_"Say, has our Capital no Tarpeian height
From which to hurl the traitor?"_
These lines were written in the excitement which prevailed during the
session of the last Congress, when the Nullifiers were fulminating
their doctrines of disunion and prophesying the downfall of the
Republic, when he, who has not yet lost all his original brightness,
was acting a part which Milton has described.
This may account for what now may be deemed harshness.