Father of his country, is but one form, in which irregular ambition, destitute of all true patriotism, and a love of power, reckless of the means of its gratification, exhibit their unsubdued and burning desire.

We believe, too, that party spirit, however natural or unavoidable it may be in free Republics, yet when it gains such an ascendency in men's minds, as leads them to substitute party for country, to seek no ends but party ends, no approbation but party approbation, and to fear no reproach or contumely, so that there be no party dissatisfaction, not only alloys the true enjoyment of such institutions, but weakens, every day, the foundations on which they stand.

We are in favor of the liberty of speech and of the press; we are friends of free discussion; we espouse the cause of popular education; we believe in man's capacity for self-government; we desire to see the freest and widest dissemination of knowledge and of truth; and we believe, especially, in the benign influence of religious feeling, and moral instruction, on the social as well as on the individual happiness of man.

Holding these general sentiments and opinions, we have come together to declare that, under the present administration of the General Government, a course of measures has been adopted and pursued, in our judgments, disastrous to the best interests of the country, threatening the accumulation of still greater evils, utterly hostile to the true spirit of the Constitution and to the principles of civil liberty, and calling upon all men of honest purpose, disinterested patriotism, and unbiased intelligence, to put forth their utmost constitutional efforts in order to effect a change.

General Andrew Jackson was elected President of the United States, and took the oaths and his seat on the 4th of March, 1829; and we readily admit that, under his administration, certain portions of the public affairs were conducted with ability. But we have to lament that he was not proof against the insinuations and influences of evil counsellors, or perhaps against his own passions, when moved and excited. Hence, in one most important branch of the public interest, in that essential part of commercial regulation which respects the money, the currency, the circulation, and the internal exchanges, of the country, accidental occurrences, acting on his characteristic love of rule, and uneasiness under opposition, led him to depart from all that was expected from him, and to enter upon measures which plunged both him and the country in greater and greater difficulties at every step, so that, in this respect, his whole course of administration was but a series of ill-fated experiments, and of projects framed in disregard of prudence and precedent, and bursting in rapid succession; the final explosion taking place a few months after his retirement from office.

General Jackson was not elected with any desire or expectation,

on the part of any of his supporters, that he would interfere with the currency of the country. We affirm this as the truth of history. It is incapable of refutation or denial. It is as certain as that the American Revolution was not undertaken to destroy the rights of property, or overthrow the obligation of morals.

But, unhappily, he became involved in a controversy with the then existing Bank of the United States. He manifested a desirehow originating, or by whom inspired, is immaterial to exercise a political influence over that institution, and to cause that institution to exercise, in turn, a political influence over the community. Published documents prove this, as plainly as they prove any other act of his administration. In this desire he was resisted, thwarted, and finally defeated. But what he could not govern, he supposed he could destroy; and the event showed that he did not overrate his popularity and his power. He pursued the Bank to the death, and achieved his triumph by the Veto of 1832. The accustomed means of maintaining a sound and uniform currency, for the use of the whole country, having been thus trampled down and destroyed, recourse was had to those new modes of experimental administration, to which we have already adverted, and which terminated so disastrously, both for the reputation of his administration and for the welfare of the country.

But General Jackson did not deny his constitutional obligations, nor seek to escape from their force. He never professedly abandoned all care over the general currency. His whole conduct show s that he admitted, throughout, the duty of the General Government to maintain a supervision over the currency of the country, both metallic and paper, for the general good and use of the people; and he congratulated both himself and the nation, that, by the measures adopted by him, the currency and the exchanges of the country were placed on a better footing than they ever had been under the operation of a Bank of the United States. This confidence in his own experiments, we know, proved most illusory. But the frequency with which he repeated this and similar declarations establishes, incontestably, his own sense of the duty of Government.

In all the measures of General Jackson upon the currency, the present Chief Magistrate is known to have concurred. Like him, he was opposed to the Bank of the United States; like him, he was in favor of the State Deposit Banks; and, like him, he insisted that, by the aid of such banks, the Administration had accomplished all that could be desired, on the great subjects of the currency and the exchange.

But the catastrophe of May, 1837, produced a new crisis, by overthrowing the last in the series of experiments, and creating an absolute necessity, either of returning to that policy of the Government which General Jackson had repudiated, or of renouncing

altogether the constitutional duty which it had been the object of that policy to perform. The latter branch of the alternative was adopted. Refuge was sought in escape. A duty, up to that moment admitted by all, was suddenly denied, and the fearful resolution announced, that Government would hereafter provide for its own revenues, and that for the rest, the people must take care of themselves.

Assembled here, to-day, and feeling, in common with the whole country, the evil consequences of these principles and these measures, we utter against them all, from first to last, our deep and solemn disapprobation and remonstrance. We condemn the early departure of General Jackson from that line of policy which he was expected to pursue. We deplore the temper which led him to his original quarrel with the Bank. We deplore the headstrong spirit which instigated him to pursue that institution to its destruction. We deplore the timidity of some, the acquiescence of others, and the subserviency of all of his party, which enabled him to carry its whole, unbroken phalanx to the support of measures, and the accomplishment of purposes, which we know to have been against the wishes, the remonstrances, and the consciences, of many of the most respectable and intelligent. We deplore his abandonment of those means for assuring a good currency, which had been successfully tried for forty years; his rash experiments with great interests; and the perseverance with which he persisted in them, when men of different temperament must have been satisfied of their uselessness and impotence.

But General Jackson's administration, authority, and influence, are now historical. They belong to the past, while we have to do, to-day, with the serious evils, and the still more alarming portents, of the present. We remonstrate, therefore, most earnestly and emphatically, against the policy upon this subject of the present Administration. We protest against the truth of its principles. We deny the propriety and justice of its measures. We are constrained to have too little respect for its objects, and we desire to rouse the country, so far as we can, to the evils which oppress and the dangers that surround us.

We insist that the present Administration has consulted its own party ends, and the preservation of its own power, to the manifest neglect of great objects of public interest. We think there is no liberality, no political comprehension, no just or enlarged policy, in its leading measures. We look upon its abandonment of the currency as fatal; and we regard its system of sub-Treasuries as but a poor device to avoid a high obligation, or as the first in a new series of ruthless experiments. We believe its professions in favor of a hard-money currency to be insincere; because we do not believe that any person, of common information and ordinary understanding,

can suppose that the use of paper, as a circulating medium, will be discontinued, even if such discontinuance were desirable, unless the Government shall break down the acknowledged authority of the State Governments to establish Banks. We believe the clamor against State Banks, State Bonds, and State Credits, to have been raised by the friends of the Administration to divert public attention from its own mismanagement, and to throw on others the consequence of its own conduct. We heard nothing of all this in the early part of General Jackson's administration, nor until his measures had brought the currency of the country into the utmost disorder. We know that, in times past, the present Chief Magistrate has, of all men, had most to do with the systems of State Banks, the most faith in their usefulness, and no very severely chastened desire to profit by their influence. We believe that the purpose of exercising a money influence over the community has never departed from the Administration. What it could not accomplish by an attempt to bend the Bank of the United States to its purposes, we believe it has sought, and now seeks, to effect by its project of the sub-Treasury. We believe that, in order to maintain the principles upon which the system of the sub-Treasury is founded, the friends of the Administration have been led to espouse opinions destructive of the internal commerce of the country, paralyzing to its whole industry, tending to sink its labor, both in price and in character, to the degraded standard of the uninformed, the ignorant, the suffering labor of the worst parts of Europe. Led by the same necessity, or pushing the same principles still farther, and with a kind of revolutionary rapidity, we have seen the rights of property not only assailed, but denied; the boldest agrarian notions put forth; the power of transmission from father to son openly denounced; the right of one to participate in the earnings of another, to the rejec tion of the natural claims of his own children, asserted as a fundamental principle of the new Democracy;—and all this by those who are in the pay of Government, receiving large salaries, and whose offices would be nearly sinecures, but for the labor performed in the attempt to give currency to these principles and these opinions. We believe that the general tone of the measures of the Adminis tration, the manner in which it confers favors, its apparent preference for partisans of extreme opinions, and the readiness with which it bestows its confidence on the boldest and most violent, are producing serious injuries upon the political morals and general sentiments of the country. We believe that to this cause is fairly to be attributed the most lamentable change which has taken place in the temper, the sobriety, and the wisdom, with which the high public counsels have been hitherto conducted. We look with aların to the existing state of things, in this respect; and we would most earnestly, and with all our hearts, as well for the honor of the coun

try, as for its interests, beseech all good men to unite with us in an attempt to bring back the deliberative age of the Government-to restore to the collected bodies of the People's Representatives that self-respect, decorum, and dignity, without which the business of legislation can make no regular progress, and is always in danger either of accomplishing nothing, or of reaching its ends by unjustifiable and violent means.

We believe the conduct of the Administration respecting the public revenue to be highly reprehensible. It has expended twenty millions, previously accumulated, besides all the accruing income, since it came into power; and there seems at this moment to be no doubt that it will leave to its successors a public debt of from five to ten millions of dollars. It has shrunk from its proper responsibilities. With the immediate prospect of an empty treasury, it has yet not had the manliness to recommend to Congress any adequate provision. It has constantly spoken of the excess of receipts over expenditures, until this excess has finally manifested itself in an absolute necessity for loans, and in a power conferred on the President, altogether new, and in our judgment hostile to the whole spirit of the Constitution, to meet the event of want of resources by withholding, out of certain classes of appropriations made by Congress, such as he chooses to think may be best spared. It lives by shifts and contrivances, by shallow artifices and delusive names, by what it calls facilities," and the "exchange of Treasury notes for specie ;" while, in truth, it has been fast contracting a public debt, in the midst of all its boasting, without daring to lay the plain and naked truth of the case before the people.

We protest against the conduct of the House of Representatives in the case of the New Jersey election. This is not a local, but a general question. In the Union of the States, on whatever link the blow of injustice or usurpation falls, it is felt, and ought to be felt, through the whole chain. The cause of New Jersey is the cause of every State, and every State is therefore bound to vindicate it.

That the regular commission, or certificate of return, signed by the chief magistrate of the State, according to the provisions of law, entitles those who produce it to be sworn in as members of Congress, to vote in the organization of the House, and to hold their seats until their right be disturbed by regular petition and proof, is a proposition of constitutional law, of such universal extent and universal acknowledgment, that it cannot be strengthened by argument or by analogy. There is nothing clearer, and nothing better settled. No legislative body could ever be organized without the adoption of this principle. Yet, in the case of the New Jersey members, it was entirely disregarded. And it is of awful portent that on such a question,a question in its nature strictly judicial,-the domination of party should lead men thus flagrantly to violate first principles.