opponents in state and federal politics, but ever abounding in that magnanimity which flourishes most in the finest minds, always spoke of the argument of Mr. Tazewell in reply to Gen. Smythe as extraordinary—­as surpassing any that he ever heard in a deliberative assembly.  He told me so in conversation, and he afterwards spoke of it in the same exalted strain in the House of Delegates and in the Convention of 1829.  The result of the Convention discussion was, that, though a bill calling a Convention passed the House by a small majority, it was lost in the Senate; and a compromise was effected between the East and the West by reorganizing the basis of representation in the Senate on white population according to the census of 1810.  In this as on most other occasions the testimony magnifying the speeches of Tazewell come from a hostile quarter.

His election to the Senate of the United States in 1824 was one of the severest trials of his life.  Having withdrawn alike from the inferior and appellate courts, he anxiously desired to spend the reminder of his days in the bosom of his family, and to mingle no more in public affairs.  To undertake any special service in behalf of his country was always a grateful employment; but to leave his home for months, and to be engaged in the monotonous routine of deliberative bodies, was most distasteful to him; but, true to the great maxim of his life—­never to seek or to decline a public trust—­he accepted the appointment; and took his seat in the early part of January, 1825.  A casual view of his career in that body, which extended from 1825 to 1833—­a period of nearly eight years—­during which he held, at least in the estimation of Virginia, if not of the whole Union, the foremost place, would alone occupy the brief hour allotted me on the present occasion.  The exciting questions of that exciting period would pass in review; and the ashes are too thinly spread over the smouldered fires of those days yet to be trodden with safety, and certainly not with pleasure by some of those who hear me, and who heartily joined in decreeing a tribute to the memory of Mr. Tazewell.  I will merely allude to two or three speeches and writings, which the student of history may consult as specimens of parliamentary ability, and as eminently displaying the caste of Mr. Tazewell’s intellectual character as well as his views on political subjects.

His debut in the Senate was made on the bankrupt bill of that session—­not a regular speech, but a searching examination of the details of the bill, which he exposed with such effect that its friends substantially gave it up in despair.  His first serious speech was delivered on the 21st day of the same month in which he had taken his seat, on his own motion to strike out the third section of the bill for the suppression of piracy in the West India seas, which had been reported from the Committee of Foreign Affairs, and had been introduced by a forcible speech