Among the Republican speakers was J. C. Calhoun, who had lately taken his seat as a member for South Carolina. Of all the new men, Calhoun was the youngest. He had not yet reached his thirtieth birthday, and his experience in life was slight even for his years; but his speech of December 12 much excelled that of Grundy in merit, showing more clearness of statement, and fairly meeting each successive point that had been made by Randolph. Little could be added to what Calhoun said, and no objection could be justly made against it, except that as an expression of principles it had no place in the past history of the Republican party. “Sir,” exclaimed Calhoun, “I know of but one principle to make a nation great, to produce in this country not the form but the real spirit of union; and that is to protect every citizen in the lawful pursuit of his business.... Protection and patriotism are reciprocal. This is the road that all great nations have trod.” Of the tenets held by the Virginia school, none had been more often or more earnestly taught than that the United States ought not to be made a great nation by pursuing the road that all great nations had trod. Had Calhoun held such language in 1798, he would have been branded as a monocrat by Jefferson, and would not long have represented a Republican district; but so great was the revolution in 1811 that Calhoun, thinking little of his party and much of the nation, hardly condescended to treat with decent respect the “calculating avarice” which, though he alluded to its authors only in vague words, had been the pride of his party. “It is only fit for shops and counting-houses,” he said, “and ought not to disgrace the seat of sovereignty by its squalid and vile appearance. Whenever it touches sovereign power, the nation is ruined. It is too shortsighted to defend itself. It is an unpromising spirit, always ready to yield a part to save the balance. It is too timid to have in itself the laws of self-preservation. It is never safe but under the shield of honor.” Not without reason did Stanford of North Carolina retort that he very well recollected to have heard precisely the same doctrines in a strain of declamation at least equally handsome, upon the same subject, and from the same State; but the time was in 1799, and the speaker was the Federalist leader of the House,--Robert Goodloe Harper.