The conduct of Mr. Tazewell on this occasion I leave to history. It was my misfortune to differ from him, and to strive against him in public meetings, by resolutions, by speeches, and by essays in the public prints, and to have been on the side of the victorious party; and I owe it to candor to say that, after a deliberate investigation of the arguments and the circumstances of that time with such faculties as God has bestowed upon me, my views through the twenty-seven years that have since passed remain unaltered; but now that my illustrious friend is gone, and as I measure that chasm which his death has made in the Commonwealth, leaving none equal to him or like him behind, and especially in my own bosom--a chasm which, at my time of life, can never, never be closed--I have looked with fear and trembling over all I said and wrote on that occasion, and I am gratified to find that, although I spoke with as great freedom of men and things as the occasion, in my opinion, demanded, I spoke personally of Mr. Tazewell as a son should speak of a father, and with that exalted respect with which I ever regarded his colossal character. Still, if Mr. Tazewell had been a man of narrow mind, our friendship would have ended, and the instruction and delight which I have derived from his conversation for the last twenty-seven years--a period in which I have doubled my own age--would have been lost. But, independent himself, and the proudest man I ever knew when the faintest shadow of vassalage was sought to be cast upon him, he valued independence in others, and his wide experience taught him that the friend who would not hesitate to stand up firmly against him when he thought him wrong, would be the last to skulk from his side in the hour of danger, and from the defence of his memory when his head was low.