my opinion, the very time and occasion where a Senator _should not resign_, are where his place is wanted for such a purpose. It is then peculiarly his duty to keep his post, because it is always his paramount duty, _as a Senator of the United States_, to protect the Constitution of the United States. May he put it at the mercy of a State Legislature, issuing, from year to year, or from month to month, its contradictory orders, as party or caprice may prevail? What is the Constitution, under such a dictation, but a fabric built upon the sand; a rag floating in the wind? It has neither permanency nor strength. It is to be lamented that good and talented men, sometimes unadvisedly and without looking far enough to consequences, entangle themselves in theories, which afterwards embarrass and constrain them, in the sound and practical exercise of their understanding, and compel them to participate in acts condemned, at once, by their judgment and conscience. In such cases it is more honest, more safe and noble, to shake off the webs which their own ingenuity has wound around them, and give a free use and exercise to their better knowledge and true convictions. There is a sensible maxim in common life which is equally wise in public affairs—that “the shortest follies are the best.” Mr. Tyler tells the Legislature that he would have complied with their wishes, if they had put them in another _form_; indeed it is only a change of form—he would have voted, at their bidding, to _rescind or repeal_ the offensive resolution of the Senate. Why would he do so, unless he thought it ought to be rescinded or repealed? If he did not think so, he was as much bound by a conscientious performance of his duty to vote against the repeal as the expunging. If the latter be a stronger case, the principle is the same. But will he say, that in the one case he is called upon to violate the Constitution, in the other only to give up an _opinion_ upon the conduct of the President? This is altogether an illusion; there is in truth no difference in the cases. In the one case he was of opinion that the President had transcended his constitutional powers; he is of the same opinion still, but his Legislature do not think so, and he yields his opinion to theirs, or rather he votes against his own opinion to give effect to theirs. In the other case he holds the _opinion_ that to expunge a part of the records of the Senate is a violation of the Constitution, but his Legislature are of opinion that it is not so; it is a question of opinion between them, and nothing more. Why, then, should he not give up this opinion to their power or their judgment, as well as the other? Why must he not on this question surrender his judgment and conscience, and become the “mere automaton” of the majority of the members of the Virginia Assembly? He casts off and treads upon the robes of a _Senator of the United States_, to bind himself in a