electors were chosen, and at that the people, by an overwhelming majority, had decided against general Jackson. I could not see how such an expression against him, could be interpreted into that of a desire for his election. If, as is true, the candidate whom they preferred was not returned to the house, it is equally true that the state of the contest, as it presented itself here to me, had never been considered, discussed, and decided by the people of Kentucky, in their collective capacity. What would have been their decision on this new state of the question, I might have undertaken to conjecture, but the certainty of any conclusion of fact, as to their opinion, at which I could arrive, was by no means equal to that certainty of conviction of my duty to which I was carried by the exertion of my best and most deliberate reflections. The letters from home, which some of the delegation received, expressed the most opposite opinions, and there were not wanting instances of letters from some of the very members who had voted for that resolution, advising a different course. I received from a highly respectable portion of my constituents a paper, instructing me as follows:

We, the undersigned voters in the congressional district, having viewed the instruction or request of the legislature of Kentucky, on the subject of choosing a president and vice-president of the United States, with regret, and the said request or instruction to our representative in congress from this district being without our knowledge or consent, we, for many reasons known to ourselves, connected with so momentous an occasion, hereby instruct our representative in congress to vote on this occasion agreeably to his own judgment, and the best lights he may have on the subject, with or without the consent of the legislature of Kentucky.'

This instruction came both unexpectedly and unsolicited by me, and it was accompanied by letters assuring me that it expressed the opinion of a majority of my constituents. I could not, therefore, regard the resolution as conclusive evidence of your wishes.

Viewed as a mere request, as it purported to be, the general assembly doubtless had the power to make it. But, then, with deference, I think it was worthy of serious consideration, whether the dignity of the general assembly ought not to have induced it to forbear addressing itself, not to another legislative body, but to a small part of it, and requesting the members who composed that part, in a case which the constitution had confided to them, to vote according to the wishes of the general assembly, whether those wishes did or did not conform to their sense of duty. I could not regard the resolution as an instruction; for, from the origin of our state, its legislature has never assumed or exercised the right to instruct the representatives in congress. I did not recognise the right, therefore, of the legislature, to instruct me. I recognised that right only when exerted by you. That the portion of the public servants who made up the general assembly, have no right to instruct that portion of them who constituted the Kentucky delega

tion in the house of representatives, is a proposition too clear to be argued. The members of the general assembly would have been the first to behold as a presumptuous interposition, any instruction, if the Kentucky delegation could have committed the absurdity to issue, from this place, any instruction to them to vote in a particular manner on any of the interesting subjects which lately engaged their attention at Frankfort. And although nothing is further from my intention than to impute either absurdity or presumption to the general assembly, in the adoption of the resolution referred to, I must say, that the difference between an instruction emanating from them to the delegation, and from the delegation to them, is not in principle, but is to be found only in the degree of superior importance which belongs to the general assembly.

Entertaining these views of the election on which it was made my duty to vote, I felt myself bound, in the exercise of my best judgment, to prefer Mr. Adams; and I accordingly voted for him. I should have been highly gratified if it had not been my duty to vote on the occasion; but that was not my situation, and I did not choose to shrink from any responsibility which appertained to your representative. Shortly after the election, it was rumored that Mr. Kremer was preparing a publication, and the preparations for it which were making excited much expectation. Accordingly, on the twenty-sixth of February, the address, under his name, to the 'electors of the ninth congressional district of the state of Pennsylvania,' made its appearance in the Washington City Gazette. No member of the house, I am persuaded, believed that Mr. Kremer ever wrote one paragraph of that address, or of the plea, which was presented to the committee, to the jurisdiction of the house. Those who counselled him, and composed both papers, and their purposes, were just as well known as the author of any report from a committee to the house. The first observation which is called for by the address is the place of its publication. That place was in this city, remote from the centre of Pennsylvania, near which Mr. Kremer's district is situated, and in a paper having but a very limited, if any circulation in it. The time is also remarkable. The fact that the president intended to nominate me to the senate for the office which I now hold, in the course of a few days, was then well known, and the publication of the address was, no doubt, made less with an intention to communicate information to the electors of the ninth congressional district of Pennsylvania, than to affect the decision of the senate on the intended nomination. the character and contents of that address of Messrs. George Kremer & Co., made up, as it is, of assertion without proof, of inferences without premises, and of careless, jocose, and quizzing conversations of some of my friends, to which I was no party, and of which I had never heard, it is not my intention to say much. It carried its own refutation, and the parties concerned saw its abortive

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nature the next day, in the indignant countenance of every unprejudiced and honorable member. In his card, Mr. Kremer had been made to say, that he held himself ready to prove, to the satisfaction of unprejudiced minds, enough to satisfy them of the accuracy of the statements which are contained in that letter, to the extent that they concerned the course of conduct of H. Clay. The object for excluding my friends from this pledge has been noticed. But now the election was decided, and there no longer existed a motive for discrimination between them and me. Hence the only statements that are made, in the address, having the semblance of proof, relate rather to them than to me; and the design was, by establishing something like facts upon them, to make those facts react upon me.

Of the few topics of the address upon which I shall remark, the first is, the accusation brought forward against me, of violating instructions. If the accusation were true, who was the party offended, and to whom I was amenable? If I violated any instructions, they must have been yours, since you only had the right to give them, and to you alone was I responsible. Without allowing hardly time for you to hear of my vote, without waiting to know what your judgment was of my conduct, George Kremer & Co. chose to arraign me before the American public as the violater of instructions which I was bound to obey. If, instead of being, as you are, and I hope always will be, vigilant observers of the conduct of your public agents, jealous of your rights, and competent to protect and defend them, you had been ignorant and culpably confiding, the gratuitous interposition, as your advocate, of the honorable George Kremer, of the ninth congressional district in Pennsylvania, would have merited your most grateful acknowledg ments. Even upon that supposition, his arraignment of me would have required for its support one small circumstance, which happens not to exist, and that is, the fact of your having actually instructed me to vote according to his pleasure.

The relations in which I stood to Mr. Adams constitute the next theme of the address, which I shall notice. I am described as having assumed a position of peculiar and decided hostility to the election of Mr. Adains,' and expressions towards him are attributed to me, which I never used. I am also made responsible for 'pamphlets and essays of great ability,' published by my friends in Kentucky in the course of the canvass. The injustice of the principle of holding me thus answerable, may be tested by applying it to the case of general Jackson, in reference to publications issued, for example, from the Columbia Observer. That I was not in favor of the election of Mr. Adams, when the contest was before the people, is most certain. Neither was I in favor of that of Mr. Crawford or general Jackson. That I ever did any thing against Mr. Adams, or either of the other gentlemen, inconsistent

with a fair and honorable competition, I utterly deny. My relations to Mr. Adams have been the subject of much misconception, if not misrepresentation. I have been stated to be under a public pledge to expose some nefarious conduct of that gentleman, during the negotiation at Ghent, which would prove him to be entirely unworthy of public confidence; and that, with the knowledge of his perfidy, I nevertheless voted for him. If these imputations are well founded, I should, indeed, be a fit object of public censure; but if, on the contrary, it shall be found that others, inimical both to him and to me, have substituted their own interested wishes for my public promises, I trust that the indignation, which they would excite, will be turned from me. My letter, addressed to the editors of the Intelligencer, under date of the fifteenth of November, 1822, is made the occasion for ascribing to me the promise and the pledge to make those treasonable disclosures on Mr. Adams. Let that letter speak for itself, and it will be seen how little justice there is for such an assertion. It adverts to the controversy which had arisen between Messrs. Adams and Russell, and then proceeds to state that, 'in the course of several publications, of which it has been the occasion, and particularly in the appendix to a pamphlet, which had been recently published by the honorable John Quincy Adams, I think there are some errors, no doubt unintentional, both as to matters of fact and matters of opinion, in regard to the transactions at Ghent, relating to the navigation of the Mississippi, and certain liberties claimed by the United States in the fisheries, and to the part which I bore in those transactions. These important interests are now well secured.' An account, therefore, of what occurred in the negotiation at Ghent, on those two subjects, is not, perhaps, necessary to the present or future security of any of the rights of the nation, and is only interesting as appertaining to its past history. With these impressions, and being extremely unwilling to present myself, at any time, before the public, I had almost resolved to remain silent, and thus expose myself to the inference of an acquiescence in the correctness of all the statements made by both my colleagues; but I have, on more reflection, thought it may be expected of me, and be considered as a duty on my part, to contribute all in my power towards a full and faithful understanding of the transactions referred to. Under this conviction, I will, at some future period, more propitious than the present to calm and dispassionate consideration, and when there can be no misinterpretation of motives, lay before the public a narrative of those transactions, as I understood them.'

From even a careless perusal of that letter, it is apparent, that the only two subjects of the negotiations at Ghent, to which it refers, were the navigation of the Mississippi, and certain fishing liberties; that the errors which I had supposed were committed, applied to both Mr. Russell and Mr. Adams, though more particu

larly to the appendix of the latter; that they were unintentional; that they affected myself principally; that I deemed them of no public importance, as connected with the then, or future security of any of the rights of the nation, but only interesting to its past history; that I doubted the necessity of my offering to the public any account of those transactions; and that the narrative which I promised was to be presented at a season of more calm, and when there could be no misinterpretation of motives. Although Mr. Adams believes otherwise, I yet think there are some unintentional errors in the controversial papers between him and Mr. Russell But I have reserved to myself an exclusive right of judging when I shall execute the promise which I have made, and I shall be neither quickened nor retarded in its performance by the friendly anxieties of any of my opponents.

If injury accrue to any one by the delay in publishing the narrative, the public will not suffer by it. It is already known by the publication of the British and American projets, the protocols, and the correspondence between the respective plenipotentiaries, that the British government made at Ghent a demand of the navigation of the Mississippi, by an article in their projet nearly in the same words as those which were employed in the treaty of 1783; that a majority of the American commissioners was in favor of acceding to that demand, upon the condition that the British government would concede to us the same fishing liberties within their jurisdiction, as were secured to us by the same treaty of 1783; and that both demands were finally abandoned. The fact of these mutual propositions was communicated by me to the American public in a speech which I delivered in the house of representatives, on the twenty-ninth day of January, 1816. Mr. Hopkinson had arraigned the terms of the treaty of peace, and charged upon the war and the administration the loss of the fishing liberties, within the British jurisdiction, which we enjoyed prior to the war. In vindicating, in my reply to him, the course of the government, and the conditions of the peace, I stated:

'When the British commissioners demanded, in their projet, a renewal to Great Britain of the right to the navigation of the Mississippi, secured by the treaty of 1783, a bare majority of the American commissioners offered to renew it, upon the condition that the liberties in question were renewed to us. I was not one of that majority. I will not trouble the committee with my reasons for being opposed to the offer. A majority of my colleagues, actuated, I believe, by the best motives, made, however, the offer, and it was refused by the British commissioners.'

And what I thought of my colleagues of the majority, appears from the same extract. The spring after the termination of the negotiations at Ghent, I went to London, and entered upon a new and highly important negotiation with two of them, (Messrs. Adams and Gallatin,) which resulted, on the third day of July, 1815, in the commercial convention, which has been since made