Early in March, Polk submitted his report justifying every step of the Administration, and including the sensational resolution providing for an investigation of the Bank at Philadelphia. Binney submitted a minority report favoring the restoration of the deposits, and the debate took a fresh start. The outstanding speech of this phase of the debate was that of Rufus Choate, described by Adams, on the evening of its delivery, as “the most eloquent speech of the session, and, in a course of reasoning, altogether impressive and original.”[745] Still young, and his public career but brief, his great intellectual labors had already undermined his health, and even thus early in life he presented to the House when he arose the “cadaverous look” which confronts us to-day in the portraits of his later life.[746] With all the consummate skill which so distinguished his advocacy in the courts, he sought to divert the discussion from the channels it had followed. “As to the Bank itself,” he said, “I shall go throughout on the supposition that it will not be rechartered. I call on gentlemen to look upon the proposition to restore the deposits merely as a temporary measure of relief.” The crying need of the immediate hour was the use of the public money, and this could be had in a beneficial way at the time only through the Bank of the United States. Like Binney, he won the respect of Administration forces, and the succeeding speaker, hostile to the restoration, found the views expressed “new and interesting, and delivered in a tone and spirit becoming the representatives of a free people.”[747] But the debate dragged on without any high lights until in early April, when McDuffie returned to the attack, still in a superheated condition, and seeing swords and daggers gleaming in the air. Never in all history, he thought, had “the progress of the usurpation of the Executive been more rapid, more bold, or more successful than in the United States in the last fifteen months.” As he sat down, the previous question was moved, and with the appointment of tellers there fell a deep silence with the contending forces “glowering upon each other.”[748] The roll was called--and victory fell to the Jacksonians with an overwhelming majority.