It so happened, Gentlemen, that my preference was for another place,—­for that which I have now the honor to fill.  I felt all its responsibilities; but I must say, that, with whatever attention I had considered the general questions of finance, I felt more competent and willing to undertake the duties of an office which did not involve the daily drudgery of the treasury.

I was not disappointed, Gentlemen, in the exigency which then existed in our foreign relations.  I was not unaware of all the difficulties which hung over us; for although the whole of the danger was not at that moment developed, the cause of it was known, and it seemed as if an outbreak was inevitable.  I allude now to that occurrence on the frontier of which the chairman has already spoken, which took place in the winter of 1841 the case of Alexander McLeod.

A year or two before, the Canadian government had seen fit to authorize a military incursion, for a particular purpose, within the territory of the United States.  That purpose was to destroy a steamboat, charged with being employed for hostile purposes against its forces and the peaceable subjects of the crown.  The act was avowed by the British government at home as a public act.  Alexander McLeod, a person who individually could claim no regard or sympathy, happened to be one of the agents who, in a military character, performed the act of their sovereign.  Coming into the United States some years after, he was arrested under a charge of homicide committed in this act, and was held to trial as for a private felony.

According to my apprehensions, a proceeding of this kind was directly adverse to the well-settled doctrines of the public law.  It could not but be received with lively indignation, not only by the British government, but among the people of England.  It would be so received among us.  If a citizen of the United States should as a military man receive an order of his government and obey it, (and he must either obey it or be hanged,) and should afterwards, in the territory of another power, which by that act he had offended, be tried for a violation of its law, as for a crime, and threatened with individual punishment, there is not a man in the United States who would not cry out for redress and for vengeance.  Any elevated government, in a case like this, where one of its citizens, in the performance of his duty, incurs such menaces and danger, assumes the responsibility; any elevated government says, “The act was mine,—­I am the man";—­“Adsum qui feci, in me convertite ferrum.”

Now, Gentlemen, information of the action of the British government on this subject was transmitted to us at Washington within a few days after the installation of General Harrison.  I did not think that it was proper to make public then, nor is it important to say now, all that we knew on the subject; but I will tell you, in general terms, that if all that was known at Washington then had been divulged throughout the