When we look at the votes, we must suppose that every man in Virginia voted the same way.  These votes are received as a correct expression of the public will.  And yet we know that if the votes of that State were apportioned according to the several voices of the people, that at least seven out of twenty-one would have been opposed to the successful candidate.  It was the suppression of the will of one-third of Virginia, which enables gentlemen now to say that the present chief magistrate is the man of the people.  I consider that as the public will, which is expressed by constitutional organs.  To that will I bow and submit.  The public will, thus manifested, gave to the House of Representatives the choice of the two men for President.  Neither of them was the man whom I wished to make President; but my election was confined by the constitution to one of the two, and I gave my vote to the one whom I thought was the greater and better man.  That vote I repeated, and in that vote I should have persisted, had I not been driven from it by imperious necessity.  The prospect ceased of the vote being effectual, and the alternative only remained of taking one man for President, or having no President at all.  I chose, as I then thought, the lesser evil.

From the scene in this House, the gentleman carried us to one in the Senate.  I should blush, sir, for the honor of the country, could I suppose that the law, designed to be repealed, owed its support in that body to the motives which have been indicated.  The charge designed to be conveyed, not only deeply implicates the integrity of individuals of the Senate, but of the person who was then the chief magistrate.  The gentleman, going beyond all precedent, has mentioned the names of members of that body, to whom commissions issued for offices not created by the bill before them, but which that bill, by the promotions it afforded, was likely to render vacant.  He has considered the scandal of the transaction as aggravated by the issuing of commissions for offices not actually vacant, upon the bare presumption that they would become vacant by the incumbents accepting commissions for higher offices which were issued in their favor.  The gentleman has particularly dwelt upon the indecent appearance of the business, from two commissions being held by different persons at the same time for the same office.

I beg that it will be understood that I mean to give no opinion as to the regularity of granting a commission for a judicial office, upon the probability of a vacancy before it is actually vacant; but I shall be allowed to say that so much doubt attends the point, that an innocent mistake might be made on the subject.  I believe, sir, it has been the practice to consider the acceptance of an office as relating to the date of the commission.  The officer is allowed his salary from that date, upon the principle that the commission is a grant of the office, and the title