is also adduced as a precedent. I will not take up the time of this committee in showing the total want of resemblance in the two cases. The whole organization of the courts was changed, and not the slightest inclination manifested to wage a personal war against the judges. The effect of such a warfare must always be disastrous, and if the doctrines so earnestly advocated on the other side should finally prevail, then indeed as has been said, we shall find ourselves far at sea, without a chart and without a compass-every wave will carry us further from safety and every breeze of popular commotion, will but hasten our destruction. Your judges, standing solitary and unsupported, are obliged to be overpowered-they have been so in this present controversy. The cry of their destruction has gone forth, and to escape their pursuers they have fled to the constitutionyes, they have fled to that as the city of refuge, and are now standing and holding to the horns of the altar. I implore gentlemen not to pursue them further, nor pollute the sanctuary by staining it with their blood. But, sir, I believe that I am imploring in vain; I believe that a majority of this house is determined to accomplish this work of destruction. They have seized, like the strong man of old, on the pillars of the constitution, and are determined to pull it down on our heads. If it must be so, I will not fly for safety, but call on every friend to the constitution and an independent judiciary, to stand by each other to the last, and let us be buried in its ruins.

ADDRESS,

Delivered at Pulaski, by A. V. Brown, to his constituents on his return from the called session of the Legislature of 1832.

GENTLEMEN AND FELLOW CITIZENS: I am induced to address you on the present occasion, in order to respond to the frequent enquiries made as to what course I shall probably pursue in the next elections. On my return from the Legislature, I disovered that so many of my political friends were expecting me to offer for another station, that I came to the determination not to be again a candidate for the General Assembly. Having communicated this fact to a few individuals, I wish now to make a public declaration of it, in order that all who desire to become candidates, may have early and fair notice.

In taking leave of you as your representative, I beg leave to trespass awhile on your patience, in reviewing some of the most prominent subjects connected with my late service. It is most common for public men to address you on subjects that lie in prospective-aspiring to win your favor, they attempt to lift the curtain of futurity, and to please your imaginations with the brightest visions which genius and fancy in their highest revelry can possibly create. I have no such splendid prospects, however, to lay before you--my business now is with the past -not the future; to lay before your understandings, not your passions, a true and just account of all my conduct as your public agent. I am the more ready to render that account, from a deep and thorough conviction, that during no period of my public life have I better sustained your interest and maintained your rights, than during the two last sessions of the General Assembly.

The public acts of the regular session have now been for more than twelve months before the public mind, and as far as I have been able to learn, have given general satisfaction.With but few if any exceptions they have been found to be based on equal and impartial justice, calculated neither to pamper the rich nor to oppress the poor-intended for the benefit of all, they confer no party or sectional advantages, but look forward to the general welfare of the whole State. As to the special laws of that session, in which the county of Giles was interested, we presume none can be dissatisfied. At the commencement of that session, the county had not a single dollar in the way of public funds, except what was raised by ordinary taxation; at its close, your representatives had obtained for her between 12 and $15,000. All remember the dissatisfaction that then prevailed about our Agency Bank. Your representatives prevailed on the Legislature to cut off the greater part of it from the mother Bank, and to make a donation of it to the county of Giles. Its superintendence was given to all the Justices of the county, whilst its direct management was given to Mr. Abernathy, an agent, in whose integrity and capacity for such business, I know you have unbounded confidence. Beside this, your representatives obtained for you nearly $3000 for the important purpose of improving your navigable waters. Both of these sums, making in all about 12 to $15,000, they procured for you at one session. They made it absolutely yours, putting it beyond all future chances of being taken from you. When, let me ask, since 1809, when this county was first organized, did you ever receive such a donation as this? Never. And I will venture the assertion, that when the little prejudices and the passions of the present times shall have passed away, and public men shall be judged by what they do, by what they accomplish for you, and not by the dictates of party animosity, this one donation alone will hail that session as one of the most liberal and useful to the county which was ever holden.

With this slight reference to the regular session, I will now pass to the more recent and important events of the called session. The uninformed have sometimes complained that this session should not have been convened at all. They impute it to some neglect or oversight of the members of the Legislature.

To these, it is proper to say, that such a session was unavoidable, and that no talents, however lofty, and no industry, however assiduous, could have rendered it unnecessary. The Constitution of the United States requires a new census and a new apportionment of representatives every ten years. This law of Congress, passed in April, or May, 1832; whereas the Legislalature of this State, having gotten through with all its business, had adjourned about the middle of December, 1831.

Were we to have continued in session, with nothing to do all that time, waiting for Congress to pass that law? or were we to be gifted with the spirit of prophecy, and thereby know beforehand how many new representatives we would be entitled to, and to lay off the districts accordingly? Alas! your representatives, like their constituents, are but poor prophets, and can find themselves full of employment in comprehending the past and providing for the present, without pretending to lay claim to a prescience of the future!

That law of Congress gave to Tennessee four additional members of that body, and of course four more electors of President and Vice President. In these alarming times, when Congress was engaged on the great questions of the Bank, of Internal Improvement, the Tariff, etc., were you willing to do without your full weight in the national councils? Again, were you willing in the Presidential election, whilst General Jackson was struggling in his election against Henry Clay, the antiMasons, the United States Bank, and the old Federal party in the bargain, to take away from him four votes in Tennessee, to which he was entitled? No, gentlemen--the Governor knew his own duty and your wishes too well not to convene the Legislature on such an important occasion. If he had not done so, he would have been denounced from one end of the State to the other; and you yourselves would have been amongst the loudest in his malediction. Liberty is better than money, and the expense of a called session ought not to weigh as the dust in the balance, when compared with the permanence and safety of our republican institutions.

In his message, the Governor called our attention to the laying off of Congressional districts, according to the new apportionment of Congress. This has always been found a

troublesome and perplexiug business. I was in the Legislature ten years ago, when the present system was formed; I then witnessed the difficulty of making any arrangement which would give universal satisfaction, and at the same session took an early opportunity to explain to the committee, most of whom had no experience on such subjects, the main source whence dissatisfaction then arose, and implored them, as far as practicable, to avoid such difficulties. I was opposed to long districts, because they were sure to create a struggle amongst the counties for the centre-each anxious to get a favorable position for itself, would exert every effort to avoid being placed at either end of the district. Laying down this principle, I insisted, wherever it was practicable, to lay off the districts in a triangle, rather than an oblong. In that form, no county would be in the centre, and therefore none would have a right to complain. Applying these rules to this quarter of the State, I was willing to place Bedford, Warren and Franklin, in one district; Lincoln, Giles and Maury, in another; and then to give three districts to the west, beginning on Lawrence, etc., west. Contrary, however, to this wish, the committee reported our district in its present form, I voting against it on account of its being longitudinal instead of triangular.

In the House, whilst the bill was on its passage, I was still anxious for Lincoln, Giles and Maury to compose the district rather than the present, because I knew I.incoln would be dissatisfied at running so far to the west, whilst the small counties would be dissatisfied at being connected with the large ones above. Whilst, however, I was exerting myself to bring about a district composed of Lincoln, Giles and Maury, the former made an effort to place herself in the centre, by taking Franklin on the east, and Giles on the west. This proposition was directly at war with the interest of both Franklin and Giles, because it placed them, though much the smallest counties, on the outer skirts of the district, whilst it placed Lincoln between seven hundred or one thousand votes stronger than either exactly in the centre. I regretted this proposition very much, because it compelled me to give up the idea of Lincoln, Giles and Maury, which I thought would give the least dissatisfaction, and in self-defence, to contend for the centre for my own