impossible. The people of the whole Union would now have been in
the condition of the people of Pennsylvania, bestrode by the monster,
in daily conflict with him, and maintaining a doubtful contest for
supremacy between the government of a State and the directory of a
moneyed corporation....

Sir, I think it right, in approaching the termination of this great
question, to present this faint and rapid sketch of the brilliant,
beneficent, and glorious administration of President Jackson. It is not
for me to attempt to do it justice; it is not for ordinary men to attempt
its history. His military life, resplendent with dazzling events, will
demand the pen of a nervous writer; his civil administration, replete
with scenes which have called into action so many and such various
passions of the human heart, and which has given to native sagacity
so many victories over practiced politicians, will require the profound,
luminous, and philosophical conceptions of a Livy, a Plutarch, or a
Sallust. This history is not to be written in our day. The
contemporaries of such events are not the hands to describe them.
Time must first do its office--must silence the passions, remove the
actors, develop consequences, and canonize all that is sacred to honor,
patriotism, and glory. In after ages the historic genius of our America
shall produce the writers which the subject demands--men far removed
from the contests of this day, who will know how to estimate this great
epoch, and how to acquire an immortality for their own names by
painting, with a master's hand, the immortal events of the patriot
President's life.

And now, sir, I finish the task which, three years ago, I imposed on
myself. Solitary and alone, and amid the jeers and taunts of my
opponents, I put this ball in motion. The people have taken it up, and