a very low origin, and a still lower present condition.  It is one of the thousand calumnies with which the press teemed, during an excited political canvass.