by him.  If he and I now were to find ourselves together under the Free Soil flag, I am sure that, with his accustomed good nature, he would laugh.  If nobody were present, we should both laugh at the strange occurrences and stranger jumbles of political life that should have brought us to sit down cosily and snugly, side by side, on the same platform.  That the leader of the Free Spoil party should so suddenly have become the leader of the Free Soil party would be a joke to shake his sides and mine.

Gentlemen, my first acquaintance in public life with Mr. Van Buren was when he was pressing with great power the election of Mr. Crawford to the Presidency, against Mr. Adams.  Mr. Crawford was not elected, and Mr. Adams was.  Mr. Van Buren was in the Senate nearly the whole of that administration; and during the remainder of it he was Governor of the State of New York.  It is notorious that he was the soul and centre, throughout the whole of Mr. Adams’s term, of the opposition made to him.  He did more to prevent Mr. Adams’s re-election in 1828, and to obtain General Jackson’s election, than any other man,—­yes, than any ten other men in the country.

General Jackson was chosen, and Mr. Van Buren was appointed his Secretary of State.  It so happened that in July, 1829, Mr. McLane went to England to arrange the controverted, difficult, and disputed point on the subject of the colonial trade.  Mr. Adams had held a high tone on that subject.  He had demanded, on the ground of reciprocity and right, the introduction of our products into all parts of the British territory, freely, in our own vessels, since Great Britain was allowed to bring her produce into the United States upon the same terms.  Mr. Adams placed this demand upon the ground of reciprocity and justice.  Great Britain would not yield.  Mr. Van Buren, in his instructions to Mr. McLane, told him to yield that question of right, and to solicit the free admission of American produce into the British colonies, on the ground of privilege and favor; intimating that there had been a change of parties, and that this favor ought not to be refused to General Jackson’s administration because it had been demanded on the ground of right by Mr. Adams’s.  This is the sum and substance of the instruction.

Well, Gentlemen, it was one of the most painful duties of my life, on account of this, to refuse my assent to Mr. Van Buren’s nomination.  It was novel in our history, when an administration changes, for the new administration to seek to obtain privileges from a foreign power on the assertion that they have abandoned the ground of their predecessors.  I suppose that such a course is held to be altogether undignified by all public men.  When I went into the Department of State under General Harrison, I found in the conduct of my predecessor many things that I could have wished had been otherwise.  Did I retract a jot or tittle of what Mr. Forsyth had said?  I took the case as he had left it, and conducted it upon the principles which he left.  I should have considered that I disgraced myself if I had said, “Pray, my Lord Ashburton, we are more rational persons than our predecessors, we are more considerate than they, and intend to adopt an entirely opposite policy.  Consider, my dear Lord, how much more friendly, reasonable, and amiable we are than our predecessors.”