money, so may the War Department, and the Navy Departinent. If half a million may be borrowed, ten millions may be borrowed. What, then, if this transaction shall be justified, is to hinder the Executive from borrowing money, to maintain fleets and armies, or for any other purpose, at his pleasure, without any authority of law? Yet, even this, according to the doctrine of the Protest, we have no right to complain of. We have no right to declare that an executive department has violated the Constitution and broken the law, by borrowing money on the credit of the United States. Nor could we make a similar declaration, if we were to see the Executive, by means of this borrowed money, enlisting armies and equipping fleets. And yet, Sir, the President has found no difficulty, heretofore, in expressing his opinions, in a paper, not called for by the exercise of any official duty, upon the conduct and proceedings of the two Houses of Congress. At the commencement of this session, he sent us a message, commenting on the land bill, which the two Houses passed at the end of the last session. That bill he had not approved, nor had he returned it with objections. Congress was dissolved; and the bill, therefore, was completely dead, and could not be revived. No communication from him could have the least possible effect as an official act. Yet he saw fit to send a message on the subject, and in that message he very freely declares his opinion that the bill which had passed both Houses began with an entire subversion of every one of the compacts by which the United States became possessed of their western domain; that one of its provisions was in direct and undisguised violation of the pledge given by Congress to the States; that the Constitution provides that these compacts shall be untouched by the legislative power, which can only make needful rules and regulations; and that all beyond that is an assumption of undelegated power.

These are the terms in which the President speaks of an act of the two Houses; in no official paper, in no communication which it was necessary for him to make to them; but in a message, adopted only as a mode through which to make public these opinions. After this, it would seem too late to enjoin on the Houses of Congress a total forbearance from all comment on the measures of the Executive.

Not only is it the right of both Houses, or of either, to resist, by vote, declaration, or resolution, whatever it may deem an encroachment of Executive power, but it is also undoubtedly the right of either House to oppose, in like manner, any encroachment by the other. The two Houses have each its own appropriate powers and authorities, which it is bound to preserve. They have, too, different constituents. The members of the Senate are representatives of States; and it is in the Senate alone that the four

and-twenty States, as political bodies, have a direct influence in the legislative and executive powers of this Government. He is a strange advocate of State rights, who maintains that this body, thus representing the States, and thus being the strictly federal branch of the Legislature, may not assert and maintain all and singular its own powers and privileges, against either or both of the other branches.

If any thing be done or threatened derogatory to the rights of the States, as secured by the organization of the Senate, may we not lift up our voices against it? Suppose the House of Representatives should vote that the Senate ought not to propose amendments to revenue bills; would it be the duty of the Senate to take no notice of such proceeding? Or, if we were to see the President issuing commissions to office to persons who had never been nominated to the Senate, are we not to remonstrate?

Sir, there is no end of cases, no end of illustrations. The doctrines of the Protest, in this respect, cannot stand the slightest scrutiny; they are blown away by the first breath of discussion.

And yet, Sir, it is easy to perceive why this right of declaring its sentiments, respecting the conduct of the Executive, is denied to either House, in its legislative capacity. It is merely that the Senate might be presented in the odious light of trying the President, judicially, without regular accusation or hearing. The Protest declares that the President is charged with a crime, and, without hearing or trial, found guilty and condemned. This is evidently an attempt to appeal to popular feeling, and to represent the President as unjustly treated and unfairly tried. Sir, it is a false appeal. The President has not been tried at all; he has not been accused; he has not been charged with crime; he has not been condemned. Accusation, trial and sentence are terms belonging to judicial proceedings. But the Senate has been engaged in no such proceeding. The resolution of the 28th of March was not an exercise of judicial power, either in form, in substance, or in intent. Every body knows that the Senate can exercise no judicial power until articles of impeachment are brought before it.. It is then to proceed, by accusation and answer, hearing, trial, and judgment. But there has been no impeachment, no answer, no hearing, no judgment. All that the Senate did was to pass a resolution, in legislative form, declaring its opinion of certain acts of the Executive. This resolution imputed no crime; it charged no corrupt motive; it proposed no punishment. It was directed, not against the President, personally, but against the act; and that act it declared to be, in its judgment, an assumption of authority not warranted by the Constitution.

It is in vain that the Protest attempts to shift the resolution on to the judicial character of the Senate. The case is too plain for

such an argument to be plausible. But, in order to lay some foundation for it, the Protest, as I have already said, contends that neither the Senate, nor the House of Representatives, can express its opinions on the conduct of the President, except in some form connected with impeachment; so that if the power of impeachment did not exist, these two Houses, though they be representative bodies; though one of them be filled by the immediate representatives of the people; though they be constituted like other popular and representative bodies, could not utter a syllable, although they saw the Executive either trampling on their own rights and privileges, or grasping at absolute authority and dominion over the liberties of the country! Sir, I hardly know how to speak of such claims of impunity for Executive encroachment. I am amazed that any American citizen should draw up a paper containing such lofty pretensions-pretensions which would have been met with scorn, in England, at any time since the revolution of 1688. A man who should stand up, in either House of the British Parliament, to maintain that the House could not, by vote or resolution, maintain its own rights and privileges, would make even the tory benches hang their heads for very shame. There was, indeed, a time when such proceedings were not allowed. Some of the kings of the Stuart race would not tolerate them. A signal instance of royal displeasure with the proceedings of Parliament occurred in the latter part of the reign of James the First. The House of Commons had spoken, on some occasion, "of its own undoubted rights and privileges." The king thereupon sent them a letter, declaring that he would not allow that they had any undoubted rights; but that what they enjoyed they might still hold by his own royal grace and permission. Sir Edward Coke and Mr. Granville were not satisfied with this title to their privileges; and, under their lead, the House entered on its journals a resolution, asserting its privileges, as its own undoubted right, and manifesting a determination to maintain them as such. This, says the historian, so enraged his majesty, that he sent for the journal, had it brought into the council, and there, in the presence of his lords and great officers of state, tore out the offensive resolution with his own royal hand. He then dissolved Parliament, and sent its most refractory members to the Tower. I have no fear, certainly, Sir, that this English example will be followed, on this occasion, to its full extent; nor would I insinuate that any thing outrageous has been thought of, or intended, except outrageous pretensions; but such pretensions I must impute to the author of this Protest, whoever that author be.

When this and the other House shall lose the freedom of speech and debate; when they shall surrender the rights of publicly and freely canvassing all important measures of the Executive; when

they shall not be allowed to maintain their own authority and their own privileges by vote, declaration, or resolution,-they will then be no longer free representatives of a free people, but slaves themselves, and fit instruments to make slaves of others.

The Protest, Mr. President, concedes what it doubtless regards as a liberal right of discussion to the people themselves. But its language, even in acknowledging this right of the people to discuss the conduct of their servants, is qualified and peculiar. The free people of the United States, it declares, have an undoubted right to discuss the official conduct of the President, in such language and form as they may think proper, "subject only to the restraints of truth and justice." But, then, who is to be judge of this truth and justice? Are the people to judge for themselves, or are others to judge for them? The Protest is here speaking of political rights, and not moral rights; and if restraints are imposed on political rights, it must follow, of course, that others are to decide, whenever the case arises whether these restraints have been violated. It is strange that the writer of the Protest did not perceive that, by using this language, he was pushing the President into a direct avowal of the doctrines of 1798? The text of the Protest and the text of the obnoxious act of that year are nearly identical.

But, Sir, if the people have a right to discuss the official conduct of the Executive, so have their representatives. We have been taught to regard a representative of the people as a sentinel on the watch-tower of liberty. Is he to be blind, though visible danger approaches? Is he to be deaf, though sounds of peril fill the air? Is he to be dumb, while a thousand duties impel him to raise the cry of alarm? Is he not, rather, to catch the lowest whisper which breathes intention or purpose of encroachment on the public liberties, and to give his voice breath and utterance at the first appearance of danger? Is not his eye to traverse the whole horizon with the keen and eager vision of an unhooded hawk, detecting, through all disguises, every enemy advancing, in any form, towards the citadel which he guards? Sir, this watchfulness for public liberty; this duty of foreseeing danger and proclaiming it; this promptitude and boldness in resisting attacks on the Constitution from any quarter; this defence of established landmarks; this fearless resistance of whatever would transcend or remove them,-all belong to the representative character, are interwoven with its very nature, and of which it cannot be deprived, without converting an active, intelligent, faithful agent of the people into an unresisting and passive instrument of power. A representative body, which gives up these rights and duties, gives itself up. It is a representative body no longer. It has broken the tie between itself and its constituents, and henceforth is fit only to be regarded

as an inert, self-sacrificed mass, from which all appropriate principle of vitality has departed forever.

I have thus endeavored to vindicate the right of the Senate to pass the resolution of the 28th of March, notwithstanding the denial of that right in the Protest.

But there are other sentiments and opinions expressed in the Protest, of the very highest importance, and which demand nothing less than our utmost attention.

The first object of a free people is the preservation of their liberty; and liberty is only to be preserved by maintaining constitutional restraints and just divisions of political power. Nothing is more deceptive or more dangerous than the pretence of a desire to simplify government. The simplest governments are despotisms; the next simplest, limited monarchies; but all republics, all governments of law, must impose numerous limitations and qualifications of authority, and give many positive and many qualified rights. In other words, they must be subject to rule and regulation. This is the very essence of free political institutions. The spirit of liberty is, indeed, a bold and fearless spirit; but it is also a sharp-sighted spirit; it is a cautious, sagacious, discriminating, far-seeing intelligence; it is jealous of encroachment, jealous of power, jealous of man. It demands checks; it seeks for guards; it insists on securities; it entrenches itself behind strong defences, and fortifies, with all possible care, against the assaults of ambition and passion. It does not trust the amiable weaknesses of human nature, and therefore it will not permit power to overstep its prescribed limits, though benevolence, good intent, and patriotic purpose, come along with it. Neither does it satisfy itself with flashy and temporary resistance to illegal authority. Far otherwise. It seeks for duration and permanence. It looks before and after; and, building on the experience of ages which are past, it labors diligently for the benefit of ages to come. This is the nature of constitutional liberty; and this is our liberty, if we will rightly understand and preserve it. Every free government is necessarily complicated, because all such governments establish restraints, as well on the power of government itself, as on that of individuals. If we will abolish the distinction of branches, and have but one branch; if we will abolish jury trials, and leave all to the judge; if we will then ordain that the legislator shall himself be that judge; and if we will place the executive power in the same hands, we may readily simplify government. We may easily bring it to the simplest of all possible forms-a pure despotism. But a separation of departments, so far as practicable, and the preservation of clear lines of division between them, is the fundamental idea in the creation of all our constitutions; and, doubtless, the continuance of regulated liberty depends on maintaining these boundaries.