The appeal for action in this paragraph is vehement. It takes every form of violent desire which is known to the art of entreaty. Supplication, solicitation, remonstrance, importunity, prayer, menace! until rising to the dignity of a debt due from a moneyed metropolis to an expectant community, he demanded payment as matter of right! and enforced the demand as an obligation of necessity, as well as of duty, and from which such a community could not escape, if it would. The nature of the action which was so vehemently desired, could not be mistaken. I hold it a fair interpretation of this appeal that it was an exhortation to the business population of the commercial metropolis of the Union to take the initiative in suspending specie payments, and a justificatory manifesto for doing so; and that the speech itself was the first step in the grand performance: and so it seemed to be understood. It was received with unbounded applause, lauded to the skies, cheered to the echo, carefully and elaborately prepared for publication,--published and republished in newspaper and pamphlet form; and universally circulated. This was in the first month of Mr. Van Buren's presidency, and it will be seen what the second one brought forth. The specie circular--that treasury order of President Jackson, which saved the public lands from being converted into broken bank paper--was the subject of repeated denunciatory reference--very erroneous, as the event has proved, in its estimate of the measure; but quite correct in its history, and amusing in its reference to some of the friends of the administration who undertook to act a part for and against the rescission of the order at the same time. "Mr. Webster then came to the treasury circular, and related the history of the late legislation upon it. 'A member of Congress,' said he, 'prepared this very treasury order in 1836, but the only vote he got for it was his own--he stood 'solitary' and 'alone' (a laugh); and yet eleven days after Congress had adjourned--only six months after the President in his annual message had congratulated the people upon the prosperous sales of the public lands,--this order came out in known and direct opposition to the wishes of nine-tenths of the members of Congress.'"