While I leave the wisdom of his course in relation to the deposit question and in the executive chair of the commonwealth to the award of history, I recall one lesson which may be read from his acts, which is, that he never was, strictly speaking, a party man; that while he held to his dying day the theory of our federal system which he had adopted in his youth, and in defence of which he prepared, as has just been said, in his old age, with his vast stores of learning and experience unrolled before him, the most elaborate and conclusive exposition which that system ever received; his course on the restrictive policy and on the removal of the deposits, irrespective as it was whether he carried along with him one or a thousand of his associates, shows that on great questions involving mere expediency he would burst the trammels of party, and act with his old and inveterate opponents against the darling measures of his political friends. I have said that he was not, and could not well be, in a series of years, the unvarying adjunct of any party. He looked upon a subject through so many lights,--the lights of the past, the lights of the present, the lights of the future; he saw such a tissue of good and evil so inextricably intermingled in human projects; he saw so much that was questionable in the best party measures; so much that was not bad in what seemed the worst; and so much that could be accomplished by doing nothing, that, though he was prompt above most men in decision, and to the last degree practical, his enthusiasm was cooled by philosophy, and he was never very much exalted or depressed by the success or failure of political schemes.