“Past experience has shown,” he cried, “that this is one of those subjects which pollution has sanctified.” He treated the majority of the House as corruptionists, “As if animated by one spirit, they perform all their evolutions with the most exact discipline, and march in a firm phalanx directly up to their object. Is it that men combined to effect some evil purpose, acting on previous pledge to each other, are ever more in unison than those who, seeking only to discover truth, obey the impulse of that conscience which God has placed in their bosoms?” He fell upon Granger: “Millions of acres are easily digested by such stomachs. Goaded by avarice, they buy only to sell, and sell only to buy. The retail trade of fraud and imposture yields too small and slow a profit to gratify their cupidity. They buy and sell corruption in the gross.” He hinted that the Administration was to blame: “Is it come to this? Are heads of executive departments to be brought into this House, with all the influence and patronage attached to them, to extort from us now what was refused at the last session of Congress?” He closed by asserting that this was the spirit of Federalism, and that Republicans who yielded to it were false to their party: “Of what consequence is it that a man smiles in your face, holds out his hand, and declare himself the advocate of those political principles to which you are also attached, when you see him acting with your adversaries upon other principles which the voice of the nation has put down, and which I did hope were buried, never to rise again in this section of the globe?” He maintained that the Federalist administrations had done no act so corrupt: “If Congress shall determine to sanction this fraud upon the public, I trust in God we shall hear no more of the crimes and follies of the former Administration. For one, I promise that my lips upon this subject shall be closed in eternal silence. I should disdain to prate about the petty larcenies of our predecessors after having given my sanction to this atrocious public robbery.”