"Whenever the system shall be firmly established that the States are to enter into a miserable scramble for the most money for their local appropriations, and that senator is to be regarded the ablest representative of his State who can get for it the largest slice of the treasury, from that day public honor and property are gone, and all the States are disgraced and degraded." February 27, 1857.
He is always preaching against the heinous abuse of diverting government from impartially guarding the whole community and making it profit only a few. His text is never far-fetched. He finds it in the proposed legislation of the day, which it is his duty to consider in his place. He cares not that he makes no present effect. Just before Bell's bill for improving the Cumberland river was passed, he said of it and its companions: "These bills are passing _sub silentio_, and I suppose attempt to resist is wholly useless. I wish it understood that I do not assent to their passage. I am opposed to all of them." February 24, 1855.
He sees that the appropriations for harbors and rivers, lighthouses, private claims, pensions, etc., are almost as baneful as was the distribution of corn to the Roman populace, and yet the people everywhere are eager for the corrupting gifts. Against his party, against many of his section, he fights alone and single-handed, reminding of Horatius keeping the bridge against the Etruscan host. Though always outvoted, he behaves with spirit and dignity. Either he, or some one of the faithful few who act with him in the slim minority, always have the yeas and nays recorded. His grand purpose was to appeal to the American people upon an issue involving the article of his creed which he had held up with so much puissance and fidelity in days of evil report. These words contain the motto of the long contest which occupied all of his non-sectional career in the senate:
"I think every one of these bills should be considered. I do not wish to have them considered in such a manner as improperly to occupy the time of the senate. I desire to spread before the country reasonable information. That is the only purpose we can have now; because the combination is sufficient to carry everything that the committee report. But there is a day of reckoning to come; and I trust that those who support this system will be called to judgment."