On yet another point, I was still more unaccountably misunderstood.  The gentlemen had harangued against “consolidation.”  I told him, in reply, that there was one kind of consolidation to which I was attached, and that was the consolidation of our Union; that this was precisely that consolidation to which I feared others were not attached, and that such consolidation was the very end of the Constitution, the leading object, as they had informed us themselves, which its framers had kept in view.  I turned to their communication, and read their very words, “the consolidation of the Union,” and expressed my devotion to this sort of consolidation.  I said, in terms, that I wished not in the slightest degree to augment the powers of this government; that my object was to preserve, not to enlarge; and that by consolidating the Union I understood no more than the strengthening of the Union, and perpetuating it.  Having been thus explicit, having thus read from the printed book the precise words which I adopted, as expressing my own sentiments, it passes comprehension how any man could understand me as contending for an extension of the powers of the government, or for consolidation in that odious sense in which it means an accumulation, in the Federal Government, of the powers properly belonging to the States.

I repeat, sir, that, in adopting the sentiments of the framers of the Constitution, I read their language audibly, and word for word; and I pointed out the distinction, just as fully as I have now done, between the consolidation of the Union and that other obnoxious consolidation which I disclaim.  And yet the honorable member misunderstood me.  The gentleman had said that he wished for no fixed revenue,—­not a shilling.  If by a word he could convert the Capitol into gold, he would not do it.  Why all this fear of revenue?  Why, sir, because, as the gentleman told us, it tends to consolidation.  Now this can mean neither more nor less than that a common revenue is a common interest, and that all common interests tend to preserve the union of the States.  I confess I like that tendency; if the gentleman dislikes it, he is right in deprecating a shilling of fixed revenue.  So much, sir, for consolidation. * * *

Professing to be provoked by what he chose to consider a charge made by me against South Carolina, the honorable member, Mr. President, has taken up a crusade against New England.  Leaving altogether the subject of the public lands, in which his success, perhaps, had been neither distinguished nor satisfactory, and letting go, also, of the topic of the tariff, he sallied forth in a general assault on the opinions, politics, and parties of New England, as they have been exhibited in the last thirty years.