I came into public life about the period of the election of James Madison as President of the United States.[4] I served as a member of the House of Delegates of Virginia the two sessions of 1808-9, 1809-10. I was a friend to the election of Mr. Madison and a warm and zealous advocate of the measures of his administration. [4] FOOT NOTE.--Mr. Madison was elected President in 1809 and re-elected in 1813. Among the measures to which I gave my hearty support was the establishment of the late Bank of the United States. Since that period I have not mingled in politics. As a citizen, however, I approved generally of the administration of James Monroe, and was opposed to the election of his successor, John Quincy Adams. I advocated the election of Andrew Jackson, and supported most of the measures of his administration during his first term. I also voted reluctantly for his re-election, I disapproved of his veto to the bill to recharter the Bank of the United States, and the _ad captandum_ arguments used by him to justify the measure. I attributed the act then, however, more to the feelings created by the particular time when Congress passed the bill--it being just previous to his second election, than to any settled hostility on his part to a United States Bank. Shortly after his re-election, he commenced a train of measures to which I was utterly opposed; measures of a novel and alarming character, and which in their origin and subsequent developments, brought distress and embarrassment upon the banks, upon the country at large, and especially upon all our great commercial interests. I allude to his wild, violent and undigested schemes of finance--commencing with his pet Bank system and ending with his order in council, the Specie circular. This warfare upon the Bank of the United States, the currency and the commerce of the nation, reduced us in 1837 to the degradation of witnessing a general suspension of specie payments by the banks. These acts connected with the corrupting system of party discipline introduced by that administration with the view of compelling private judgement to succumb to the behests of party, completely separated me from the administration of Andrew Jackson. His successor who pledged himself in advance "to follow in the footsteps of his predecessor," and who has gone a bowshot beyond him in obstinately pressing upon a free and intelligent people; his thrice rejected scheme of a sub-treasury--to him and his measures I have always been strenuously opposed. Upon those subjects which fall more legitimately within the scope of the duties of a Virginia State Senator--in advancing and promoting the great cause of internal improvement, and in the diffusion of light and knowledge among our people, and in the general objects of legislation, my interest is identified with yours.