SENATE.]

Public Lands.

[JAN. 14, 1837.

only an annual profit of five or ten per cent., when five hundred per cent. can be made in a series of years, at a single operation, by purchases of wild lands. Many of these capitalists purchased these lands as a permanent investment, intending to withhold them from sale for pe

tained much longer in territorial pupilage. The spirit of speculation will sweep over them, like the hurricane of the tropics, subverting all within the range of its wild and desolating career. These Territories will, in fact, so far as regards the public domain, cease to be the Territories of the United States, and become the Terri-riods ranging from five to twenty years, calculating that tories of speculators, owning their soil, controlling their destiny for half a century, and postponing their admission as States of the Union. To the truly wise and patriotic American, there can be no spectacle more truly sublime than the admission of new States of the Unionto behold another region reclaimed from solitude, and added to liberty and civilization; another country emerging from territorial pupilage, and assuming the attitude of one of the States of the American Union. Pass this bill, and in a few years more Iowa and Wisconsin, containing the mountain streams and fountains of the great Mississippi, will, together with Florida, send their Senators here to co-operate with us in advancing the prosperity of our common country. These Territories are unrepresented on this floor; and should we not all feel disposed to legislate for them in a spirit of parental kindness, and, above all, save them from the grasp of speculating monopolists? This bill embraces within its munificent provision the whole Union and all its parts. It reserves our noble public domain as a precious inheritance for the whole American people, to be purchased only by settlers or cultivators, from the Government, at the minimum price. It encourages agriculture, that mother of freemen, that nurse of virtue, liberty, and independence-that truly useful and virtuous vocation, heretofore depressed by exorbitant tariffs. It will enable every American citizen to obtain a farm at a reasonable price from a paternal Government, for more than half a century to come. It reserves for the noblest purposes, as the inheritance of the whole people of this Union, what, under the existing system, will soon be the property of a few speculating monopolists.

the continued advance would be more than equivalent to the ordinary interest of money or profits of business. In the mean time, during this long interval, this ten mil lions annually might as well be sunk in the ocean. There is thus opened a golden stream from the East to the West, which, whilst it drains the East of millions of capital, condemns to a period of long sterility vast portion of the beautiful valley of the West, containing a soil inexhaustibly fertile, but remaining in the hands of speculators barren and unproductive. From the old and the new States combined, we have seen that there was this year withdrawn more than twenty millions of dollars, for investment in lands for speculation. For the present, this twenty millions might as well be annihilated; and if the system is continued, great indeed will be the distress and embarrassment of the whole country. Indeed, to this cause, more than all others combined, must be attributed any existing difficulties in the money market. No one at all versed in the principles of political economy can for a moment doubt that twenty millions taken annual ly from commerce, agriculture, and manufactures, must embarrass the business of any nation. These results of this system (Mr. W. said) he clearly foresaw and predicted at the last session of Congress. Mr. W. here read the following extract from the report made by him at the last session, from the select committee in favor of the bill confining the sales of public lands to settlers or cultivators:

"Until within a few years past the sales were made almost exclusively for settlement, but now the reverse is the fact. The sales within the last year have amounted to nearly thirteen millions of acres, being almost three times the amount sold in any preceding year. Eight millions of acres of these sales have probably been

There is another method in which the existing system retards the prosperity of the new States. Of the twenty-seven millions of dollars paid this past year for pub-made for speculation, and not for settlement. This lic lands, at least fifteen millions are paid by the people of the new States, and at least ten millions of this for purchases for speculation. Thus is ten millions taken in a single year from the people of the new States, for investment in wild lands, remaining a dead capital, and withdrawn from investment in farms, or buildings, or railroads, or some of the useful branches of productive industry; and thus injuriously affecting the business and prosperity of the new States. Nor is it only the new States in which this evil is experienced. No; the old States are perhaps the greatest sufferers. Exclusive of the entries made for cultivation or settlement upon the ratio of the present year, we have seen that upwards of ten millions annually from the old States will be withdrawn for the purchase of wild lands for speculation. This is a process equally injurious to the old and to the new States. To the new States, we have seen that it is equivalent to a law advancing the price of the public lands to settlers and cultivators, for the benefit of speculators, at least five dollars per acre. To the old States, it is a withdrawal of ten millions annually from the channels of productive industry, for investment in wild lands, thus doomed to remain for years waste and uncultivated. Who can deny that ten millions taken annually from commerce, agriculture, manufactures, and public improvements, in the old States, must prove deeply injurious to those communities? Under the existing system, capitalists, great and small, and borrowers from banks, will send from the old States millions of money annually for land speculations, which they would otherwise invest in some useful business, or in some public improvements at home; but these investments will be not made, yielding

spirit of speculation in the public lands is increasing with alarming rapidity. Companies are forming in all directions to monopolize the ownership of the public domain, and thus be enabled to arrest the settlement and regu late the prosperity of the new States and Territories of the Union. A total and complete monopoly of the public lands by speculators is now contemplated, and the consequent withdrawal from the Government of all its power over this subject. This system will be deeply injurious to the interest of the old as well as of the new States. Vast sums will be taken from investment in the channels of productive industry in the old States, and invested in purchases of uncultivated lands. It is a bounty offered by Government for the annual withdrawal of capital from the useful pursuits of productive industry, for investment in waste lands, producing nothing, and, consequently, adding nothing to the general prosperity of the country. Agriculture, commerce, and manufac tures, are all injuriously affected by this process. For a great period of time, the moneys thus invested might as well be sunk in the ocean. Agriculture is not benefited, for settlement is retarded, and not advanced, by this sysCommerce and manufactures are injured by the annual sinking of so much of the active capital of the country. The vast sums thus invested during the pres ent year have certainly greatly contributed to create the existing embarrassments, and, as the evil progresses, the embarrassments will be increased and aggravated. It is, then, the interest of the old as well as the new States to arrest this annual investment of millions in unproductive pursuits. Were it arrested, these millions of dead capital would be adding yearly to the commerce,

tem.

ment.

[SENATE.

agriculture, and manufactures, of the whole country. When money is invested, even from the old. States, in lands for settlement and cultivation only, in the new States, the annual products of the soil increase the wealth and prosperity of the whole country, and soon give back to the old States, through the channels of trade and business, more than the amount of the purchase-money of the land. But if the citizens of a nation appropriate millions annually in the purchase of property yielding no income, the result is a great national loss. It is, then, the interest of the whole Union that those monopolies of the public lands should be arrested, and that capital should continually flow in the various channels of productive industry. If, among other causes, the exist ing embarrassments are now greatly attributable to the speculating investment of millions, during the past year, in wild lands, what will be the result if the system is permitted to continue for a series of years unabated? It is easy to foresee that the necessary consequence will be, increasing distress and embarrassment, or at least a dim-ty, it will lean upon a small and decreasing minority. inution of the national prosperity."

A surplus tariff coalition can never resist the mandate of the people's will. The tariff and surplus coalition will be more odious than any which have preceded it; it will be the union of sin and death; and both, both will be driven out together from the halls of Congress. Let me tell the manufacturing interest, in the spirit of truth and candor, that to them a union with the surplus party will be the embrace of death. By the surplus party I mean not those who voted to deposite with the States an already accumulated surplus, but I mean the party that wishes to legislate, or refuse to legislate, for the purpose of creating a surplus. Last year that party had perhaps an uncertain majority, or nearly a majority, in this chamber. Where is that majority now? Gone, swept away by the majesty of the people's will; and the anti-surplus, anti-distribution party now constitute a great majority in both Houses of Congress, and have carried the President elect. If, then, the manufacturing interest leans for support upon the surplus par

Sir, (said Mr. W.,) I do not wish to renew the scenes of 1832; I never again wish to behold the very fabric of this Government rocking upon its foundation, when every patriot heart throbbed with apprehension, and each tyrant's bosom bounded with the exulting hope that this Union--freedom's, the world's last hope-was blotted from the scroll of nations. Never, therefore, without necessity, never in a wanton, reckless spirit, would I disturb the main provisions of the compromise act of March, 1833. But there is one great constitutional principle too sacred to be yielded to any compromise, and that is this: the revenue must be reduced to the wants of the Government; for, if not so reduced, the Government will be subverted or changed into a central despotism, collecting millions upon millions of unnecessary revenue, for a distribution unknown to the framers of the constitution. If, then, the revenue can be reduced to the wants of the Government by this bill, blind in. deed must be the manufacturing interest to its true policy if it oppose this salutary measure. The necessary reduction cannot be accomplished except by such a measure as this. The revenue this year from customs is $19,391,310. Estimating the revenue from this source hereafter, by the decreasing scale of the act of March, 1833, as it now stands, and the increased importations, augmenting with our increasing wealth and population, and the maximum would be as follows:

Mr. W. asked, had not the predictions contained in this report been fully realized, and would it not have been well for the community if the bill then proposed by this committee for arresting these speculations had been adopted by Congress? And if we continue the existing system, will not these evils continue to augment from year to year, till the whole public domain, which is of any value, shall be swept within the vortex of speculating monopoly? Continue the existing system but a few years more, and the nation will awake, as it were, from a trance, and find itself despoiled, by speculators, of every acre of good land east of the river Mississippi. Nor will it stop there. No; it will roll on, it is rolling on, over the regions of the far West, reaching from the Ohio to the Missouri, and from near the sources of the great Mississippi to its outlet in the Gulf. In a few years more, and speculators will command an empire, and parcel it out at their pleasure; and yet we refuse to interpose, nay, we sustain and encourage this system, by which whole States and Territories will be placed beneath the degrading control of a few speculating monopolists. National interest and national honor alike prompt us to interpose. And what restrains us? Sir, it is the surplus, the fatal surplus spirit, that pushes onward this Government to the very verge of the precipice. It is this spirit which dares to demand from the people more revenue than is required for the wants of the Government; it is this spirit which must be gratified, and would soon sell, if it could, not only the land, but the people of the new States, for unnecessary revenue. But, God be thanked, this spirit has been rebuked by the people, and their decree has been proclaimed, that no more money shall be collected from them than is required for the wants of the Covernment, administered in Now, add to this the twenty-five millions received ana spirit of republican economy, and within the strict lim-nually for lands, upon the basis of the receipts of this its of the constitution. This principle is becoming fun-year, and the maximum result of the aggregate revenue damental, and must be carried into full and practical from lands and customs would be as follows:

effect.

If you will not bring down the revenue to the wants of the Government, by confining to settlers or cultivators the sales of the public lands, reduce! reduce! repeal! repeal the tariff! will be the voice that will be echoed by the people through these walls. Already this voice is breaking upon us, and within the hall of the House of Representatives, demanding that the revenue from the tariff be reduced more than six millions of dollars. Has the manufacturing interest no eyes to see the difficulties which surround it! has it no ears to hear the voice of the people, demanding more and more loudly the reduction of the revenue to the wants of the Government? If the manufacturing interest now unites itself with the surplus party, it will be swept before the torrent of public senti

1837,
1838,

1839,

1840,

1841,

1842,

1837,

1838,

1839,

1840,

1841,

1842,

$18,000,000

17,500,000

17,000,000

16,500,000

16,000,000

15,000,000

$43,000,000

42,500,000

42,000,000

41,500,000

41,000,000

40,000,000

The above calculation would present an excess, in six years, of ten millions above an annual revenue of forty millions, and, including our bank stock, a total excess of eighteen millions over an annual revenue of forty millions, exclusive of the amount accruing from incidental

sources not embraced in this estimate. The above esti

mates, though maximums, and therefore beyond the actual amounts, would seem to demonstrate that no change of the tariff ever proposed would bring down our re

ceipts to the wants of the Government. The twenty-five millions of dollars alone received annually from the sales of the public lands to speculators, under the existing system, would be too great for the proper, regular, annual, expenditures of the Government. Any Senator, then, who is for the present system, is either for an annual revenue of nearly forty millions of dollars, for wild and extravagant expenditures, or for an annual distribution. Any Senator who votes to continue the present system, votes to create a surplus. Any Senator who votes against limiting to settlers or cultivators the sales of the public lands, votes to accumulate a surplus. This fact cannot be disguised from the people, and will constitute the true criterion between the surplus and anti-surplus party, unless, indeed, we almost entirely repeal the tariff. Under the system we propose, the public domain, exclusive of sales for settlement, will remain the property of the Government, and in case of war or any great emer gency we may sell again for revenue.

acres.

[JAN. 16, 1837.

But it is to be hoped that there are some articles, particularly those of universal use or consumption by all classes, and especially by the poor, upon which we may be enabled to reduce the duties, though not embraced within the provisions of the sixth section of the com. promise act, without reviving the strife and difficulties of 1832, so as not only to reduce the revenue to the wants of the Government, but to graduate our expenditures by a standard of republican economy in all our appropri ations,

Such are the great principles of the bill, and the details are designed to promote the great object. Sales of the public lands at public auction, though not entirely abolished, are confined to those who purchase for settle. ment or cultivation. The speculator is excluded from the public sales, as he is from private entries. This is indispensable; for when the speculator is excluded only from private entries, but permitted to purchase at public auction, he would engross nearly all the lands offer.

ment gained by sales of its lands at public auction? Nothing deserving an estimate. Upon comparing the official records, the total number of acres sold, and the total price received, the following have been the results of the auction system: From the 1st of July, 1820, to the present period, we have received, from sales of the public lands, an average of three cents per acre over the minimum price; from 1796 to 1st July, 1820, nearly three cents per acre over the minimum price; from 1796 to the present period, three cents per acre over the minimum price; for the year 1835, one cent and a half per acre over the minimum price; for the year 1836, less than one cent per acre over the minimum price. Hence it is obvious that nothing is gained by the Gov ernment by continuing the auction system.

There is no subject in regard to which so many erro-ed at any future land sales. And what has the Govern. neous estimates have been made, as the number of acres of public land required annually for settlement or culti vation. It is demonstrable that five millions of acres is the maximum required for these purposes. This is ascertained by the augmentation of population in the new States and Territories in a given term of years, and the correspondent amount of lands entered during the same period. The increase of population in the new States and Territories, from 1820 to 1830, was 1,070,993. The total amount of entries and purchases of the public lands, for all purposes, during the same period, was 8,216,858 Thus, an annual increase of one million of population, in the new States and Territories, would require less than eight millions of acres for the purposes of settlement or cultivation. Now, the most extravagant estimate of the annual increase of population in the new States and Territories does not exceed two hundred thousand; at this rate, requiring annually only one million six hundred thousand acres. But suppose the quantity trebled, and the amount will not reach five millions of acres; thus making a difference in the revenue of nearly nineteen millions of dollars per annum, according to the receipts of the present year. As, then, a mere financial measure-as a measure to reduce the revenue to the wants of the Government-there is nothing proposed so important as this bill.

Assuming these five millions of acres as the largest amount that would be sold annually under the system now proposed, and the maximum of revenue hereafter accruing annually from lands and customs would be as follows:

The great difference between the years 1837 and 1838, in the above estimates, arises from the fact that, in any event, for a large portion of the year 1837, the sales must take place under the existing system. If we make a still further reduction, by the repeal of the duties on all articles now paying a less duty than twenty per cent. ad valorem, as authorized by the sixth section of the compromise act of 1833, we would probably strike off one million and a half annually from the taxes of the people, and the maximum of our annual revenue would be

Mr. W. here proceeded to explain to the Senate the details of the b l'; the clause confining the sales to settlers or cultivators; the limitation to two sections; the authority to parents to purchase for their children, with a view to the establishment of farms; the pre-emption section; the privilege of purchasing in forty-acres lots; and, finally, the taxing power conceded to the States, by which they might raise a revenue from unoccupied lands, whether held by their own or non-resident speculators, and thus, to a certain extent, repress speculation. And Mr. W. concluded by returning his thanks to the Senate for the very general and indulgent attention with which they had received his remarks.

Mr. CLAY said he was gratified to hear from the chairman of the Committee on Public Lands the assurance that the Treasury order of July, 1836, would, in some way, be dispensed with. He wished to ask of the chairman when the committee would probably report on this subject.

Mr. WALKER could not certainly tell; but probably by Tuesday next.

On motion of Mr. MORRIS, the bill, with the amendments, was postponed till Monday.

The expunging resolution of Mr. BENTON now coming up for further consideration, and Mr. CLAY having the floor

On motion of Mr. KENT,

The Senate adjourned: Yeas 22, nays 18.

MONDAY, JANUARY 16.

EXPUNGING RESOLUTION. After disposing of the usual morning business, the Senate proceeded to the consideration of the special order, which was Mr. BENTON's resolution to expunge from the journal of the Senate the resolution of the 28th March, 1834, censuring the President for having removed the deposites from the Bank of the United States.

JAN. 16, 1837.]

Expunging Resolution.

[SENATE.

Mr. CLAY rose and said that, considering that he was the mover of the resolution of March, 1834, and the consequent relation in which he stood to the majority of the Senate by whose vote it was adopted, he had felt it to be his duty to say something on this expunging resolution; and he had always intended to do so when he should be persuaded that there existed a settled purpose of pressing it to a final decision. But it had been so taken up and put down at the last session-taken up one day, when a speech was prepared for delivery, and put down when it was pronounced-that he had really doubted whether there existed any serious intention of ever putting it to the vote. At the very close of the last session, it will be recollected that the resolution came up, and in several quarters of the Senate a dispo-concurrence of these four officers required in disbursesition was manifested to come to a definitive decision. On that occasion he had offered to waive his right to address the Senate, and silently to vote upon the resolution; but it was again laid upon the table, and laid there forever, as the country supposed, and as he believed. It is, however, now revived; and, sundry changes having taken place in the members of this body, it would seem that the present design is to bring the resolution to an absolute conclusion.

he is to report, not to the President, but directly to Congress, and is liable to be called to give information in person before Congress. It is impossible to examine dispassionately that act, without coming to the conclu sion that he is emphatically the agent of Congress, in performing the duties assigned by the constitution to Congress. The act further provides that a Treasurer shall be appointed, to receive and keep the public money; and none can be drawn from his custody but under the authority of a law, and in virtue of a warrant drawr, by the Secretary of the Treasury, countersigned by the Comptroller, and recorded by the Register. Only when such a warrant is presented can the Treasurer lawfully pay one dollar from the public purse. Why was the ments of the public money? Was it not for greater security? Was it not intended that each, exercising & separate and independent will, should be a check upon every other? Was it not the purpose of the law to consider each of these four officers, acting in his proper sphere, not as a mere automaton, but as an intellectual, intelligent, and responsible person, bound to observe the law, and to stop the warrant, or stop the money, if the authority of the law were wanting?

I have not risen (continued Mr. C.) to repeat, at full length, the argument by which the friends of the resolution of March, 1834, sustained it. That argument is before the world, was unanswered at the time, and is unanswerable. And I here, in my place, in the presence of my country and of my God, after the fullest consideration and deliberation of which my mind is capable, reassert my solemn conviction of the truth of every proposition contained in that resolution. But, whilst it is not my intention to commit such an infliction upon the Senate as that would be of retracing the whole ground of argument formerly occupied, I desire to lay before it, at this time, a brief and true state of the case. Before the fatal step is taken of giving to the expunging resolution the sanction of the American Senate, I wish, by presenting a faithful outline of the real questions involved in the resolution of 1834, to make a last, even if it is to be an ineffectual, appeal to the sober judgments of Senators. I begin by reasserting the

truth of that resolution.

Our British ancestors understood perfectly well the immense importance of the money power in a representative Government. It is the great lever by which the Crown is touched, and made to conform its adminis tration to the interests of the kingdom and the will of the people. Deprive Parliament of the power of freely granting or withholding supplies, and surrender to the King the purse of the nation, he instantly becomes an absolute monarch. Whatever may be the form of gov ernment, elective or hereditary, democratic or despotic, that person who commands the force of the nation, and at the same time bas uncontrolled possession of the purse of the nation, has absolute power, whatever may be the official name by which he is called.

Our immediate ancestors, profiting by the lessons on civil liberty which had been taught in the country from which we sprung, endeavored to encircle around the public purse, in the hands of Congress, every possible security against the intrusion of the Executive. With this view, Congress alone is invested, by the constitution, with the power to lay and collect the taxes. When collected, not a cent is to be drawn from the public Treasury but in virtue of an act of Congress. And among the first acts of this Government was the passage of a law establishing the Treasury Department, for the safe keeping and the legal and regular disbursement of the money so collected. By that act a Secretary of the Treasury is placed at the head of the Department; and, varying in this respect from all the other Departments,

It re

Thus stood the Treasury from 1789 to 1816. During that long time no President had ever attempted to interfere with the custody of the public purse. mained where the law placed it, undisturbed, and every Chief Magistrate, including the Father of his Country, respected the law.

In 1816 an act passed to establish the late Bank of the United States for the term of twenty years, and, by the 16th section of the act, it is enacted that the deposites of the money of the United States, in places in which the said bank and the branches thereof may be established, shall be made in said bank or branches thereof, unless the Secretary of the Treasury shall at any time otherwise order and direct; in which case, the Secretary of the Treasury shall immediately lay before Congress, if in session, and, if not, immediately after the commencement of the next session, the reasons of such order or direction."

Thus it is perfectly manifest, from the express words of the law, that the power to make any order or direc tion for the removal of the public deposites is confided to the Secretary alone, to the absolute exclusion of the President, and all the world besides. And the law, proceeding upon the established principle that the Secretary of the Treasury, in all that concerns the public purse, acts as the direct agent of Congress, requires, in the event of his ordering or directing a removal of the deposites, that he shall immediately lay his reasons therefor before whom? The President? No; before Congress. So stood the public Treasury and the public deposites from the year 1816 to September, 1833. In all that period of seventeen years, running through or into four several administrations of the Government, the law had its uninterrupted operation, no Chief Magistrate having assumed upon himself the power of diverting the public purse from its lawful custody, or of substituting his will to that of the officer to whose care it was exclusively intrusted.

In the session of Congress of 1832-'3 an inquiry had been instituted by the House of Representatives into the condition of the Bank of the United States. It resulted in a conviction of its entire safety, and a declaration by the House, made only a short time before the adjournment of Congress, on the 4th of March, 1833, that the public deposites were perfectly secure. This declaration was probably made in consequence of suspicions then afloat of a design on the part of the Executive to remove the deposites. These suspicions were denied by the press friendly to the administration. Nevertheless,

SENATE.]

Expunging Resolution.

the members had scarcely reached their respective homes before measures were commenced by the Executive to effect a removal of the deposites from that very place of safety which it was among the last acts of the House to declare existed in the Bank of the United States.

In prosecution of this design, Mr. McLane, the Secretary of the Treasury, who was decidedly opposed to such a measure, was promoted to the Department of State, and Mr. Duane was appointed to succeed him. But Mr. Duane was equally convinced with his predecessor that he was forbidden by every consideration of duty to execute the power with which the law had intrusted the Secretary of the Treasury, and refused to remove the deposites; whereupon he was dismissed from office, a new Secretary of the Treasury was appointed, and, in September, 1833, by the command of the President, the measure was finally accomplished. That it was the President's act was never denied, but proclaimed, boasted, defended. It fell upon the country like a thunder. bolt, agitating the Union from one extremity to the other. The stoutest adherents of the administration were alarmed; and all thinking men, not blinded by party prejudice, beheld in the act a bold and dangerous exercise of power; and no human sagacity can now foresee the tremendous consequences which will ensue. The measure was adopted not long before the approaching session of Congress; and, as the concurrence of both branches might be necessary to compel a restoration of the deposites, the object was to take the chance of a possible division between them, and thereby defeat the restoration.

And where did the President find the power for this most extraordinary act? It has been seen that the constitution, jealous of all executive interference with the Treasury of the nation, has confided it to the exclusive care of Congress, by every precautionary guard, from the first imposition of the taxes to the final disbursement of the public money.

It has been seen that the language of the 16th section of the law of 1816 is express and free from all ambiguity, and that the Secretary of the Treasury is the sole and exclusive depositary of the authority which it confers. Those who maintain the power of the President have to support it against the positive language of the constitution, against the explicit words of the statute, and against the genius and theory of all our institutions.

And how do they surmount these insuperable obstacles? By a series of far-fetched implications, which, if every one of them were as true as they are believed to be incorrect or perverted, would stop far short of maintaining the power which was exercised.

The first of these implied powers is, that of dismissal, which is claimed for the President. Of all the questioned powers ever exercised by this Government, this is the most questionable. From the first Congress down to the present administration, it had never been examined. It was carried then, in the Senate, by the casting vote of the Vice President. And those who, at that day, argued in behalf of the power, contended for it upon conditions which have been utterly disregarded by the present Chief Magistrate. The power of dismissal is nowhere in the constitution granted, in express terms, to the President. It is not a necessary incident to any granted power; and the friends of the power have never been able to agree among themselves as to the precise part of the constitution from which it springs.

But if the power of dismissal was as incontestable as it is justly controvertible, we utterly deny the consequences deduced from it. The argument is, that the President has, by implication, the power of dismissal. From this first implication another is drawn; and that is, that the President has the power to control the officer,

[JAN. 16, 1837.

whom he may dismiss, in the discharge of his duties, in all cases whatever; and that this power of control is so comprehensive as to include even the case of a specific duty expressly assigned by law to the designated officer. Now, we deny these results from the dismissing pow.

er.

That power, if it exists, can daaw after it only a right of general superintendence. It cannot authorize the President to substitute his will to the will of the officer charged with the performance of official duties. Above all, it cannot justify such a substitution in a case where the law, as in the present instance, assigns to a designated officer exclusively the performance of a par ticular duty, and commands him to report, not to the President, but to Congress, in a case regarding the pub. lic purse of the nation, committed to the exclusive control of Congress.

Such a consequence as that which I am contesting would concentrate in the hands of one man the entire executive power of the nation, uncontrolled and unchecked.

It would be utterly destructive of all official responsi bitity. Instead of each officer being responsible, in his own separate sphere, for his official acts, he would shelter himself behind the orders of the President. And what tribunal, in heaven above or on earth below, could render judgment against any officer for an act, however atrocious, performed by the express command of the President, which, according to the argument, he was absolutely bound to obey?

Whilst all official responsibility would be utterly annihilated in subordinate officers, there would be no practical or available responsibility in the President himself.

But the case has been supposed, of a necessity for the removal of the deposites, and a refusal of the Secretary of the Treasury to remove them; and it is triumphantly asked if, in such a case, the President may not remove him, and command the deed to be done. That is an extreme case, which may be met by another. Suppose the President, without any necessity, orders the removal from a place of safety to a place of hazard? If there be danger that a Secretary may neglect his duty, there is equal danger that a President may abuse his authority. Infallibility is not a human attribute. And there is more security for the public in holding the Secretary of the Treasury to the strict performance of an official duty, specially assigned to him, under all his official responsi bility, than to allow the President to wrest the work from his hands, annihilate his responsibility, and stand himself practically irresponsible. It is far better that millions should be lost by the neglect of a Secretary of the Treas ury, than to establish the monstrous principle that all the checks and balances of the Executive Government shall be broken down, the whole power absorbed by one man, and his will become the supreme rule. The argument which I am combating places the whole Treasury of the nation at the mercy of the Executive. It is in vain to talk of appropriations by law, and the formalities of war. rants upon the Treasury. Assuming the argument to be correct, what is to prevent the execution of an order from the President to the Secretary of the Treasury to issue a warrant, without the sanction of a previous legal appropriation, to the Comptroller to countersign it, to the Register to register it, and to the Treasurer to pay it? What becomes of that quadruple security which the precaution of the law provided? Instead of four subtantive and independent wills, acting under legal obligations, all are merged in the executive vortex.

But there was, in point of fact, no cause, none whatever, for the measure. Every fiscal consideration (and no other had the Secretary or the President a right to entertain) required the deposites to be left undisturbed in the place of perfect safety where by law they were. We told you so at the time. We asserted that the charges