All laws calculated to affect a whole nation should never be changed for slight causes, nor changed without giving the people, and the whole people, time to duly reflect upon such changes, in all their bearings on the whole people. Such are our ideas of that republican form of government, which was erected by our fathers, to promote the happiness of the people, aye, of the whole people. Keeping this great object in view, the laws should be plain, simple and few, and be changed as seldom as possible, otherwise no man in any business can make any safe calculations as to the course he should pursue--what plans he should form, or how he can execute them. There is an union of interests, not always duly considered. The farmer, the mechanic, the manufacturer, the merchant and the mariner have precisely the same interests in the prosperity of all the great interests of all our people. Destroy or greatly injure any one class of people, and the whole body politic feels the wound and suffers by the injury. One class may feel it first, but in the end, all feel it. On all great national questions of policy, time, reflection, prudence and caution seem to be required by the dictates of patriotism and true wisdom. And our legislators, and indeed all our wise men, should always remember, and be sure never to forget, that we Americans are a very exciteable people, more so, much more so, than many nations are in the north of Europe. Our southern people may be the soonest moved by any sudden impulse, but get our northern people once fairly started, and they move like a tornado. Knowing ourselves, and how exciteable we are, let us endeavor to keep cool, on all the political questions, which agitate the public mind, from time to time. Our republican institutions have been dearly bought--with the blood of our ancestors, freely shed, in the battle fields of glorious memory, and on the mountain waves, where our sailors fought, bled, died and conquered in the cause, the holy cause of liberty.--When the liberties of this country go down to their graves, have we not reason to fear that free government all over the world, will be overwhelmed in one universal ruin? May my eyes be closed in death before that day arrives. Having decided that the tariff case shall be put down to the foot of our docket, on the principle of want of more time for national reflection, it follows as a matter of course, almost, that we ought to put the Oregon question at the foot of our docket also, and continue it for a trial at the next term of our high court of judicature. Whether the Texas case shall be disposed of in the same manner, we will not decide, until we have ascended to our seat on the bench, and there patiently heard the arguments of counsel learned in the law, on the motion for a continuance of the cause until the next session of this honorable court.