"violation of the constitution," and insert "not warrant,ed by the constitution."

Mr. BENTON observed that he saw some difference between the words proposed to be inserted and those already in the preamble; however, he was not, he said, at all tenacious on the subject; and he expressed his willingness to accept the amendments.

Mr. EWING then rose and addressed the Senate as follows:

Mr. President: Since the first presentation of this resolution, it has always been my purpose to say something upon it, before it should be brought to a final decision; but I was aware, from indications not to be mistaken, both at the time it was first presented, and at each subsequent session when it was brought forward, that the mover did not design to bring it then to the issue. Indeed, I well knew that it was deemed necessary, as a pending measure, to agitate and excite the country. Every movement with reference to it showed that such was its purpose; and hence, after several months' discussion last year, when there was a clear administration majority in the Senate, and when the long session gave ample time for deliberation and decision, it was permitted to expire on the table, though a vote upon it was challenged by its opponents. But now, now at this moment, its power being expended-every thing being effected by it which can be expected or hoped from itnow it must come, and at once, to a final vote. And gentlemen upon this side of the House, who have been called upon to discuss it-who, because they would not, heretofore, when they saw that it was but a farce, discuss it are denied a single day-nay, they are not allowed one hour, of which it is in the power of a fixed and determined majority to deprive them. No courtesy to individuals, which has been usual with this body, or, rather, a part of its very constitution and nature, can procure the slightest relaxation of the iron role which seems to be laid down for us; the small favor of a day to deliberate or a night to rest is denied; if we ask for an adjournment, even at this late hour, when all occupation should be suspended, and all labor cease, we hear the cry of "No, no," and "the yeas and nays, the yeas and nays," coming from a quarter which, however it may be respected, is never disobeyed. Gentlemen have their reasons, doubtless. I leave them to weigh the importance of those reasons, and to estimate the propriety of their And, subject to all the disadvantages under which I labor-the extreme lateness of the hour, great bodily fatigue, and a want of time to arrange my thoughts and cast them into form, and give them coherence, I proceed, rather than sit by in silence-I proceed to the discussion of this deeply exciting question.

course.

I will not enter again fully into a consideration of the reasons that sustain the resolution of the Senate of the 28th day of March, 1834, which it is now proposed to expunge from the journals of the Senate. At the time when those resolutions were under discussion, I gave reasons, so far as my action was concerned, fully, and in detail. I have re-examined those reasons since, when any excitement to which the occasion may be supposed to have given rise had subsided, and I find nothing to retract, nothing to alter; time has made no change in my convictions, unless it be to strengthen and confirm them. It would, therefore, be unnecessary for me to touch again that branch of the subject, were it not that the arguments upon the other side have, year after year, been reiterated and re-enforced; the subject which had been thus considered, discussed, decided, and laid aside, is thus revived from time to time, and the arguments upon the one side, with a perseverance worthy of a better cause, are again and again shown up before the publir, while those which sustained that resolution, having once been triumphant, are since permitted to sleep. I

[SENATE

feel the impolicy of our course in this, for hence im. pressions have taken root, and opinions have grown up in society, which constant vigilance and constant effort, and constantly uniting at all times, and pressing the contest, would have kept down; but it was a natural course; it arose from the repugnance which we all feel to turn to a subject on which the mind has exerted its powers, and retrace the path which we have already trodden, after it is divested of the charm of novelty and the freshness of original thought. But let gentlemen be assured, once for all, and let the country be assured, that we abandon no ground which we have assumed and heretofore sustained. Yet, though I will not go fully into the subject now, I will attempt a brief analysis of the arguments which, on a former occasion, I presented at large to the Senate.

It is perhaps necessary, in the first place, to say something of the character of the resolution of 1934, and to define as nearly as possible what we understood it to import. Gentlemen say that, in its terms, it conveyed censure of the act of the President, and pains are taken to show that its words imported censure. Now, sir, this argument was wholly unnecessary; this declaration useless; a simple inquiry would have settled the fact; for, so far as I was concerned in this matter, and in this I believe I differed but little from those with whom I acted, I intended no praise-no laudation of the President or his executive act; that was not my object in voting for the resolution. I thought the President, in that act, had broken the laws and violated the constitution of our country; and I intended to say so: I meant to speak the language of an American Senator, and a free American citizen; and the same language which I uttered then I now reiterate, and would on a like occasion again imbody it in the form of a resolution. It has also been said that this resolution attributes evil motives to the President, in the performance of this act; and that the act charged, as against the constitution, joined with the motive imputed, forms the subject of impeachment. This is wholly unfounded in fact. The resolution attributes no motive whatever. It speaks in the decorous, and, at the same time, dignified language in which one of the legislative branches of our Government may properly speak of the Executive, or of the co-ordinate branch. We believed that the legislative rights and powers of the Senate had been encroached upon by the President; and that we, who exercised those powers for the time being, as trustees of the people, were called upon to defend, or at least to assert them. This body could speak in that matter only by resolution; and by that means, and in that way, we did assert its rights under the constitution, and we declared that those rights had been violated; but we charged no motive. Gentlemen insist that there is impeachable matter charged in the face of this resolution; and, when we deny it, because no motive is charged, they turn, and say we have abandoned our ground; that we soften down and palliate, to avoid the effect of our own act. This, also, is putting a false face upon the whole matter. I, for one, personally, never said and never believed that the President was actuated in this matter by those high motives of public interest which ought to govern the Executive of a great nation. I never thought so; I never said so; and I have not wavered in my opinion; but that opinion, which was my own, was never incorporated into the resolution, neither in language nor in substance. Then, let the resolution stand for itself, and speak its own language; and let the opinions of each of those who supported it be their own, be they strong or weak, firm or wavering; but let those private and individual opinions be kept distinct from the resolution, and let us be met in the argument fairly, not misrepresented.

I presume it will be admitted that it is in the power o

Congress and the President, conjointly, by a law, to place the public treasure in such a situation that it will not be in the direct and immediate possession and control of the President. Perhaps I ask too much, by way of concession, considering the temper and character of the present times; but the time has been, and, I trust, will be again, when it would strike any American statesman as a self-evident proposition. The constitution de clares that no money shall be drawn from the public Treasury except upon appropriations made by law; and if the Executive be a unit, as has been sometimes contended; and if the keeping of the treasure be necessarily an executive office; and if the drawing of money from the Treasury be also an executive office, the keeping of the treasure and the drawing from the Treasury be both done by the same band, then have the framers of our constitution failed, miserably failed, in their attempt to adjust its checks and balances-in their attempt to place the sword and the purse of the nation in separate and distinct bands. To say that money shall not be drawn from the Treasury except by appropriations made by. law, and yet place the whole treasure of the nation in the hands of the Executive, who is (according to the political creed of gentlemen) the disbursing officer, also would be an excess of weakness almost approaching to idiocy.

If, then, it were in the power of Congress to place the public treasure out of the immediate control of the President, it was done in the law chartering the late Bank of the United States. The public moneys were placed in deposite in that bank by law; the bank, therefore, be came the Treasury; for that is the Treasury where the public treasure is deposited and kept. The constitution declares that money shall not be drawn from this Treasury except by appropriations made pursuant to law, and the law provides that the deposites (or, in other words, the treasure) shall remain in that bank, unless removed by the Secretary of the Treasury, (not by the President,) and for reasons which he (the Secretary) shall make known to Congress. So stand, or rather so stood, the constitution and the law-as the safeguards of the pub. lic treasure. Could the President touch, could he possess himself of that treasure, without an infraction of the law and a violation of the constitution? Could be, by a straight-forward, direct act, in his own name, and by his own power, unaided by any instrument which he might fashion for himself, or which the constitution had placed in his hands for other purposes? If he could not, is the act the less illegal or unconstitutional when done by indirection? All admit that a direct order from the President would not have touched public funds, and that the immediate keepers of those funds would not have been bound to obey, or even have been justified in obeying, such order. But the law placed in the hands of the President an instrument with which it could be done, and with which it was done; and I shall now show that it was done by putting a lawful instrument to an unlaw ful use.

The constitution places the collection of the revenues of the United States in Congress; and the spirit of that provision, coupled with the other provision which requires a law of Congress to draw money from the Treas ury, clearly fixes the custody of those revenues, when collected, in the same hands; and the several laws passed shortly after the adoption of the constitution, separating our Government into Departments, and appointing their heads, recognise and keep up this principle. In those acts the Department of State is called an "executive De. partment." So with the Department of War; and both communinate directly with the President, and not with Congress; while the Treasury Department is not styled executive, and is made to communicate directly with Congress. Thus is explained the intent of the framers of

[JAN. 16, 1837.

the constitution, and the understanding which a contem poraneous Congress had of its provisions.

But gentlemen here seize upon general terms used in that instrument, and would make them overturn its most particular and express provisions. The Senator from North Carolina [Mr. STRANGE] says that, by the express language of the constitution, "all executive power is vested in the President." The Senator has interpolated a word, and an important one. The constitution does not say "all;" its letter does not, its spirit does not. The language of the constitution is, "the executive pow. er," &c.; but gentlemen, assuming that all executive power is granted, then exercise their ingenuity to find how many of the powers of our Government may be call ed executive; and all that can be included within that sweeping and undefinable term they attribute to the President. But the constitution does not say "all;" and if it did, the term, as it is elsewhere limited, would not justify their conclusions. Another clause in the consti. tution does grant all the legislative powers" to Congress; and yet the same instrument, in another of its articles, confers a large and important portion of those powers upon the President. The judicial power is vested in a Supreme Court of the United States, and such inferior courts as Congress shall from time to time appoint; and yet the same instrument vests in the Senate of the United States an important portion of those judicial powers the trial of impeachments. It vests in the President "the executive power,” and in another article gives to the Senate of the United States a most impor tant share in that executive power. Gentlemen who contend that all power executive in its nature must fol low this general grant, and who go for the exact separation, by distinct lines, of the three great powers--legislative, executive, and judicial--and their investment in three separate, uncontrolled, irresponsible, branches, seem to me, with all deference, to understand little of the nature of government. If those powers were exactly separated, so that each stood entirely unchecked and alone, the executive power, being the stronger--indeed, the only power capable of action--having drawn to it. self, and, according to gentlemen, being entitled to, the custody of the treasure of the nation, would be independ ent of all others, and above them all, and all must be absorbed and swallowed up in its vortex.

I have said that the executive act which the resolution of March, 1834, condemns, was, in the language of that resolution, in derogation of both the constitution and law. This I shall attempt to establish.

It was against law. The act of Congress incorporating the Bank of the United States was a law containing in itself a contract as soon as accepted by the bank, and it was a contract for a good and valuable consideration; this contract was violated in its spirit and intent, (and the gentleman from North Carolina [Mr. STRANGE] will not, I presume, deny that this contract had a spirit as well as letter, if the constitution have none.) It was violated in its spirit, and so violated that, as between individuals in a parallel case, an action of law could have been sustain. ed, and damages recovered. This contract was, that the public money should be deposited in the bank, and should be continued there in deposite, until removed by the Secretary of the Treasury, for reasons which he was required to lay before Congress. For this, among other things, the bank agreed to transmit the public funds, wheresoever wanted, free of charge; and it paid, in cash, a large bonus to the Government. Under this contract, it seems to me perfectly obvious, and even self-evident, that the public deposites could not be removed, unless there were some just financial cause for removal. could not be done to try experiments, nor to test its ef fect upon the public mind, but for some fiscal reason, of which the Secretary of the Treasury had official cogni.

It

zance, and which he, as the fiscal agent, could make known to Congress. The removal, too, must, in order to conform to this law, be an act of the Secretary of the Treasury himself--his own official act--his own reason approving, and his own will moving him to its execution. It must have been, likewise, a Secretary, the regular officer of the Government appointed to perform the general duties of that office, and to whose duties this was but incidental and additional; not an officer appointed for the sole and only purpose of doing this act, and pledged or committed to the act before his appointment. If this were not the case, the reference to the Secretary of the Treasury, and the requirement of his reasons, were but a mockery, a criminal evasion of right and justice, which would stamp fraud upon any private contract. I have thus shown what ought to have been done according to a fair and just construction of this law and contract; I will now show what was in fact done.

Just after the adjournment of Congress, and but a few weeks after an inquiry in the House of Representatives, and a decision that the public deposites were safe in the Bank of the United States, the President set on foot negotiations with the State banks, with a view to the removal of the deposites; this without the consent or concurrence of the then Secretary of the Treasury to the removal, but with his known and avowed opinion against the propriety as well as the legality of the act. I speak now of Secretary McLane, who was consulted by the President, and required to do the decd. He would not lend himself to be the instrument for any such purpose; he refused, and was removed from that office, to a higher, it is true, but removed so that he went out of the way, and could not prevent the measure. He was of opinion that the deposites could not legally be removed without a reason, and that the reasons alleged as existing were unfounded or insufficient. Now, I contend that, according to any fair construction of the law, the bank had a right to the judgment of Mr. McLane, then Secretary of the Treasury, on that subject, and was entitled to all the benefit of his judgment and his volition; and it was a breach, or, worse, a dishonest evasion of that contract, to put that Secretary out of the way, his opinion having been taken, and because his opinion was taken, and put another in his place in order to try the experiment upon and by that other, especially as the then Secretary was not even accused of the slightest impropriety in his judgment or in his acis. His promotion to a superior office shows that he had not lost the confidence of the Executive. Mr. McLane was removed, and Mr. Duane appointed specially to perform the act. He was approached on the subject, immediately after his appointment, in a manner which touched his spirit and wounded his pride, and by an individual from whose communion he shrunk with disgust. He was pressed by the Presiident himself, but at last refused, because the reasons for the act were insufficient, and he was removed; and so far as executive disappointment and party slander could do it, he was disgraced. The President then called in a third Secretaay, who had pronounced an opinion before his appointment; and by the President, through him, the act was done. Now, I say that, if in a parallel case between individuals this course had been pursued by one party towards the other, any court or jury would decide, any honest community would declare, that the contract was violated-shamefully violated.

The Senator from Pennsylvania, [Mr. BUCHANAN,] in his zeal to vindicate the acts of the President, and testify his gratitude to him, has done injustice to some of his own constituents--to men, in all the relations of life, social and official, as correct and honorable as himself. The gentleman said that the directors of the Bank of the United States, for political effect, for the purpose of op. erating upon the elections, and compelling a recharter

[SENATE.

of the bank, first threw out a large amount of bank pa per, and created a delusive prosperity; then suddenly contracted their issues, in order to distress the commu nity, and make them cry out for a recharter. This, sir, is not true in the connexion and the manner in which it is stated; it is not true in fact, to say nothing about mo tive. The bank did not contract its issues until it had received notice-unofficial, it is true, but not until it had received notice-that the deposites would be withdrawn, and that the executive power and influence would be di rected against the institution, to discredit and destroy it. The documents laid upon our table during that agitating session conclusively show this fact. The public prints of the day, on the side of the administration, show it. The speeches of Senators in this body at that time show it. By all these the bank was declared to be insolvent, and unworthy of credit. The public deposites were said to be unsafe in its vaults, in consequence of that insolvency; and the agent appointed by the President to settle the preliminaries of a contract with some of the State banks declares that he will bring the Bank of the United States, as a reptile, to the feet of the Executive. Then, with all this executive power and executive influence directed against it; with this large amount of public deposites to be suddenly and capriciously withdrawn, while at the same time the party press resounded through the Union the approaching prostration and destruction of the bank; while the institution was assailed on all sides, and unad. vised of the point at which the next attack was to be made; I ask you, sir, and I ask every candid man, whether the men who managed the affairs of that institution, whose public and whose private characters also were in a high degree involved in making good its defence, I ask whether they can be censured, with any show or color of justice, for using all the lawful means which were placed in their hands to sustain and support the credit of the institution.

Sir, not only their duty to themselves, but their duty to the public at large, required it. If that bank had fallen beneath the weight of the executive arm, it would have dragged down with it most of the banks in the Union, and it would have caused much individual dis. tress, bankruptcy, and ruin. Hence every principle of self-preservation, every motive of patriotism and of duty, united to impel those men to use every means so to guard and fortify and defend their institution as that it would stand the shock. And they did guard it and de. fend it so that it withstood a power before which the Bank of England would have fallen, even in its most palmy days. Perhaps they fortified their fortress more strongly than actual necessity required; perhaps they overrated the strength of the enemy, and were not fully conscious of their own; perhaps they remained in their intrenchments after the siege was raised, or the power of the assailants had become exhausted; but if they erred, it was on the side not of danger but of duty, and their success has conferred a lasting benefit on the country. This much I have thought proper to say in behalf of those gentlemen with whom I have some acquaintance, but no connexion of any kind; and I say it as an act of common justice towards them, who have been attacked, and whose acts have been misrepresented on this floor.

The Senator from North Carolina, [Mr. STRANGE,] in the abundance of his charity, declares that he does not accuse Senators of taking bribes of the Bank of the United States. He acquits them of the foul charge, as he really believes they were not bribed. The Senate are much indebted to the honorable member for his decree of acquittal, especially as they never constituted him their judge. But what right has he, or what right has any man who is not himself shameless, in the presence of this body or elsewhere, to entertain the infamous proposition for a moment; to speak of it in terms of either de

nial or belief; to refer to it at all, except to consign the base slanderers who invented and who uttered it, to the depth of infamy which their atrocious falsehoods have merited? But there are bounds to the liberality of the Senator from North Carolina. He thinks, if I have comprehended him, that gentlemen here who were counsel for the Bank of the United States may have been warped in their feelings and judgment from that cause, to form opinions which no unbiased and intelligent man could form, and to do acts which no honest man having an intellect much above idiocy could do. The Senator has not told us where, or how, or among whom, he has formed his opinion of the bar, especially of those who are admitted to be among its best and most honorable and most enlightened members.

[Mr. STRANGE explained: did not say that gentlemen who were counsel for the bank were biased from that cause, but that they were warped by political excitement.]

I am happy (said Mr. E.) to receive the explanation of the Senator from North Carolina, and yet I am at a loss to comprehend how he used the fact of the employment of some gentlemen as legal counsel for the bank, and the statement of that fact following, with a "but," the general acquittal of direct and naked bribery. But however these engagements may have been supposed by him or others to operate on the minds of gentlemen with whom they were made, they certainly never affected mine, as I never was in any case the counsel of that institution. Still I know not but the same influence may be brought equally home to me, for I in several cases profited | by the litigation of the bank, by engagements on the opposite side, which engagements I should never have had, if there had been no bank to bring suits against those who employed me to defend them. So that, on the whole, I believe I must even share with my friends here, whom I have sometimes met in the hall below, where justice is still administered, and where truth and reason and law are not yet outraged or spurned. I must even content myself to share with them in the imputation of that bias which counsellors at law are supposed to feel in behalf of those through whose means they obtain a cause in a court of justice.

But I do not admit that the Senator's charge, as explained, approaches nearer to the truth than that which I had mistaken for it, and which he has just corrected. 1, for one, was not moved in this matter by political interest or political excitement. It was a subject for cool deliberation and sober judgment, and I brought the pow. ers of my mind calmly and patiently to act upon it; and when full conviction followed investigation, and my opinion was fixed, I acted in obedience to the dictates of that judgment, not under excitement—unless, indeed, a strong feeling of attachment to those abstractions called law and right, which at some times, and in some minds, warms, and kindles, and glows to enthusiasm, is to be called by that name.

|

[JAN. 16, 1837.

startled the Senator from North Carolina in his private retreat, startled also the nation; and the sensation did not subside until they and he had become used and reconciled to new and extravagant acts of executive power. There are other gentlemen now on this floor who condemned this act in the strongest terms, until they knew that the popular voice would sustain it. The Senator from Virginia near me, [Mr. Rives,] at the close of the last session, in a speech which, I am sorry to say, has never found its way into the public papers, declared that in this act he thought the Executive had gone to the very verge of the constitution, but that he had not overstepped it. I differed from the Senator from Virginia in this only: I thought he had not only gone to the verge of the constitutional boundary, but that he had broken over it. That gentleman and myself were separated in opinion by a mere mathematical line-length, without breadth or thickness-for he thought, and so said on the occasion I have referred to, that the custody of the public treasure belonged, by the constitution, to the representatives of the States and of the people; and that almost any sacrifice ought to be made, in order to restore it to their bands. But the Senator from North Carolina-whose opinion, since he has recovered from the first surprise that the executive act occasioned, is, on this subject especially, entitled to a very great weight-thinks that no man, possessing both honesty and sense, could vote for the resolution which passed the Senate.

[Mr. STRANGE. I did not say so. I said they could not, unless under strong previous bias.]

Mr. EWING. The explanation amounts to but little. A bias which destroyed the honesty or obscured the sense is now introduced and attributed, to lighten the odium of the charge which his unqualified language, as I understood it, cast upon the former majority of this body. And now, the Senator from Virginia, who believed the President had gone to the very verge of the constitution, and had then possessed himself of the treasure which, by that constitution, belonged to the representatives of the people, and the Senator from North Carolina, who was, in private, "startled" by the boldness of the act, until he found that the people sustained it, are ready to vote censure and obloquy upon those Senators who ventured to express an opinion, before they knew whether that opinion would be sustained by the popular voice or not. For one, I respect not their opinions, so elicited and so expressed; and I scorn their censure and their reproach. When men use language harsh or vindictive, or utter degrading charges against others at least as honorable as themselves, they seize a two-edged sword, which often wounds the hand that wields it. I am willing to stand in the ranks in which I then stood, and now stand, and receive their onset, no matter how fierce and how furious. I am willing to risk the character of the majority which passed that resolution, for integrity and intelligence, and independence of thought and of action, against this majority, which is now the instrument of its repudiation. And if, in connexion with the pregnant incidents of the times, the names of those who have taken part in the moving scenes should de

have well chosen the rank in which my humble name shall stand to receive the judgment of that august tribunal.

I find that I am desultory and diffuse in my course of discussion, but time was not allowed me to prepare to be connected and brief. I have shown that the removal of the deposites was in violation of a contract, and against law. I shall now endeavor to make good the position that it was in violation of the constitution. For this a few words will suffice; for it flows as a consequence from the illegality of the act of removal, and

the conceded point that the Legislature, and not the Executive, is the constitutional keeper and guardian of the public treasure. The President, if he had seized that treasure by an act of open and direct violence, and become himself the keeper, in defiance of legislative authority, would, by the concurrent opinion of all here, have violated that constitution which made the Legislature its keeper. But if, through the exercise of a power which the law (not the constitution) placed in his bands for other purposes, he did by lawful means effect this unconstitutional object, does it vary the case, or make the violation of the constitution less certain? The President had by law a right to remove the Secretary of the Treasury, though he had no right to seize the public treasure; but, through the exercise of that power of removal, exerted for that distinct and avowed purpose, and that purpose only, he did seize upon the public treasure, and dispose of it according to his will. He used a lawful weapon to do an illegal and unconstitutional act. This is not difficult to be comprehended. A man has a legal right to use his own walking-stick; yet it is easy to conceive how he may use it illegally. The Senator from Virginia admits that the President almost violated the constitution. "He marched to its verge." I say he overstepped it.

These are my reasons for thinking and for voting that the executive act of the President in the case referred to was not in accordance with the constitution and law, but in violation of both; and I care not how lightly the Senator from North Carolina may speak of either the sense or honesty which dictated that opinion and that vote. Language such as his on this occasion falls harmless to the ground, or recoils on him who utters it.

66

Having proved the statement in the resolution true, the next inquiry is as to our right to spread it on the record. Gentlemen on the side of the administration heap upon the act, in this aspect of it, the terms “shameful,” “disgraceful,” flagrant impropriety”— ¦ all the epithets of detestation and abhorrence which those diligent gentlemen have been able to collect and amass from our whole vocabulary. But let this pass; it amounts to little. Reproach and violence from those who profess to pass judgment leaves an intelligent public (to whom is the final appeal) impressed with the conviction that the discretion of the judge was lost in his own passion. They probably will not stop to inquire what has become of his propriety. On the one hand, towards the former majority of the Senate we have vituperation and reproach fit to be cast only on a tenant of Newgate, by a felon like himself; and towards the President tirade upon tirade of fulsome flattery, which would make even a coquette turn sick. Let all this go to the country; a discerning public will see what I seemotives not to be named or avowed, lying deep in the breasts of those who say and do these things-deep, but not hidden, and prompting them, or rather goading | them on to the act. As the deed is to be done, I am glad it comes in the form and is pressed in the spirit and temper which here discloses itself; for, being so done, it will be repudiated as authority, either as to opinion or fact, by every honest and candid mind.

Why was it improper or indelicate to pass this resolution, if the facts and opinions set forth in it be true and correct? Gentlemen say we may not express our opin ion of the act, because we may possibly be the triers of the actor. The President might, by possibility, be impeached, and we, as a Senate, would be called upon to try him; therefore, it was indelicate and improper to give an opinion beforehand which might influence our decision hereafter. Now, my answer to this is, that the question of delicacy and propriety here put is merely of a personal nature, and addresses itself to each individua! member rather than to the whole body; for the Senate,

[SENATE.

as a body, was not committed to any thing by that resolution. Suppose, then, at the time these resolutions passed, with the full knowledge that all of us had of the power of the Executive and the state of parties in the other House; suppose any one here, being asked privately his opinion on the subject, had declined, as a matter of delicacy, to give it, lest he should be committed in case of an impeachment preferred against the President, which would you have considered it, a seri ous scruple, or rather an idle jest? The truth is, there is nothing in the point, nor am I able to convince my. self that any man ("except under strong political bias") can believe there is any thing in it. As for myself, I knew there was to be no impeachment, and no trial; and my own opinion of propriety and right was then, as it is now, the guide of my own actions. The President had done an act violatory of the constitution, and especially affecting the powers and rights of this body as one of the legislative branches of the Government. What was to be done? Reassert the constitution and the rights of the Senate by law? The executive veto was ready to give a quietus to every law which you might have attempted to pass. He had possessed himself of the public treasure, and you could pa`s no law to wrest it from his hands. What was to be done? Be calm, say gentlemen; be quiet; make no disturbance; it is quite startling; but say nothing; the country can stand it, and perhaps, if you are silent and patient under this, the President may commit no more acts of violence; but, if you irritate, he may do still worse things. They therefore would have recommended silence and submission.

The Senate, as a legislative body, has the right to assert its own powers by virtue of that first of nature's laws, self-preservation. A body composed of numerous members can speak only by some prescribed form, such as an order or resolution; and as, in this case, their constitutional powers were assailed, it was their duty, their solema duty, to reassert them, that the invasion might not stand without objection or contradiction, and thus become a binding precedent in future times.

The resolution of the Senate is also objected to as one couched in terms of censure against the President; it is said to be reproachful in its language and its import. Believing that I have established the position that the reso lution is true in point of fact and opinion, and that it was due to the rights of this body, which we were delegated by the States, for the time being, to guard and protect, that we should, in a resolution couched in some language, assert those rights; I now ask any candid man, whether a partisan of the President or not, if he can devise any language, conveying the substance and sense of that resolution, which shall be more decorous and more courteous than that? Can you, sir, convey the idea in milder, more dignified, and more appropriate language? It is true it contains no compliment, no adulation. This the Senator from Pennsylvania has discovered, and therefore condemns it. That gentleman, in reference to the President, uses the word "immaculate," which I never before heard applied to but one created being, and that in worship. This resolution contains no such term, as applied to the President; and I think I would not now, if it were again before the Senate, move to insert the word, even if that would gain for it the vote of the gentleman from Pennsylvania.

In England, from which we derive our free institutions, and to which we still refer for precedent of parliamentary independence, (God knows how long those examples may be endured,) in England it is not deemed the duty of Parliament to address the King, or to answer his address, in terms only of acquiescence and praise. The British Parliament represents a free people, and they have not forgotten to speak the language of freemen; and did any one ever hear of an attempt in that body to