Gentlemen, it is not without embarrassment that I address you. Yet I might plead a high example for my course, if I were worthy, in any respect, to mention myself in connection with my venerated predecessor, who has made the past history of his country so luminous with his wisdom and purity, and the name of this district which he represented so honored and memorable. Would to God I could carry you to some Pisgah height, and show you, under one view, the past, the present, and the future, as he was wont to do, when, as was his custom, he used to address you on those great topics which employed his energies,--on the principles by which you ought to be guided, and on the dangers to which you were exposed. We have fallen, gentleman, on momentous times. Great events have occurred, in rapid succession, both in this and in the other hemisphere. There seems to have been a grand upheaving of the elements of society from its deep foundations. We have been so often astonished and amazed, by shock after shock, and convulsion after convulsion, that I fear we are beginning to lose our moral sensibility to political catastrophes, however grand or fatal they may be. You know there is a spot near the Mississippi River famous for the frequency of its earthquakes. A gentleman who visited there some years ago, told me that soon after entering a hotel, at a place called New Madrid, his attention was suddenly arrested by the rattling of the crockery, the jarring of the household furniture, and the shaking of the chair in which he sat. Starting up in trepidation, he sprang for the door. “O,” said his landlord, “don’t be alarmed. _It is nothing but an earthquake._” These phenomena, it seems, had become so common as to have lost their power of exciting alarm. So, I fear, it is in regard to the late commotions in Europe; and especially in regard to some of the marvellous doings of Congress in our own country. From their astounding character, and their rapid succession, I fear we are becoming insensible to their importance, like the inhabitants who dwell at the base of Mount Etna, whom neither the rumbling of the mountain, nor the lava rivers which pour down its side, can awake from their stupor, until, like Pompeii or Herculaneum, they are buried in the ruins. In the old world, things seem already to be settling back into their former condition, and hopes are darkening into fears. In this country, I still trust that we shall redeem something of the past, and secure the future. Yet the events of the last few months are of a disheartening character, if any thing could ever dishearten a true lover of his country. It has been my fortune and duty to be in the midst of these events. I have watched the tide of battle with sleepless eye; and when Liberty at last was stricken down, my heart bled with hers.