George Julian: “This policy was thoroughly and perseveringly tried, and proved utterly unprofitable and ruinous.”

The system of public plunder inaugurated by Jackson was in full blast, and an organized effort to reform it was the real need of the hour; but here was the weak point of the Whigs.

Its prizes are often rich and suddenly gained, and when they are sought through the forms of a law which compels a man to choose between an expensive and hazardous litigation and robbery, human nature is severely tried.

No situation could well be more deplorable than that which obliges a man to pay heavy black- mail as the only means of saving his property from legal confiscation by another; and the moral ravages of a code which allows this can not be…

It may thus happen that a system of laws initiated by itinerant miners solely for the protection of their transient posessory interests, and carried through Congress at their behest by parliamentary roguery, may be permanently engrafted…