ocean to the Missouri:  Will you continue the war for territory, to be purchased, after all, at an enormous price, a price a thousand times the value of all its purchases, or take peace, contenting yourselves with the honor we have reaped by the military achievements of the army?  Will you take peace without territory, and preserve the integrity of the Constitution of the country?  I am entirely willing to stand upon that question.  I will therefore take the issue:  Peace, with no new States, keeping our own money ourselves, or war till new States shall be acquired, and vast sums paid. That is the true issue.  I am willing to leave that before the people and to the people, because it is a question for themselves.  If they support me and think with me, very well.  If otherwise, if they will have territory and add new States to the Union, let them do so; and let them be the artificers of their own fortune, for good or for evil.

But, Sir, we tremble before executive power.  The truth cannot be concealed.  We tremble before executive power!  Mr. Polk will take no less than this.  If we do not take this, the king’s anger may kindle, and he will give us what is worse.

But now, Sir, who and what is Mr. Polk?  I speak of him with no manner of disrespect.  I mean, thereby, only to ask who and what is the President of the United States for the current moment.  He is in the last year of his administration.  Formally, officially, it can only be drawn out till the fourth of March, while really and substantially we know that two short months will, or may, produce events that will render the duration of that official term of very little importance.  We are on the eve of a Presidential election.  That machinery which is employed to collect public opinion or party opinion will be put in operation two months hence.  We shall see its result.  It may be that the present incumbent of the Presidential office will be again presented to his party friends and admirers for their suffrages for the next Presidential term.  I do not say how probable or improbable this is.  Perhaps it is not entirely probable.  Suppose this not to be the result, what then?  Why, then Mr. Polk becomes as absolutely insignificant as any respectable man among the public men of the United States.  Honored in private life, valued for his private character, respectable, never eminent, in public life, he will, from the moment a new star arises, have just as little influence as you or I; and, so far as I am concerned, that certainly is little enough.

Sir, political partisans, and aspirants, and office-seekers, are not sunflowers.  They do not

                “turn to their god when he sets
    The same look which they turned when he rose.”