UNIVERSITY LIBRARY

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YALE UNIVERSITY
LIBRARY

A REPLY TO THE LETTER

OF

J. FENIMORE COOPER.

BY

ONE OF HIS COUNTRYMEN.

REPLY

TO THE LETTER

J. FENIMORE COOPER,

ONE OF HIS COUNTRYMEN,

BOSTON.
(PUBUSHED BY J. T. BUCKINGHAM,
1834,

TO J. FENIMORE COOPER.

I EXERCISE a common right, as one of your country
men, in replying to some passages of the Letter,' which
you have recently addressed to the whole people of the
United States. In doing this, it is no part of my design
to comment particularly on those topics of alleged person
al grievance, which occupy the chief part of your com
munication. We, of the general mass of your fellow-cit
izens, who were accustomed to read your works with
delight, — who admired your genius, — who knew you only
as an eminently popular novelist, — who prized your lite
rary reputation as parcel of our own great national her
itage, — we, the indiscriminate people of the United States,
regard your Letter, so far as it relates to yourself individ
ually, with unmingled emotions of mortification and sor
row. There is no party-feeling in this, either American
or European. If not a solitary word of American poli
tics had appeared in your Letter, our sentiments on this
point would have been precisely the same ; for, whatever
be our party-banner, we universally honor and esteem the
nationality of spirit, which is alike predominant in the
Pioneers or the Prairie, and in the more didactic page of the
Notions of the Americans. Neither are we doctrinaires^,
Orleaniste^, foreign diplomatic agents, or aught else, which
there may be, of transatlantic name, to rack your imagin
ation with terrors of persecution abroad, and slander at
at home. None of these considerations affect our judge-

4
tnent. But we grieve to see this new chapter in the
record of the infirmities of genius. We deplore a glori
ous planet darting madly from its empyrean sphere.
We seem to be lessened in our own estimation, hum
bled, depressed as by an overwhelming evidence of our
universal human weakness, in witnessing this aberration
of the great faculty of intellect, in beholding the weak
spots in higher and nobler mind, thus laid bare, self-
exposed, to the profanation of vulgar gaze. Participat
ing in all these feelings, and your name, as an author,
being 'coupled in my memory with so many reminiscences
of pride and of pleasure, I abstain, therefore, absolutely
and entirely, from any remark upon your exposition of the
controversy between you and certain of the newspapers of
New-York. My business, at present, is with the extraordinary poli
tical opinions, which, — in the professed intention of exem
plifying the spirit of foreign imitation, characteristic, as
you say, of this country,^you have introduced into
your Letter.
In the very beat and agony of a mighty political strug
gle,— the mightiest since the days of the Revolution, —
you have gratuitously thrown yourself into the midst of
¦the strife. Quitting the field of honor whereon you were
nearly supreme, you have descended into the common
arena of party contention, totally unfitted for the contest
by all the habits and occupation of a life-time, to gain a
dubious honor if successful, but under the assurance,
meanwhile, of almost inevitable discomfiture. Aspiring
to be more profound, logical, learned, and far-seeing
than Clay and Webster, in the comprehension of the
great principles of national polity,— more critical, acut?,
and •penetrative in the construction of the Constitution
than Calhoun and Leigh,— you deny to the Senate of
the United States, all right to express, and by conse-

quence to entertain, any opinion upon the executive acts
of the Chief Magistrate. He may, directly and undis
guisedly, violate the Constitution ; but they must be blind,
dumb, senseless, even in view of the prostration of their
own constitutional powers, as a co-ordinate branch of
Congress, and as the representations of the States of the
Union. In your apprebension, the Resolutions of the
Senate are unconstitutional, and fraught with mischief;
but in the Protest of the President, and the series of out
rageous measures which preceded it, there seems to be
nothing to alarm the most timid understanding. Therein,
you and the Nation are at issue ; and it were idle to touch
upon the points of this question, after the masterly and
irrefragable constitutional arguments, with which Mr.
Webster has justified his vote in the Senate. At the
same time, whilst you were coming to such a conclusion,
with the Resolutions and Protest before you, and whilst
you were seeking for examples of English analogies and
English precedents obtruded into the politics of the Unit
ed States, it is somewhat marvellous that you should have
overlooked the remarkable feature of the Protest itself,
namely, the express assertion of an inherent executive
authority in the President, prior to the Constitution, a
sort of divine right drawn from analogy of the ro\'al
prerogatives of the kings of Great Britain. You en
deavor, by elaborate construction, to make out a case of
foreign imitation against the Senate : you shut your eyes
to' a case, in the self-same transaction, of monstrous
and most dangerous foreign imitation, avowed on the part
of the President.
But my quarrel is not with these doctrines or averments
of your Letter. What I specially deny and impugn is
the strange heresy it puts forth, — a misconception so pal
pable as not even to possess the faint lustre of mere par
adox, — that, in the United States, the great object of

public suspicion and watchfulness should be the legislative,
rather than the executive, department of the government.
That your declared opinions, and my remarks upon
them, may be clearly understood, I premise a few extracts
from your Letter. No injustice will be done to you in
separating them from the context, because they are essen
tially independent observations, involving ideas extrinsic
to your argument, and to be construed by reference to the
general principles of political science.
In one place you say :
' This measure of withholding the supplies is peculiarly English ; it is the means
by which Parliament has destroyed whatever of balance the government ever had,
and is the simplest, the most obvious, and the most dangerous of all the modes of
legislative usurpation. It is time to begin to consider our legislators in their true
character; not as sentinels to watch the executive merely, but as those of the
public servants the most likely to exceed their delegated authority.'
Again you say : —
' If this Union ever shall be destroyed by any errors or faults of an internal
origin, it will not be by executive, but by legislative, usurpation. The former is
easily enough restrained , while the latter, cloaked under the appearance of legality
and representation, is but too apt to carry the public sentiment with it. England
has changed its form of government, from that of a monarchy to that of an ex
ceedingly offensive aristocracy, precisely in this manner.'
And yet again, after ascribing to the President exclu
sive control of the public treasure, in the offensive, and
universally repudiated, terms of the Protest, you say : —
' Many who read this Letter will feel disposed to exclaim against a state of
tilings, which places so much power in the hands of one man. I see far less ap- •
prehension of executive than of legislative usurpation, in this country. Still, I
am willing to admit that the President has too much authority for our form of
government.' Well, indeed, might you admit this, if the high prerog
ative doctrines of the Protest were sanctioned by the text
or spirit of the Constitution. But, allow me to observe,
you misapprehend the great source of danger in our form
of government, not less than you do the extent of the
powers of the President. I undertake to show that the
general position, which you thus deliberately and repeat
edly state, is false in principle, and that it is mischievoul
in application.

It is quite manifest how you arrived at such an erroneous
opinion. It was by the self-same course which you yourself
so pointedly condemn, the unconsidered adoption of prece
dents from the history of England. You perceived that,
in very modern times, the English Parliament, or rather,
the House of Commons, had been the successful antago
nist of the Crown. You remembered that, in the days of
the Commonwealth, it had actually usurped and appropri
ated the whole public authority. You knew how, during
the two last reigns, it had practically exercised complete
control over executive measures by means of its power to
withhold supplies, or otherwise by its votes to embarrass
the royal ministers. You had witnessed its late innova
tion upon the constitution of government, in the laws of
parliamentary reform. Out of these and other analogous
acts of the English Parliament, you have extracted a gen
eral political theory, that usurpation is to be apprehended
from the legislative branch of government, rather than
from the executive, that great object of patriot and repub
lican jealousy in all ages of the world. A moment's re
flection will satisfy you that this is an erroneous view of
the facts. Grant that, in England, ' Parliament has de
stroyed whatever of balance the government ever had,'
and this, too, by ' legislative usurpation.' What usur
pation f Why, trulyl this which you thus stigmatize as
usurpation, and hold up in terror to us, lest we should be
over watchful of the monarchical element of our Consti
tution, and over trustful in the representative and popular
element, — this usurpation it is, which gave back to Eng
land, by wresting it from the tyranny of the Crown, all
that of great and free, in her institutions, which renders
them a name of glory among the nations of Europe. Her
statesmen boast of her limited monarchy. It is limited,
solely by reason of the functions acquired to Parliament,
through what you designate as 'legislative usurpation.'

But the case is applicable to our institutions only as it dlus-
trates one of the grand political aims of the age, abstracting
power from the executive, and tran.f erring it to ihe legisla
tive, branch of the government. It is no otherwise appli
cable, because, with us, the executive and the legislative
authorities are alike public functionaries, with limited pow
er delegated to them by the Constitution. And which of
these authorities, the legislative or the executive, is most
to be apprehended by the constituent people, is not a ques
tion of mere English analogy, as you put it, — but a ques
tion of human motive and action, tested by experience and
principle, and considered with reference to our own pecu
liar Constitution.
Independently of the misapplied English precedents, from
which you infer the lamb-like innocence of the executive
as compared with the legislative authority, under our Con
stitution, you cursorily allude to some other considerations,
which demand a brief notice. One is, the faculty of Con
gress, or either branch of it, as already touched upon, lo
refuse its assent to the annual appropriations. I reply, that
the power of doing this belongs to the Senate and the
House of Representatives severally, by positive grant of
the Constitution; and the exercise of a power, thus con
ferred, cannot be justly termed an act of usurpation. Con
gress, or either branch of it, has the same right to negative
an appropriation, which the President deems essential to
the public service, as the President has to veto a bank-
bill or a land-bill, or a bill for internal improvements,
which Congress deems for the welfare of the Union.
You say, that in so doing. Congress is not withholding its
supplies, but our supplies ; and, in so doing, likewise, the
President is not vetoing Us bank or his public improve
ments, but our bank and our public improvements. You
say, that for a legislator to oppose granting supplies in or
der to ' embarrass an administration,' is a direct insult to

the intelligence of the constituency ; and so, likewise, for
an executive magistrate to oppose a bank, in order to up
hold an administration, is a direct insult to the intelligence
of the nation. But if the President, illegally, usurpingly,
in derogation of the Constitution, seizes upon the public
treasure, and loans it out to irresponsible political partisans
for party-purposes merely, — it is a clear case of constitu
tional discretion for either the Senate or House of Rep
resentatives to judge, whether, in voting the supplies, they
will see to the security of the revenue ; and in doing so
they proceed upon their responsibility to the respective
States, or to the people they represent, in the exercise of
a function given them by the Constitution.
Which is most liable to misuse its constitutional discre
tion, the President or either branch of Congress, is a very
different question. As to this you express an opinion, that
executive usurpation is easily restrained, while legislative
usurpation, being cloaked under the appearance of legali
ty and representation, is but too apt to carry with it the
public sentiment ; and these are the remaining reasons,
which you assign, for your greater confidence in the ex
ecutive authority.
' Appearance of legality and representation !' What
language of a Liberal and an American, applied to the
Congress of the United States ! How, appearance of
representation ? Have you lent your ear to the insidious
doctrine of incipient tyranny, broached in the Protest,
that the President is the peculiar representative of the
people ? Do you forget that one branch of Congress
consists of individuals chosen directly by the people, and
who are, by name and constitution, its only immediate
Representatives ?' Of what citizen is the President the
direct representative ? He is chosen by small electoral
colleges, assembled in each State. Those electors are, in
many instances, chosen, not by the people directly, but by
2

10
the legislatures of States. In the last resort even, he is
chosen, not by the people, but by their Representatives in
Congress. It is, therefore, an implication, pregnant of
error, to speak of the legislative authority as acting with
appearance of representation.
And how, appearance of legality ? Observe, that we
are considering the relative tendency to usurpation of the
President and of Congress, adversely each to the other ;
and for an act of Congress to wear the ' appearance of
legality,' it must have the assent of the President, and of
course, cannot be any usurpation upon his authority. If,
indeed, two-thirds of each house of Congress should pass
a bill, after it had been rejected by the President upon a
constitutional question, a difficult emergency would have
arisen. If Congress were actually exceeding its constitu
tional powers, and the case did not readily admit of set
tlement by judicial interpretation, it must, of course, be
for the States or the people to decide between the two
parties ; and in that event, certainly the chances of victo
ry, as 1 shall hereafter argue, would be on the side of the
President and the Constitution. Doubtless there is ample
cause, under our Constitution, to be jealous of usurpation
on the part of Congress and the President, conjointly, that
is, the entire Government of the Union. Our assurance
against this lies in the general integrity of the people, and
when that fails, in the state-pride and public independence
of the separate States. Even at the present time, but
for the patriotism and wisdom of the Senate, representing
the qualified sovereignty of the States, we might see the
national liberties overborne by an usurping President, and
by that Administration majority of the House of Represen
tatives, which is denounced by the President himself, as
venal and corrupt. Usurpation by the joint power of the
President and Congress, I repeat, is possible ; but this is
not the ' legislative usurpation' spoken of in your Letter.

11
Executive usurpation, you allege, is easily restrained ;
that is, under our Constitution. Is it so ? Undoubtedly,
there are legal means of repression, as applied to executive
magistrates, namely, the preferring an impeachment ; and
no such means, as applied to members of Congress. You
express wonder, in one place, that members of Congress
are not proceeded against by impeachment ; and ascribe
this to false imitation of the English. Not so. The Pres
ident possesses vast independent power, greater, as you
yourself avow, than that exercised by the King of Great-
Britain. An individual member of Congress, what inde
pendent power does he possess, — except it be to make
speeches, and frank them to his constituents ? And either
house of Congress, as a legislative body, possesses very
little separate independent power. It cannot, as you be
lieve, so much as express an opinion, except in the form
of, or with a direct view to, legislative action, wherein its
own decision is of no avail without the concurrence of the
other house and of the President. Nor are the powers of
Congress, in themselves, apt for abuse. Whereas it is
inherent in the executive functions, as will hereafter be
made to appear, that they should be peculiarly susceptible
of abuse, and perpetually run into usurpation.
Whether you build your opinions, as to the danger of
legislative usurpation, and the innocuous quality of the ex
ecutive power, upon the foregoing considerations alone, is
not distinctly stated in your Letter. But the confident
air of conviction, wherewith you announce the doctrine,
would imply that you have deduced it from attentive scru
tiny of history, or profound analysis of the principles of
public polity. The subject, interesting in itself, invites a
careful examination.
In a constitutional government, like that of the United
States, a majority of the constituent people may, in some
sense, commit usurpation ; and this happens, when they

12
remodel or amend the constitutional compact, or appoint
a chief magistrate, by unconstitutional methods, as the
South-American States have done in several instances.
One of the States may impose unconstitutional conditions
upon the sister States. Congress, or the President, sepa
rately or jointly, may arrogate power conferred on neither,
but reserved to the people or to the States. Congress
may assume to perform acts, which it belongs to the
President to perform ; and the President to perform acts,
which are the province of Congress. All these and other
forms of usurpation are conceivable and possible. But
for the purposes of the present investigation, it needs only
to consider Congress and the President relatively, in re
spect of two forms of usurpation, namely :
First, Whether is Congress, or the President, according
to the first principles of government and the theory of our
Constitution, most likely to encroach one upon the other,
in the discharge of duties actually imposed upon them, or
one of them, by the Constitution ; and,
Secondly, Whether is Congress, or the President, sin
gly, most likely to usurp powers reserved to the people or
the States. I say singly, because examples of alleged
usurpation by the joint authority of the President and
Congress, as in tariff-laws, laws of internal improvement,
or other alleged unconstitutional laws, do not bear upon
the question of the relative tendency of the President
singly, or of Congress singly, to encroach upon the people
or the States.
I maintain, as a general political theorem, that, in each
of these two conditions, the executive authority is more
dangerous to the public liberties than the legislative au
thority ; or, to speak with stricter exactness of language,
that there is more cause of apprehension from the Presi
dent, than from either or both of the two houses of Con
gress. And, in illustrating my opinion upon this subject,

13
I shall, in the first place, run quickly over a few examples
of other free nations, and then look more particularly at
the case of the United States.
Most of the valuable lessons of national polity, appli
cable to the European civilization, are drawn from the
history of the great nations of Europe, and of their colo
nial offsets in America. It would little avail us, in the
present inquiry, to depart out of the limits thus indicated.
Within these, we find the splendid Republics of Greece
and Rome, the very watchword of liberty, names of
greatness, bright with a halo of never-dying glory. The
Republics of modern Italy, Switzerland, and the Low
Countries, — the less durable ones of England and France,
— the great military democracies of the middle age, out
of which came the various kingdoms of modern Europe,
— in all these, facts are to be discovered pertinent to our
purpose. Nor, leaving Europe, is there any dearth of
such facts in the young Republics of America.
Cast your eye over the universal book of ancient histo
ry. Great and good men, — patriots of whom the world
was unworthy, everlasting memorials of the dignity and
intellect of manhood, — meet the search from time to time
in its pages. Which of them were champions of the one
depositary of executive power ? — Unroll the old world's
record of moral grandeur. Names of famous men shine
upon it like stars in the galaxy of heaven. First among
them we see party-leaders lifted into extravagant popular
ity and power in some fever-fit of the body politic, — gen
erally successful military chieftains, exhibiting that union
of cunning and force which too often goes to make a
conqueror, — wild meteors, glaring athwart the firmament,
and filling the troubled world with discord and confusion,
so as to gratify their own selfish ambition of power and
to feed their supple syphocants with the ' spoils of victory.'
Need I specify them by individual call ? In the demo-

14
cratic cities of Greece, their number has given them a
generic name, which is now passed into the by-word of
usurpation and misrule. The tyrants of ancient Greece
were executive chiefs, who,— despite the perpetual de
mocratic jealousies of the people,— despite the many'
instances of their fatal end under the dagger of an Harmo-
dius, an Aristogeiton, even of a brother so pure as Timo-
leon, — yet continually exemplified, by their conduct in
ofifice, the tendency of the temporary chiefs of republics
to gather more and more power into their hands by grad
ual usurpations, until they become absolute monarchs un
der whatever disguise of legal forms and denominations.
And so it is with the dictators and usurping generals of
Rome, — Cinna, Marius, Sulla, Csesar. All the great
commonwealths of ancient times have passed away ; and
in what did they end.'' Is it not the familiar fact of
school-boy learning that they sunk under the usurpations
of some popular military chieftain ? That they ended in
becoming, not representative aristocracies, as your theory
would imply, but simple monarchies ? And these, I admit,
the dictators, the usurpers, the popular military chieftains,
are they, — with lives written in blood, and signalized by
violence and outrage, whether in camp or court, — who
exact our attention in all the lapse of ages, because deso
lation, civil convulsion, the overturn of states, the break
ing up of popular institutions, and the rise of brilliant
despotisms, follow along in their tremendous train. But
are such the patriots of the past time, endeared to us,
admired, honored, sanctified in our hourly thoughts, held
up to our sons as models of purity and virtue, shining
century upon century in the dimless lustre of their beau
tiful fame ? Oh no ! If ye would name a name, that
shall send the thrilling blood in a tide to the heart, it is
none of these usurping chieftains, who, having filled the
high places of their country with a mercenary host of

15
obedient followers, and possessing the sword already, by
usurpation joined to it the purse, and so became too
mighty for the public liberties ; it is none of these ; — but
rather men, who bore up the banner of their country's
honor and independence against executive usurpation, and
perchance died by the sword or the axe in resisting it, the
blessed martyrs of freedom. And as thus it is in the history
of the ancient republics, so, likewise, will any, the most
superficial observation, perceive it to be in modern Europe.
But suppose we examine this matter under a more
philosophical point of view. At the period when our
authentic knowledge of Greece begins, we perceive a
people inhabiting the southeastern extremity of Europe,
and the neighboring region of Asia, with the interjected
islands, speaking dialects of the same common tongue,
having manners, religion, and historical recollections in
common, and constituting thus far one nation, but yet
divided into separate and independent communities, only
casually or at least imperfectly associated for any of those
great purposes of peace or war, which belong to the unity
of national organization or force. These communities
generally consisted of each of the great cities, with its
environs, and occasionally some portion of subject terri
tory. Such were Sparta, Argos, Thebes, Athens. At
first, they appear in the form of monarchies ; afterwards,
some of them are changed in the process of domestic
revolution into brilliant democracies. In either condition,
they associated in general league for occasional great ob
jects, as in the aggressive one of the Trojan war, and the
defensive ones of resistance to the invasion of Darius and
Xerxes. They more frequently associated in partial
leagues, for internal warfare among themselves, as in so
many of the sanguinary contests between Athens and
Sparta. They possessed, also, at times, imperfect forms.
of permanent league, as in their Amphictyonic Council.

16
Look, now, into the interior organization of either of
the great divisions of Greece, which for any length of
time possessed a democratic form of government. Take
Athens, the greatest, the wisest, the brightest, of the
Republics of Greece. Have you imagined that Athens
was a powerful nation, having free institutions of govern
ment by an elected chief magistrate, a stable judiciary,
and a representative legislature, like the United States,
or either of its confederated States ? By no means. It
was merely a free town, whose legal citizens managed its
affairs by a simple town government, and deliberated upon
the enactment of laws, the levy of armies, the prosecution
of war, the conclusion of peace, the appointment of mag
istrates or generals, and the punishment of political offen
ces, in a plain, downright, genuine town-meeting. Its
government was a free municipal government, no more
and no less, exercised directly by the inhabitants of the*^
city in their capacity of citizens, and to which the inhab
itants of the subject foreign territory, and of the rural
population without its walls, were admitted, not in the
form of representation, but only as they might become
entitled by acquiring what in our law is called the free
dom of the city. In these town-meetings, primarily, and
for the most part, resided the deliberative voice of the
Athenians ; in them were pronounced those admirable ora
tions of Demosthenes and his cotemporaries, the great
examples of the deliberative oratory of the Greeks.
Now what was the machinery of usurpation in Athens ?
The lover of monarchy will reply that it was democratic
usurpation, the extorting of power from the line of The
seus, and the giving it to the areopagus and the assemblies
of the people. The republican \a ill reply that this was
but a restoration of political power to the citizens at
large, the only legitimate claimants of power. Well,
take it upon the latter hypothesis ; for surely none other

17
can be upheld by an American. What act of -usurpation
begins the tale ? Is it not that of Pisistratus ? And
how did he attain illegal power ? A Greek shall tell.
'He counterfeited so dexterously the good qualities which nature had denied
him, that he gained more credit than the real possessors of them, and stood fore
raost in the public esteem in point of moderation and equity, in zeal for the pres
ent government, and aversion to all that, endeavored at a change. With these arts
he imposed upon the people.'
What I have thus quoted was written, let me caution
you, nearly two thousand years ago, — not, as you might
imagine, in the summer of one thousand eight hundred
and thirty four.
Moreover, the same Pisistratus paraded his wounds in the
market-place, like a mendicant for alms, and thus contriv
ed ' to inflame the minds of the people, by telling them his
enemies had laid in ivait for him, and treated lum in this
manner on account of his patriotism.^ Thus Pisistratus
made his way to tyranny. And then it was that the wise
and virtuous Solon addressed himself to the citizens,
' sometimes upbraiding them with their past indiscretion
and cowardice, sometimes exhorting and encouraging them
to stand up for their liberty.' Then it was that Solon
used the remarkable expressions : ' It would have been
easier for you to repress the advances of tyranny, and pre
vent its establishment ; but noiv it is established and grown
to some height, it will be the more glorious to demolish it.''
And may the friends of liberty re-echo the exhortation in
every age !
But the Pisistratidse had their reward ; and the next
remarkable case of usurpation in Athens is that of Peri
cles. And how did he proceed ? Why, by banding to
gether a host of corrupt office-holders, and then using
them to lift him to absolute power ; for, says the historian,
' by pensions- and gratuities, he so inveigled the people as
to avail himself of their interest against the council of the
areopagus,'' that select legislative body, the only element
of stability and conservation in the government of Athens.
3

18
And is not this the very scene now enacting in these
United States ?
Look, now, at the state of things in Italy. When we
endeavor to call to mind the condition of any of the an
cient nations celebrated in history, we are prone lo have
before us the idea or image of that nation in its external
relations, and in the general whole, as one great power
acting in the aggregate upon the affairs of the world.
Such, at least, is the tendency of mind, as I observe it, in
those individuals, who have not reflected or studied upon *
the subject of Rome in reference to questions of abstract
political philosophy. On the very outside of things, we
see conquering armies led forth to the uttermost limits of
the civilized world ; — Spain, Gaul, Britain, Germany, on
the one side, — Carthage, Greece, Asia Minor, Syria^
Egypt, on the other, subjugated by the consuls or praetors
of Rome ; all mankind, as it were, coming under the do-
• minion of this proud Republic, this great centre of empire, "
sending out her lordly proconsuls to domineer over Europe,
Asia, and Africa. Let us approach this ambitious and
haughty power, which is commissioning Publius Scipio or
Caius Marius to cross the seas, and carry the eagles of .
the Republic into Africa ; which gives to Paulus iEmilius
authority to bind in chains the royal posterity of Alexander
of Macedon, or bids C. Mummius subdue the hummed
Greeks ; which commissions Ciieius Pompey or Cornelius*
Sulla to march their legions over half the prostrate thrones
of Asia ; which bestows on Caius Caesar a general mis
sion of victory for all Europe :— Let us approach it, I say,
and see what that is, which thus revolutionizes the uni
verse, and by what means it thus propagates and renders
universal the imperial sway of Italy. Truly it is nothing
but a great city, having a select deliberative assembly,
indeed, but still transacting its most important business in
a pure and genuine town-meeting; establishing, wherever

19
it goes, in Spain, Gaul, Germany, simple municipalities, —
mimic Romes, — civic institutions, not national ones, —
town-governments, not great constitutional or representa
tive republics.
Such, undeniably, is the fact. Our earliest knowledge
of Italy opens to us the spectacle of another Greece, its
political institutions being, indeed, derived from the Greeks.
Great cities are seen here and there, the chiefs of some local
league, or the rulers of some agricultural district, all along
in Erturia, Latium, or Magna Greecia. Presently one of
these cities engages in war with a neighboring city, and
makes the latter tributary ,• and so on from one to anoth
er until it has vanquished the whole peninsula. This is
Rome. But through all this beginning career of empire,
she still retains her municipal organization. It is the city
and citizens of Rome, with a civic not a national organi
zation, which conquer. The same civic organization re
mains to the conquered. They are the subjects or allies
of Rome as cities, not as individuals ; and the external
affairs of Italy, the first Punic War for instance, are still the
exclusive business of the great town-meetings of Rome.
At length, the Italian cities tire of being equally bur
thened with the expenses and labors of the vast enterpris
es of Rome, without participating in the honors and
enjoyments of power. What happens ? Is a representa
tive government like ours established ? Do the inhabit
ants of Capua, and Patavium, and other great towns,
choose individuals of their number in whom they repose
trust, to meet in Rome, with individuals delegated in like
manner by the inhabitants of Rome, and there consult for
the common good, as Worcester, Springfield, Plymouth,
Salem, appoint their representatives to assemble in Boston,
together with the representatives of Boston ? Not at all.
Instead of this, the freedom of the city of Rome is^ spe
cially granted to particular individuals, or the inhabitants

20
of particular towns, so that they become citizens of, and
voters in, the city of Rome ; and thus only do they par
ticipate in the governraent. In the sequel, when this par
tial doling out of the political privilege ceases to content
the Italians, there grows up the Social War, which ends in
the gradual extension of the freedom of Rome to the
whole of Italy. This was the first great step in the
downfall of the Republic ; and the second was when the
foreign provincials were admitted to the same right of
voting and acting, not by representatives, but directly, in
the municipal assemblies of Rome.
This municipal quality of the Greek and Roman gov
ernments has left the traces of itself in the language of
political science applied to a totally different condition of
the world. Whence the very word politics ? It means,
in its origin, the affairs of a city. What name is given to
him who enjoys the elective franchise ? Simply, that of
citizen. What is the civil law, but the law of a city, and,
by distinction, the law of that pre-eminent city, Rome '^
What is civilization itself in its etymology, but the becom
ing citified, if I may so speak, an idea, which in the
changed manners of the middle age, came to denote some- .
thing mercantile, or mechanical, and the reverse of its ori
ginal application. So the word metropolis, which, although
sometimes improperly used to signify the capital city of a
country, yet in strictness means the city from which a coU
ony has gone out, and of which colony it is the mother-
city. And this fact, by the way, illustrates the great
distinction between the modern European colonies and the
ancient colonies of the Greeks. The old colonies were
voluntary emigrations of the surplus inhabitants of some
city, who went abroad to found a new city ; and the moth
er-city regarded the new city as a child, to be protected
and aided if need were, but not as a subject to be held in
obedience.

21
Well, now, in the long run, did the select legislative
body of Rome usurp on the people or consuls, or did the
consuls usurp on the Senate and people ? In every chap
ter of Livy, of Plutarch, of Cicero, — the fact is appar
ent, that it was the executive magistrates, the consuls,
ever the consuls, who, after uniting the sword and the
purse, humbled the Senate, and then lorded it at will over
subject Rome. In these, the declining days of her liber
ty, it was by intruded foreign votes, as all testimony avers,
that the mischief was wrought. And the grey hairs of
age were not less prominent in this work of consular usur
pation than the greener vigor of early manhood. Age
and long services have lately been pointed at as pledges
of executive purity. But we read that one of these usurp
ing generals, — Caius Marius, — at the age of seventy, dis
tinguished by the unparalleled honor of seven consulships,
and possessed of a princely fortune in money, lands, and
slaves, died in a delirious phrensy of ambition for addi
tional wealth, honor, and power. Governments pass away ;
institutions are changed ; nations rise up, move on for a
space, and disappear, like the figures of a phantasmagoria ;
but in all ages man is one ; and that which was human
nature in Rome, may be human nature in America.
Illustrations crowd upon us on every side, as we advance
to the history of modern Europe. Prominent therein, as
the pioneers of civilization, stand the Republics of Italy,
closely resembling those of ancient Greece, in their civic
organizati6n, in their turbulent liberty, in the contest of
classes going on within each distinct municipality, in the
martial spirit of their inhabitants, in their mutual warfare,
and in their final subjugation to the tyranny of their own
executive chiefs, simultaneously with the loss of the na
tional independence of the Italians. Of all that magnifi
cent family of republics, all, all, yielded up their liberties
to some usurping chief, in one form of usurpation or an-

22
other, excepting the city of Lucca, the small village of
San Marino, and the more potent states of Genoa and
Venice. You may, if you please, take Lucca, Genoa,
and Venice, as examples on your side of the question, of
legislative usurpation ; inasmuch as they became, or
continued to be, mere aristocracies. Be it so ; the differ- -
ence, then, is just here : the great mass of the Italian Re
publics, Florence, Milan, Amalfi, Pisa, Pavia, Verona,
Siena, Bologna, in short, all the once free cities of Italy,
are examples on my behalf ; while three are in appear
ance adverse to it ; and the force of the argument is a
simple numerical comparison. 1 say, in appearance ; for,
if Venice and Genoa do come down to our times in
the form of aristocracies, yet such were all the Italian
Republics; — and how cultivated, prosperous, rich, power
ful, were these two to the last, preserving a proud indepen
dence amid the wrecks of their sister Republics ! — They
maintained their external independence, by maintaining
their domestic independence ; the impotence of their doges
rendered them harmless ; and it was in precisely the same
way, by depriving their executive chiefs of the power to do
mischief, that Switzerland so long continued a Republic.
There is one other great republican confederacy, which,
by pur,suing a course of domestic policy opposite to that
of Switzerland, saw itself continualh' subject to the usur
pation of a military chief, and at length settled down into
a mere monarchy. I allude to the United Provinces,
whole whole domestic political history is a staliding illus
tration of my hypothesis. Were not Cornelius and John
de Witt torn in pieces, — did not Barneveldt perish by ju
dicial murder, — was not Grotius banished, — that some
stadtholder might rule supreme in the Netherlands ? And
are not the magistrates and the treasures of Amsterdam
expelled at last from their ancient abode, that a roitelet may
king it in the desecrated halls of her noble Stadhuis ?

23
But tlie great monarchies of modern Europe all afford
not less cogent proofs in support of my general position.
So as not to receive this in any degree upon the mere
trust of broad assertion, let me intreat you to reflect a
moment, and call to memory that condition of the world,
out of which the manners, languages, and laws of the
modern civilized nations have sprung. It was, you will
remember, the state of barbarism and anarchy consequent
in the invasion of the Roman empire by the Barbarians
from the North. The existing governments of England,
France, Spain, Germany, are what remains of the feudal
system engrafted by the Barbarian conquerors upon the
municipal and religious institutions of the Romans. A
band of these Barbarians, be they called Goths, Saxons,
Franks, leave their native wilds in the North, and pour
themselves in a conquering host upon the population of
Gaul or Britain. This invading tribe strips the con
quered people of their lands, reduces the people them
selves to servitude, and remains in possession of the coun
try, engrossing all the rights of government and property.
The lands thus acquired, and the serfs upon them, are
then parcelled out among individuals of the tribe, on con
dition that each individual, so receiving lands, shall per
form military and other duties, as an equivalent or recom
pense for the grant. The land thus granted is what the
law calls a feud ; the tenure of holding it is feudal ser
vice. Except in regard of this engagement of military
service, each individual of the tribe still remains indepen
dent of the others, and destitute of the idea or obligations
of nationality. But the conquered people rebel ; or new
conquests invite the conquerors to other regions ; and the
necessity arises for concerted action. How, then, shall
this concert be attained ? The men, of whom we are
speaking, are a wandering tribe living in the camp, and not
yet scattered over the country in settled habitations ; and

24
they deliberate, as tliey did in their native forests, as our
Indians do, in general camp-councils. • Such are the
Champs-de-Mars, of which we rewd in the early history of
the Franks, and the assemblies of the universal German
people, which elected Conrad and Lothaire. In process of
time, however, these individuals of the conquering tribe
are fixed in separate baronial castles ; each of them is the
lord of his allotted feudal territory, the baron and liege
man of the feudal system, having the same personal inde
pendence of his fellow-barons, that he had when they or
their fathers invaded the country, and the same right of
participation in councils touching the general welfare.
As property, like power, always tends to accumulation,
ere long we find that some of the barons, by force, or
favor, or skill, or good fortune, acquire respectively larger
shares of lands and feudal followers. In this stage of the
progress of modern civilization, the lesser barons, those
who have small estates, being separated far and wide over
the country, cannot, without great expense and personal
inconvenience, attend the public councils regularly in per
son, while the great barons continue able and willing to
do it ; and hereupon grows up the practice, among the
lesser barons, of sending representatives or elected dele
gates to the Cortes, States, or Parliaments, there to act
with the great barons, the ecclesiastical chiefs, and the
king, for the common good of the kingdom. Such has
been the origin, all over Europe, of the deliberative as
semblies of modern times.
Note well the difference between the popular legislative
assemblies of ancient and modern Europe. Those of the
old time were civic democracies, voting in person in the
municipal corporations, to ^vhich they respectively belon"--
ed : those of the middle age were military democracies,
voting together at first when collected in predatory errant
armies, and subsequently resorting to representation as.

25

matters of personal convenience. So that popular
representative assemblies are the growth of modern
polity. Now with these considerations before us, for a key to
the events which ensued, let us reflect where the tenden
cy to usurpation first developed itself : — among the repre
sentative assemblies of each country, or in the person of
the king, who, in those days, was but a baron like the
rest, elected by them to be their leader for life. Is it not
notorious that, all over Europe, a stupendous revolution
was operated in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries,
through the persevering aggressions and usurpations of the
executive chiefs of Germany, France, Spain, England,
Italy ? Elective magistrates converted themselves into
hereditary dukes and princes. Crowns came to be holden,
not by the will of the people, but by divine right in the
line of primogeniture. In France, the legislative assem
blies disappear, and the kings render themselves absolute
by destroying the authority of their great barons. In the
Peninsula, Charles, first of that name in Spain and fifth
in Germany, suppresses the Cortes and makes war upon
the city-corporations of Castile, and his son Philip sets at
nought the fueros of Aragon. In Italy, every city falls
under the sway of some usurping duke, and a Norman
monarchy is established in Naples. In Germany, the im
perial election comes to be a mere ceremony of state, for
advantage of the House of Austria. In England alone a
Parliament of Lords and Commons remains ; but even
there our free vernacular tongue becomes corrupted into
the pliant tool of courtly sycophancy under the tyranny
of the Tudors. Through all this great European revolu
tion, there is no diversity of aim. Every where, it is one
unvaried picture of executive usurpation. Not a solita
ry legislative body displays that spirit of aggression, which
you deem to be the besetting vice of representative assem-
4

26
blies. They do not even make good their own hereditary
independence as legislators and as men.
Thank God, it was not always thus to be, with the dis
franchised, but not quite brutified, people of Europe.
First, the military democracies, every where but in Poland,
had suffered themselves to slide into mere hereditary mon
archies. Next, those monarchs, through the capacity of
usurpation innate in the executive head of every nation,
however constituted and named, made themselves abso
lute every where but in England. But then came a new
crisis in human affairs. Mind awoke from the torpor of
barbarism, and began to struggle in its chains so soon as it
became aware of their existence. The revival of letters,
the discovery of the polar needle and of America, and the
invention of printing, changed at once the whole face of
Europe. Men freed themselves first from religious op
pression. Was this ' usurpation ?' Afterwards, they set
about freeing themselves from political oppression, through
the obvious and ready instrumentality of their legislative as
semblies. Was this ' usurpation .'" It was what you desig
nate as such, when, — by a singular bouleversement of all the
ideas of popular right, which have come down to us from
our forefathers, the old king-killing round-heads and Com
monwealth's men, — you stigmatize the glorious conten
tion, wherein Coke, Hampden, Vane, Pym, led, — where
in Sydney and Russell perished, — which is honored by the
immortal works of Harrington, Milton, Locke, and Syd
ney,— which Chatham, Fox, and Burke, forever glorified
as the very Marathon and PlatEea of England's liberty,—
when you stigmatize these the battles of national freedom
as mere ' legislative usurpation.' The House of Com
mons, forsooth, have changed the government from a mon
archy into an oppressive aristocracy ! Pray, what was it
when the Commons began their career of ' usurpation .?'
Do you leally prefer the government of the two Henry

27
Tudors, of Mary Tudor, and of the male Stuarts, to that
of the modern Georges ? Would you, that England should
be ruled by the brutal and sanguinary Henry ? Do you
regret the fires of Smithfield ? Think you well of the times
when Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard were behead
ed at the behest of a tyrant ? When the pious Fisher, the
gallant Essex, the wise Raleigh could be judicially mur
dered at like command ? When the Commons ' agnized'
the condescensions of Elizabeth on ' the knees of their
hearts .?' When King Charles went down to the House of
Commons in person, and at the head of a troop of horse, to
seize upon John Hampden ? When Sir John Elliott was
illegally arrested and left to rot in jail without trial, for
exercising his privilege of speech in Parliament ? — Are
these the blessed days, which an American, in the zeal of
his tenderness for the high prerogative of Andrew Jack
son, complains are done away by the ' usurpation' of the
English Commons ? The times are indeed out of joint,
when the President of the United States claims inherent
executive authority by virtue of his being the successor of
the King of Great-Britain, — and when, to justify him, on
theoretic principles, an American would roll back the tide
of English liberties to the reigns of the moderate and
amiable Tudors and the liberal Stuarts.
But let us reason coolly on this matter. — D^libirons,
said Sieyes,when a chamberlain of King Louis undertook
to disperse the National Assembly with a flourish of his
white staff. — Among the great monarchies of Europe,
there are two, which have distinguished themselves by
force and boldness of intellect, by advancement in all use
ful arts, by the cultivation of science and learning, by the
attainment and possession of elective assemblies of repre
sentation. I mean, of course. Great Britain and France.
Repeatedly, you warn us to beware of foreign imitation.
But I cannot understand that we should reject all knowl-

28
edge, unless we ourselves were its first discoverers. The
object of philosophical inquiry is truth : the object of
human life is the pursuit of rational happiness here and
the preparation for it hereafter. Are we to refuse to en
tertain a valuable fact because it was known to others
before it was known to us ? Must we forget the art of
printing, or any thing else that men prize, because it came
from the other side of the water ? Is a domestic error to
be preferred to a foreign truth ? So far as this, clearly,
you do not intend to push your doctrine. And I agree
with you that we are to judge of our own political system
upon the letter of the Constitution. Nay, but for that
you lost sight of your own principle, there would have
been no occasion for the present communication; since it
is by the misconstruction of a foreign precedent, that you
are misled into error. And I introduce more specifically
the case of France and England, in order to follow up
your own precedent in its application to the United
States. First, as to England : — which, you say, ' has changed
its form of government, from that of a monarchy to that
of an exceedingly oppressive aristocracy, precisely in this
manner,' that is, by 'legislative usurpation.' When.''
When did she undergo or effect this change .'' — When did
the government of England cease to be a monarchy ?
Truly here is a strange assertion. — But, mean you, the
power of the monarch is rendered null by the power of
the aristocracy exerted in Parliament. Reduce your
proposition, then, so modified, to any specific shape of
time and person. Will you ascend above the Norman
Conquest ? You imply, that the monarch has too little
effective power now : how much more had he, I pray you,
in the time of Saxon Hengist, Horsa, Cerdic, or Aella ?
Surely these men were Germans, leading voluntary bands
of their countrymen to conquest, of whom, what Tacitus

29
avers, all other historians confirm : De minoribus rebus
principes consultant, de majoribus omnes. Will you stop
at the Norman Conquest ? Then you must be content
with that state of things, a little anterior to the complete
development of feudalism, of which 1 have already spoken,
when the suzerain had just so much authority as
the barons of his following chose to concede, and no
more. Or will you be content to take your stand with
King John in the now race-course of the ever-to-be-re
membered fields of Runnymede ? — Who could have
dreamed that the name of Magna Charta was yet so ut
terly lost to memory, that the limitation of kingly power
in England by means of Parliament, should be men
tioned with implications of regret and of bad example ! —
Reflect, also, how many times that Charter was broken ;
how long the knights and barons had to struggle with
perpetually recurring executive usurpation ; how for a
while, after they were . broken in the War of the Roses,
they succumbed to executive tyranny ; how the decapita
tion of one king was not enough to purge the Tudor and
Stuart blood of the leprosy of usurpation ; and how no
thing availed for the national safety, short of the utter ex
pulsion of all the males of that race from Britain.
You, however, seem to regard the epoch of the expulsion
of the male Stuarts, — not as what it was, the period when
the persevering usurpations of the Tudors and Stuarts
ended with the end of their dynasty, — not as what it
was, the time when Parliament evened once more the
scales of political right between itself and the Crown, —
but as the commencement of a novel series of usurpations
on the part of Parliament. ' Previously to that period,'
you say in one place, ' the prerogative was in the ascen
dant.' — Not legally ' in the ascendant ; ' for the Bill of
Rights and the fresh memory of King Charles expiating
his usurpations in front of Whitehall, were in the way.

30
Not practically ' in the ascendant ; ' for the attempt of
James of York to make it so was then losing him his
kingdom. — But previously ! How long previously .f" At
the battle of Naseby .'' — When your ' previously ' shall be,
it is not easy to discover, unless, as before observed, it be
during the usurping tyranny of the Tudors. — And in the
same place you continue : — ' Since that period the pre
rogative has been constantly on the wane, until it is com
pletely annihilated as to all practical authority.' Con
stantly on the wane, in good sooth ! — Surely you forget
the celebrated Resolution, introduced into the House of
Commons by Mr Dunning in 1780, during the War of
Independence. ' The influence of the Crown has increas
ed, is increasing, and ought to be diminished ! ' A Reso
lution, which even the Speaker, Sir Fletcher Norton,
supported ; and which was adopted by a full House, al
though it was that very House, which sanctioned the Lord
North's tyrannical policy towards insurgent America.
You counsel us to view the matter under a new aspect.
In Hallam's Constitutional History, I read that — ' The
AVhig had a natural tendency to political improvement,
the Tory an aversion to it. The one loved to descant on
liberty and the rights of mankind, the other in the mis
chiefs of sedition and the rights of kings. Though both
admitted a common principle, the maintenance of the
constitution, yet this made the privileges of the subject,
that the crown's prerogative, his peculiar care.' And I
read in Bissett, that — ' The tyrannical proceedings of
Charles formed the opponents of his pretensions into a
firm, well-compacted, and powerful body. By promul
gating the doctrines of passive obedience, so contrary to
the rights and liberties of Englishmen, to common sense,
and to common feeling, the King * * * united the sup
porters of opposite sentiments under the appellation of
Whigs.' And in Rapin's Dissertation on Whigs and

31
Tories, I find the distinction of principle, between the
Tory as the partisan of the executive authority, and the
Whig as the asserter of the rights of the people, — deduc
ed through all the changes of Saxon and Norman Britain.
But this venerable name of Whig, associated with so
many of the triumphs of liberty, — which well served as
a party-designation for those who drove James Stuart
to the Continent, — which well served to distinguish
our fathers in our own glorious Revolution, — this re
miniscence of liberty is out of vogue, it seems, in
your vocabulary. Wherefore, thrice you caution us
against reading Burke ; our legislators must not look into
any Whig speeches or books ; the star-chamber records
of royal prerogative are very profitable reading for the
writers of presidential protests ; but let all beware of such
dangerous matter as 'Chatham, Burke, and the parliamen
tary history of England.' Most of us had fondly imagined
that Parliament, in standing by its ancient privileges against
the usurpations of the Crown, was doing some little thing
for freedom ; but you tell us, no't so ; they were only
building up an ' oppressive aristocracy,' at the expense of
the good Henry and the gentle James.
Now here again I take issue upon the matter of fact.
At this present writing, I aver, the universal people of
England possess more power as such than at any prior
period since the Norman Conquest, except, perhaps, for a
very brief time of the Commonwealth. I deny that what
the Commons have been doing for the last two hundred
years is ' usurpation.' With your leave, I hold to the
Whig faith herein, as briefly stated in Parliament by Mr
Curran: —
' The existence of British liberty is due to the unremitting vigilance with which.
it has been guarded frora encroachraent. Every invasion, with which it was
threatened by the folly of ministers or the usurpation of kings, has been constant
ly checked by a constitutional assertion of liberty. Such was Magna Charta;
such were various statutes that were made under the House of Lancaster ; such

32
the Petition of Rights, the Bill of Rights, the Act of Settlement, and the recent
repeal of the vi George I. No man can think that British liberty derived any
authority from those statutes, or that acts of Parliament can cteate constituent
rights. We are not free because Magna Charta was enacted, but Magna Charta
was enacted because we were free.'
And though it were ' usurpation,' and if absolute mon
archy were a thing so much to be longed for and mourned
after, yet 1 deny that what the Commons have accom
plished is merely the strengthening of the aristocracy at
the expense of the monarchy. — In the first place, the
feudal system was in itself a pure aristocracy, just as
much so as the government of Venice. — Next, the grant
ing of supplies, or the refusing them, is coeval with the
existence of Parliament. Kings would have been very
glad to dispense with parliaments, if it might be ; but
they summoned their liegemen to meet for the express
purpose of obtaining gifts, aids, benevolences, and other
voluntary grants of money. The Commons have acquir
ed no new powers, in our time, or in any time, by refusing
supplies. Legally, it is now, and always was, an open
bargain between the King and Parliament. Govern to
our satisfaction, and we will give you supplies in aid of
your hereditary revenues, — ever has been the true consti
tutional language of the Commons. — In the third place,
as to the composition of the House of Commons, and the
intervention of the titled aristocracy in returning its mem
bers, it was conclusively shown, in the debates on the Re
form-Bill, that the bill gave to the House a broader con
stituency than it ever before possessed. — Finally, touching
the faculty possessed by the majority of the House of
Commons, of virtually controlling the executive chief by
controlling his ministers, I prefer even such government
so administered, if wc must choose in this alternative,
to the rule of an absolute and irresponsible monarch.
Can you seriously intend, as your language implies, to
express a preference for the latter condition ? On riper
reflection, you cannot but admit, for it seems to be one of

33
the truisms of public freedom, that a very straightly limit
ed monarchy, like that of England, is better than the
absolutism of Spain or of the East.
Then, as to France : I frankly avow that the organiza
tion of the National Assembly was in form a ' legislative
usurpation.' But how stood the fact upon the act of
usurpation ? Was it not the rather a justifiable reclama
tion of rights usurped from the nation by successive kings ?
From the time of the expulsion of the English out of
France, amid occasional vicissitudes in favor either of the
barons or the tiers-etat, the kings had been, for centuries,
committing usurpation after usurpation, until despotism
had, as it were, come to be legalized. The Estates had
been summoned but casually, and were disused since the
reign of Louis XIII. The nobles were converted into
mere courtiers. No land-mark of liberty remained stand
ing, but the great religious and judicial corporations. Out
of that whole series of events, from the assembling of the
States-General to the opening of the National Conven
tion, little is to be extracted of argument on either side of
our question, because it was from first to last the march of
a strong revolutionary impulse, a great democratic move
ment, rendered sanguinary and capricious by foreign inva
sion and an internal war of classes. Under the Conven
tion, there was no executive head. As our Congress did
in the Revolution, so did the Convention ; they got along
very well by means of legislative committees ; at least
there was no want of energy in those executive commit
tees, and quite enough of the spirit of usurpation. But so
soon as there was an executive head, eo nomine, what do'
we see .'' The Directory purifies the Councils by surround
ing the Tuileries with troops. — Then Bonaparte enters
upon the scene ; and surely the First Consul, taken from the
camp to preside over the republic, is not over-scrupulous to'
observe the constitutional bounds of authority. The Em-
5

34
peror indulges executive usurpation and lust of conquest
to that degree, which wearies France and Europe of his
rule.— The Bourbons return ; but they also must needs
infringe the Charter ; and the Revolution of the Three
Days ensues. At last, we have Louis Philippe ; and if
common fame speaks truth in this behalf, you will not
charge him with reluctance to magnify his apostleship,
whether at the expense of the people or the Chambers.
It may be, that I needlessly labor this point of histori
cal proof. But it is one of the traits of the times, that
every gentleman, who, like you, attempts to defend the
President, is overcome with ecstatic admiration of the ex
ecutive branch of government, and insensibly glides into
the style of absolutism, and the consequent depreciation
of legislative assemblies. Wherefore, it becomes need
ful to revive the very essential doctrine of liberty, — the
fundamental principle of democracy in all ages, — namely,
distrust and jealousy of executive usurpation.
As to this branch of the subject, the truth is a general
one, common to all times and places. Depose a given
quantity of power in the hands of one individual, and he
is more capable and more apt to abuse it, to seek to mag
nify it, than a legislative assembly invested with the same
quantity of power. The quality of oneness gives to him
immense advantages in such an enterprise ; as persever
ance of aim, secrecy, undivided counsels, energy. — Then,
popularity attaches to an individual, to the lustre of per
sonal glory, as all expeirience demonstrates, rather than
to an aggregation of individuals. That shall be deemed
virtue and moderation in a cunning individual, which
passes for rank treason in a legislative assembly. But
the argument is a trite one ; it would irk me to follow it
up ; and I leave it for the purpose of elucidating the par
ticular facilities of usurpation possessed by the President,
as compared with the Houses of Congress.

35
In the government of the United States, I hold there
are two quarters, from which usurpation, — efficient, dan
gerous attack on the Constitution, — is more especially to be
dreaded. Whether, as between the governors and the
governed, there is most reason to be jealous of the States
or of the Union, is not the present question. But, look
ing to the government merely, there is to be watched,
first, the aggregate power of President and Congress in
the shape of complete legislation ; and that is the old con
troversy, agitated in the very outset, on the adoption of the
Constitution. There is, next, the President, whether he
come upon us in the guise of a popular soldier, or of an acci
dental chief of party, or, still worse, as combining these
two perilous conditions. Setting aside the consideration
of risk to the States or people from a conspiracy of usur
pation in the President, the Congress, and the Judiciary, —
there is, in my view, more cause to apprehend effec
tive usurpation from the President separately, than from
the Judiciary, the Senate, or the House of Representa
tives. Prior to the adoption of the Federal Constitution,
it would appear, such was the universal opinion touching
this point. The opinion was afterwards called in ques
tion, however, by some eminent men of the time, who,
while they admitted that in other societies the execu
tive department was justly regarded as the source of dan
ger, yet contended that here it was too powerless to be
apprehended in comparison with the legislative depart
ment. But they confessed the dangerousness of the exec
utive power, even here, if ' in the hands of a particular
favorite of the people.' Then, it was a speculative in
quiry : now, we are able to speak to the question from
experience. And this being a vital question in our Con
stitution, let us analyze it, and examine its elementary
parts. We may very shortly dismiss the Judiciary ; which can

36
usurp only upon paper ; and that usurpation, unless aided,
and still better if opposed, by the President and Congress,
is wholly incapable of operating in fact to the immediate
detriment of the people or the Stales. Its judgements,
except they be enforced by the President, are only preju
dicial as opinions. Judges themselves are impeach
able, as well as the President ; and they may be deprived
of their political being by the repeal of the act of Con
gress under which they are appointed. Add to which,
that judicial bodies are in the habit of deferring to pre
cedent ; and if prone to amplify their jurisdiction in mat
ters of law, yet have not means or aptness for indepeiif.
dent political usurpation. So that, all things considered,
they cannot be greatly in the way, when acting adversely
to the President and to Congress.
Conjointly, the Senate and House of Representatives
have means of direct control over the President, — first,
by impeachment, — secondly, by refusing appropriations, —
thirdly, by a concurrent vote of two thirds after a veto.
Separately, the House of Representatives has no inde
pendent means of control, except in the refusal of appro
priations. The Senate has independent means of control
in the same way, and also in its action upon treaties and
appointments. Neither the House nor the Senate has
any, considerable patronage. What jurisdiction either has
of contempts is quite unsettled. Their only substantive
power, acting directly from them upon the people, is in
the opinions they express ; and the President possesses
the same power in this respect, with any member, or
either House of Congress, even to the origination of leg
islative acts. If the people are, at any time, with Con
gress, against the President, it must be on the force of
reason, or at least opinion, exclusively ; it cannot be through
any corrupt influences, or in virtue of actual power. So
much for Congress.

37
The President has co-ordinate powers with either House
of Congress in the origination or the rejection of a law.
To counterbalance their power in the matter of impeach
ments and of a vote by two thirds upon a veto, the Pres
ident has the faculty of acting upon the cupidity of indi
vidual members through the appointing power, and enor
mous means of acting upon the whole people through
appointments to and removals from office, and as com
mander of the army and navy. If he be wicked enough
to render himself the party-head of a vast mercenary
band of subservient office-holders, — and to devote the
public revenues to the business of corrupting individuals
directly with official bribes, and corrupting the public
mind generally through an organization of presses main
tained also by perquisites and official bribes, — then, as he
has incalculably greater means of mischief in this respect
than either House of Congress, if he also be possessed
of the temper of usurpation, the case will have arrived
fbr all men, who desire not a master, to strike in lo the
rescue of the Constitution.
Has, then, such an emergency arrived ? What is the
evidence of fact upon the relative tendency and capacity
of the President, and of the two Houses of Congress, to
usurpation .'' — To this inquiry will be devoted the remain
ing pages of this Letter.
No instance occurs to my recollection, of any actual
encroachment, by the House of Representatives or the
Senate, upon the constitutional rights pf the President,
except it be the disputed votes of the present Senate.
Various examples are at hand of legislative acts, that is,
conjoint acts of President and Congress, alleged by some
party or persons to be unconstitutional. Such are the
several bank-acts, acts of internal improvement, the alien
and sedition laws, embargo-acts, the purchase of Louis
iana, certain tariff-laws, and so forth, — some, among the

38
most odious of these, originating with the executive de
partment of the time, and all having its constitutional
sanction. These, of course, go for nothing in the argu
ment. Nor will I discuss imputed unconstitutional acts,
inchoate or complete, of past administrations. Sufficient,
is the lesson taught us by the present Chief Magistrate.
Executive usurpation generally begins, and often con
sists altogether, in the abuse or unlawful extension of
constitutional powers. It loves to observe the forms of
law. In elective States, it is uniformly accompanied with
false professions, wherewith to deceive the electors. Its
favorite mode of operation is by exciting a groundless
alarm in respect of some other person or institution, so as
to divert public attention from itself, and cloak its own
selfish purposes. When there is a strong military force
on foot. Its agent of aggression is the army ; but when
that is not at hand, its engine of power is either faction
or pecuniary corruption.
When Andrew Jackson came into office, it was upon
certain professed principles of the conduct he intended to
pursue, that his election was put and carried. His oppo
nents objected his violent character ; \n.s self-avowed inca
pacity for civil employment ; the disregard of law, which
had occasionally marked his public career. They predicted
misrule and usurpation, as inevitable to ensue upon his
attaining power. His advocates, and he himself person
ally in one form or another, pledged him to the following
principles, namely :
1 . His retirement at the close of one term of service.
2. His superiority to mere party-considerations.
3. Sedulously to avoid conferring office on members of
Congress. 4. To keep elections free from all contact with, or in
fluence from, executive patronage.
5. Economy of administration.

39
6. The reform of public abuses in persons and things.
7. An administration specially regardful of the interests
of the people.
8. Scrupulous delicacy in the exercise of public au
thority derived from the Constitution.
Such were the false pretences, employed in the Presi
dent's favor ; for never, in all the annals of time, was a
more extraordinary case of flagrant contrariety between
practise in office and profession out of it, than the Admin
istration exhibits. Not one substantial pledge of his party
or his friends has the President redeemed. Nay, the
monstrous violation of each seems to be in very scorn of
truth and honor. But, passing over this point, what I
propose to illustrate is, the aim of his open forfeiture of
all the pledges in question, and of his persevering march in
a line of conduct the reverse of his engagements, — name
ly, to raise up a dynasty of corruption, by perverting and
prostituting all the powers of government to that one
abominable end. This is my charge against the Presi
dent : herein 1 signalize the usurping and unconstitutional
spirit of the Administration. — Inspecting each of the great
classes of action, whereupon he was pledged, we shall
perceive that the executive functions have in general been
stretched to their uttermost tension for the augmentation
of executive power ; and that where, in some noted
cases, abstinence in this respect has appeared, it was not
through moderation of principle, but in order to weaken
Congress. Let me briefly call your attention to the details of this
undeniable and pregnant fact.
1. The President's friends promised that he would
serve but one term ; and he himself, in his first message
to Congress, advised the amendment of the Constitution
in this particular, to prevent the abuse of a second elec
tion ; while not only is he a second time in office, but it

40
is by no means clear he will not be held up for a third
term. And when Mr. McDuffie, pursuant to the Presi
dent's recommendation, actually moved an amendment of
the Constitution to limit the tenure of presidential service,
he was denounced as an enemy of the President, it thus
appearing that what the President had been made to say
in his message was nothing but deceitful profession, the
stale demagogue's art of usurpation in all republics.
2. He urged President Monroe to break down ' the
monster, party,' and to be catholic in his appointments;
yet he it was that adopted a system of proscription for
opinion's sake, removing from office two thousand persons
in four years, only because they were not partisans, and
appointing mere partisans with such reckless disregard of
personal fitness, that some nominations were unanimously
rejected by the Senate ; descending ' down to low- water
mark to make an ousting of tide-waiters,' if they did not
happen to be clamorous for Andrew Jackson. Nay, the
high offices of this Republic were shamelessly claimed as
the ' spoils ' of party victory !
3. Before he came into office, the President formally
reprobated the appointment of members of Congress to
ofifice ; averred that to do so would make corruption ' the
order of the day ' ; and solemnly declared that it was ' due
to himself to practise what he recommended to others.'' Yet
this, which John Quincy Adams and his predecessors did
rarely, Andrew Jackson has done frequently. Corruption
has become the order of the day ; and that in examples of
baseness, of themselves enough to sink in the deep sea
any Administration not sustained by unconstitutional and
fraudulent means.
4. In his inaugural address the President reiterated the
assurances of his partisans, not to bring ' the patronage of
the government into conflict with the freedom of elec
tions.' Yet it is the daily spectacle of this Administration

41
that the revenue officers earn their wages in electioneer
ing for the President ; that party newspapers are estab
lished or sustained by contributions of their pay ; that not
a few of the higher officers of government are specially
meddlesome even in state-elections ; that post-office con
tracts are made a matter of corrupt partisan emolument ;
that the surest qualification for ofifice is noisy partisan
ship ; and that all the energy of place and patronage, al
most the entire revenues of the government, are squander
ed in corrupting the press and the citizens for the special
benefit of the President and the Vice-President.
5. Economy of administration. — There was no one
thing in the administration of John Quincy Adams, about
which his opponents complained so clamorously, as its^ al
leged profusion. — Who could have thought it possible ? —
In their long roll of pretended abuses, not a clerkship have
they abolished, not a salary reduced. Their loud talk of
retrenchment was the trickery of imposition. Those
very men have augmented the public expenditures by mill
ions annually ; money has been poured out like water in
extra-allowances to partisan contractors, and extravagant
jobs to newspaper-editors, in multiplied offices and aug
mented salaries ; in every form of lavish prodigality.
6. The party composing this Administratio© raised an
outcry against abuses, which did not exist ; and so soon
as they came into power, with unparalleled effrontery ac
tually proceeded to create those very abuses. What they
meant by ' reform,' no man knew ; for they did not desig
nate the abuses to be reformed ; but they defined the
thing practically to be the turning out of ofifice faithful and
intelligent incumbents, and putting in political partisans.
How truly they have themselves shunned abuses in office,
the world may see by that sickening mass of rottenness
and fraud, the bankrupt Post Ofifice Department.
7. Protecting the interests of the people. — This appears
6

42

to imply, vetoing public improvements, denouncing the
Bank, raising interest to eighteen cents in the dollar, par
alyzing industry in all its branches except note-shaving,
taking measures to reduce to insolvency every man whose
capital consists in his integrity and enterprize only, aiding
to put down manufactures, and the like notable methods
of ruining the middling interest, and spreading dismay
among the business-men throughout the Union.
8. But the grand charm was the word ' democracy.'
The Administration was to be purely ' democratic' in prin
ciple, scrupulously abstinent in the exercise of power, the
special and incorruptible guardian of the Constitution.
Pending his first term of service, the conduct of the Pres
ident on this head was ambiguous, not to say capricious,
in appearance. Occasionally, he seemed to give up the
clearest rights of the government, to deny the plainest
powers of the Constitution ; as in some of his official
messages. Then again he was exerting the executive au
thority in forms never practised by his predecessors, never
contemplated by the Constitution. Time has presented
us with a solution of the seeming inconsistency or uncer
tainty. The ' democracy,' which he contemplated, was
not a republican government, administered in a democrat
ic spirit ; but a submissive people ruled at the will of a
dictator. First, this Administration is decidedly more
federal than either of its predecessors ; that is, the Pres
ident habitually exercises, and in the Proclamation or
Protest elaborately claims, higher federal powers, pow
ers more purely constructive and more glaringly anti
democratic, than any antecedent Chief Magistrate. Next
while the President, and his immediate organs, denied
various constitutional powers of the Judiciary and
of Congress, none are denied to the President. And
this proves to be the key of the seeming caprice in the
construction of the Constitution, of occasional rigor alter-

43
nating with extreme laxity, which had characterized the
first four years of the Administration : — to abstract pow
er from the judicial and legislative departments of govern
ment, to arrogate power to the executive department.
First, the President avowed that he held himself above
the law of the land, undertaking to observe the laws, not
as construed by the constitutional judges of their mean
ing, but as construed by himself: thereby aiming a
deadly blow at the Judiciary, which indeed the official
presses denounced and proscribed by name in echo of the
President. Next, in one message or another, the President has
expressly denied to Congress the right to make appropri
ations for internal improvements and to incorporate a
national bank, and impliedly disputed the constitutionality
of the protecting system ; while the same official presses
talked about 'cutting down' the Senate, and justified the
shooting at members of the House for words uttered in
debate. But, on the other hand, while the President and his par
tisans were thus lopping ofif the functions, and insulting
the dignity, of Congress and of the Judiciary, they were
silently heaping up power in the hands of the President.
He began by that wholesale exercise of the power of
removal, before alluded to ; a power not set down in the
Constitution ; raised only by implication ; introduced in
to practice at first for cause of extreme necessity, and that
by so doubtful a construction as to be decided by the casting
vote of the Vice-President ; rarely used by Washington
and Jefiferson ; disused as it were for thirty years ; but
immediately seized for daily use in the settled party-sys
tem of this Administration. Next, he took upon him the
frequent exercise of the odious power of the veto, also
intended by the founders of the Constitution for extreme
cases only, but employed by Andrew Jackson in four years

44
more times than by all his predecessors together since the
formation of the Union. And, in conformity with the
spirit of these acts, he gave Congress to understand that it
might exercise the powers which he absolutely denied to
it, if it would exercise them, or leave them to be exercis
ed, in the way and time he prescribed. Thus, after ap
proving a harbor-bill and making it the law of the land,
he assumed to abrogate parts of it at his discretion. Thus,
also, Congress might not incorporate a bank subject to the
joint authority of the President and of Congress ; but,
waiting his time, it might incorporate a bank to be the
treasury agent, (oi in other words, the private party-hack,)
of the President.
Down to this epoch, — the close of the first term, — the
President himself did not indulge in those ofiTensive pre
tensions and phrases of dictatorship, which have recently
come into fashion wilh the Administration. The Globe,
to be sure, told us that Andrew Jackson was ' born
to command.' But things were not yet ripe for the final
step. Usurpation proceeds gradually. Usurpers may
sometimes conceive indistinct ideas, entertain vague
hopes, as to the future ; but generally it is one stage
of elevation, which lifts them high enough to take
observation of another. Bonaparte resolved to be the
greatest of generals, and he became so ; but the re
solution to be Consul was an after-thought, and the
resolution to be Emperor still a second after-thought.
Cromwell scarce looked to be Protector, when he led a
troop against King Charles. — The object contemplated, I
repeat, and the object acconi plished, in the first four years
of this Administration, was to establish a dynasty of cor
ruption by perverting and prostituting all the powers of
government to that end. By means then perceived and
understood, although not then distinctly exposed or cir
cumstantially proved, a portion of the newspaper press

45
was thoroughly bribed, and corrupted into the mere sti
pendiary of the Administration. All men in the public
service, from the heads of department down to the hum
blest clerks and revenue-officers, were made lo compre
hend that their tenure of office consisted, not in ability
and integrity, but in blind subservience to the will of their
chief in all things, even to the matter of the company lo
be kept by their wives ; not in official faithfulness, but in
shouting hosannas to Andrew Jackson. Then, by the
agency of venal presses, and the all-pervading intrigues
of contractors and office-holders, the re-election of the
President was secured, and the present difficulties entailed
on the Republic. The fabric of corruption was reared.
Its machinery of imposition and calumny was in full play.
The fetters of the dynasty were twisted about our limbs.
And all the energies of this nation, —
O glorious strength
Put to the labor of a beast, debased
Lower than bond-slave ! — .
were harnessed for the despicable work of the faction
about the President.
Notwithstanding the just perception of the usurping
spirit of the Administration, entertained by all enlightened
men not bound to ils cause by party-trammels, there oc
curred a series of events in the autumn of his re-election,
and the winter ensuing, which for a season diverted the
public watchfulness into another channel. I refer to the
progress of nullification in South-Carolina. In the case
of Georgia, the President had expressly given his sanc
tion to practical nullification in the worst form. No man
suspected him of any intention lo deal thus kindly with
the NuUifiers of South-Carolina ; because the circum
stances of his personal difiference with John C. Calhoun,
and the unfortunate connexion of that eminent individual
with the nullification-parly of his Stale, were matter of
universal notoriety. We at the North, especially, felt

46
alarm for the safety of the Union. We feared some act
of precipitate violence on the part of the President. His
extraordinary veto-message had eradicated all faith in the
general soundness of his views of the Constitution. When,
therefore, his Proclamation unexpectedly appeared, it filled
us wilh joyful and most welcome surprise. Although it
was rather ultra-federal in some points, we yet hailed
it with sincere approbation ; because we cherished the
Constitution above all things ; and cheerfully sacrificed
our party-predilections on the altar of the Union. In the
stormy session of Congress, thereon following, the great
statesman of Massachusetts, actuated by such sentiments,
gave to the Administration his all-powerful aid. That
controversy, then, was ended ; honorably, to be sure, to
the President, thanks to the timeous interposition of
Daniel Webster at one period, and that of Henry Clay
and John C. Calhoun at another ; but it was ended, and
so ended, that Opposition seemed to slumber. In reality,
the people were prosperous and content. A load of care,
uncertainly, and apprehension, was taken off their shoul
ders by the simultaneous settlement of the nullification
and tariff questions. Then was the time for the Presi
dent to earn himself immortal opinions. If he had pos
sessed magnanimity enough to frown into nothingness the
'venal herd of flatterers' about him, — had he taken
counsel the rather of his known responsible advisers, —
could he, like Sulla, after attaining the summit of ambition
at the expense of honor and his country, have shown
himself superior even to his fortunes, — if, emerging from
the murky atmosphere of faction which he had groped in
so long, he were great enough to have made himself the
head of the nation instead of the mere leader of a party
held together by nothing but money, — if Andrew Jackson
had been capable to do this, men would have thrown the
mantle of charity over the manifold sins of his first ad-

47
ministration ; and, save among disappointed officeholders
no longer able to use him for their emolument, not a voice
would have spoken but to honor him in every city and
every hamlet of America. The path of true glory was
plain before him as the light of noonday. His visit at the
North made manifest the readiness of all the world to be
silent if they could not applaud, and to acquiesce in his
authority ; — they little dreaming that the prime use he
meditated to make of his unexampled popularity was
wantonly to strike a death-stab at the welfare of the na
tion and the integrity of the Constitution.
So early as during the first year of his being in ofifice,
the President called the attention of Congress lo the
subject of a re-charter of the National Bank. He re
peated the call in subsequent years. No scruples had
then entered his mind as to the constitutionality of a bank-
act. We heard nothing of its being a gigantic moneyed
corporation, dangerous to the liberties of the people.
Some three years afterwards. Congress accordingly passed
a bill for a re-charter of the Bank. But the President
negatived the bill on various grounds of special excep.-
tion to its provisions, and among the rest because that,
which he had recommended to be done two or three years
ago, was now, as he said, premature. At the same time, the
presses of the Administration began to raise an outcry
against the Bank, upon grounds incredibly factious or con
temptibly futile ; and the parly took up the matter in
Congress the next winter. Wherefore this remarkable
change in the views of the President ? The answer to
this inquiry brings us to the next step in the career of
executive usurpation.
The Administration had succeeded, past all belief, be
yond even their own hopes, in the plan of rendering the
ofifice-holders of the country instruments of electioneering,
and of identifying a part of the newspaper-press with

48
the government through post-office largesses. The rev
enues of the nation were administered, not for the good
of the people, but the interest of a party ; and the re-elec
tion had, as the managers thought, fastened the country
to the dynasty of Jackson. But they wished to clench
the nail. They knew that the business of this people
was conducted in no small degree by means of bank-
credits. Their own venality, — the facility with which
they had made corruption the order of the day in their
own ranks, — led them lo conclude they might render it
universal, if they could but obtain the same absolute con
trol of the Bank of the United States, which they al
ready possessed of the Treasury Department and the
Post Office. Working such wonders with the annual
revenue of the government and the mail-contracts and
offices, what might they not do if they could turn the
whole business of borrowing and lending inlo the same
feculent kennel ! There was too much of promise in this
hopeful scheme to be neglected. For reasons obvious
enough, the Branch in New-Hampshire was first at
tempted ; but they found, to their mortification, that
although the Senator from New-Hampshire might be a
very fit person lo traffic in government bribes, it was a
thing wholly out of Jeremiah Mason's line of practice.
Both were citizens of New-Hampshire, to be sure;
but they did not breathe the same stratum of atmos
phere, physically, morally, or intellectually. The Pres
ident of the New-Hampshire Branch could honor the
Senate or the Bar ; but he could not administer the
Bank in the exclusive interests of the dynasty of cor
ruption. Nicholas Biddle and his associates of the Moth
er Bank were alike impracticable. Thereupon came
war against the Bank. Had the Bank been equally sub
servient with the Post Office, although, like the latter,
it should have coined its life-blood into bribes, becoming

49
utterly bankrupt and a standing beacon of mismanage
ment and foul fraud, yet would the sympathetic presses
and the tender-hearted orators of the Administration have
been filled with sensibility for its amiable weaknesses and
the loveliness of its unblemished purity of intention. But
it was incorruptible, and therefore unfit to live, — under
the government of Andrew Jackson.
Men, who are at once great and good, administer pub
lic affairs in the honor and welfare, not of themselves,
but of the nation over which they preside. It has been
a feature of the sycophantic man-worship, which charac
terizes the party in power, to apply all the acts and events
and resources of the Administration to the uses of elec
tioneering and the personal glorification of Andrew Jack
son. In the mistimed, and generally misplaced, gascon
ades, which have accompanied the announcement of any
treaty concluded, wC see this pointedly exemplified.
Reckless of principle, the minions of the Administration
were equally ready to clamor for or against a man or an
institution, whichever should best aid them in the work
of securing the perpetual control of the Union. Accord
ingly, as they could not use the Bank for electioneering
purposes, they betook themselves to abuse it for such pur
poses. And their game, in this matter, was another of
the secrets of usurpation, which historical experience
teaches and exposes.
Under all governments, the various corporate associa
tions of the people are always elements of popular
strength and popular power, except when they are cor
ruptly or surreptitiously attached to the machine of gov
ernment. If independent of the government, and amen
able only to the laws of the land, they are the points
d' appui of the people in resisting the usurpations of their
rulers. In despotic monarchies, having no true legislative
bodies, like Russia, Turkey, some of the governments of
7

50
the East, they are the only civil resource against oppres
sion, which the nation possesses. They were so in
France previous to the Revolution. These are notorious
political facts. Wherefore, in all ages, one of the great
objects of despots, or would-be despots, is first to corrupt,
and if that may not be, then to break down, all corporate
associations of the people. To accomplish this, it has
been the ordinary device of tyranny, to excite a false up
roar against one such corporate association, or class of as
sociations, so as to arouse the fears or jealousies of another
association or class of associations, and thus to render the
diverse elements of liberty the means of their reciprocal
destruction. A striking instance of this comes to my re
membrance. When the Emperor Charles of Spain as
cended the throne of Castile, the nation possessed two
prominent means of withstanding executive usurpation, —
first, the Cortes, a legislative body, — secondly, the com-
unidades, or civic corporations. Charles played ofif one
of these against the other, made war upon the comuneros,
domineered over the Cortes, and so crippled both, as lo
leave his son Philip all but absolute ; and Spain has never
rallied from the political degradation brought upon her in
that disastrous period. Another remarkable instance of
this occurs in the assaults of the two last Stuarts upon
the corporations of Great Britain. Analogous facts
abound, indeed, in the history of all almost every people.
In pointing all the batteries of party-fury against the
Bank, then, the Administration saw various of their sinister
ends to be served. First, they were to destroy an insti
tution, which, being independent of them, was of course
odious to them. Thus usurpation was to have its path
cleared of one great obstacle.^ — Then, it was desirable to
possess a topic for tirades about money, moneyed influence,
moneyed aristocracy, as the means of exciting jealousies
of class among the laborious and the poor. Here were

51
men revelling in the treasures of the nation ; enjoying
enormous salaries in the collection and superintendence of
the revenue ; enriching themselves with government-con
tracts; marling the public offices to 'undeservers;' bloated
as it were with bribes. How specially convenient was it
for these men, to declaim against the corruptions of the
Bank, and so hide their own iniquity under the visor of vir
tue, rolling up their eyes in hypocritical horror of the sins
they falsely imputed to others, while they themselves were
rotten to the core ! Corruptions of the Bank ! — Shame on
the desperate hirelings, suborned to raise this factious cry
against every freeman and every lover of his country, who
disdains to wear on his neck the golden collar of the
Treasury. They talk of corruption ! Matchless impu
dence ! — What says the false Glo'ster ? —
I do the wrong, and first begin to brawl ;
The secret mischiefs, that I set abroach,
I lay unto the grievous charge of others ; —
And seem a saint when I most play the devil.
And thus it is with the charges of the Administration
against the Bank. — Finally, they took it up as a pretext,
under cover of which to seize upon the public treasure,
and thus make another advance in the march of usurpa
tion. Into the question of the legality of the fact or mode of
removing the deposites of public revenue from the Bank
of the United States, and its disastrous eflfects upon the
national welfare, — there is no occasion for me to enter
at large. It is not, you perceive, the purpose of my ar
gument to make a systematic arraignment of the Admin
istration. That were a task, fit to be done by one man
among us, 'preeminently qualified for its performance.
Would that the caustic intensity, the unequalled experience
and reading, the all-embracing comprehension, the burn
ing eloquence, of John Quincy Adams, were pledged to
the great public duty of exposing the dangerous constitu-

52
tional doctrines of the President, — the false pretences
and forfeited promises by which he gained power, — his ap
pointments and removals from office, — his economy of ex
penditure, — his negotiations, — his dealings with Georgia,
the Bank, the Post Ofifice, the public domain, the tarifif,
and internal improvements, — his successive cabinets,
proper and improper, — in fine, all those pernicious meas
ures of misrule, which have signalized the career of the
present Administration! Nay, the best pens of the
country might honorably unite in communicating to the
people, through the newspaper-press, a dignified and con
nected, but at the same lime plain and popular, view of
this whole subject. Il is what is peculiarly needed at this
crisis. — My plan is a more restricted one, aiming only to
illustrate the question of executive usurpation, suggested
by your Letter.
It is pretty clear that the removal of the deposites was
a blunder on the part of the President's advisers, arising
from their inconceivable ignorance of the principles of cur
rency and trade. They had no distinct conception of the
extent of public misery which must ensue ; had they done
so, they would not have put their places in jeopardy by
over-hasty audacity in crime. The President's responsi
ble cabinet foresaw the efifects of it, and opposed it : but
his irresponsible advisers prevailed. They were stupid
enough and mad enough to imagine that by removing the
government-deposiles they -should break the Bank. So
this could be done,— and thus their party-ends be promot
ed, and the vindictiveness of the President gratified by
throwing to him a victim to devour,^ — they cared nothing
for the loss of seven millions of dollars, stock in the Bank,
belonging to the nation. ' Unless the Bank is broken
down,' said the President to William J. Duane, ' il will
break us down ; if the last Congress had remained a
week longer in session, two-thirds would have been secur-

53
ed by corrupt means ; and the like result may be appre
hended at the next Congress.'
The Bank, therefore, was to be broken down, lest
It should bribe the Administration members of Congress ;
that is, diminish the number of the President's partisans.
— Where, in the Constitution, does he find it enjoined
upon the President to break down an institution, exist
ing under a law of the United Stales ? Does he
violate laws by virtue of the line which requires him
to see that the laws be duly executed .'' What law au
thorized him, on his responsibility, to remove the public
money from the place where it was deposited by Con
gress .'' — It was an illegal seizure of the public treasure.
I hold the Resolutions of the Senate to be solemn truth,
and the arguments of Binney, Webster, Clay, Calhoun,
Adams, and others, upon this topic, to be unanswered
and unanswerable.
But no, say you, the removal was the lawful right of
the President, who, as the executive authority, has exclu
sive custody and control of the public treasure. Then, I
reply, if it be admitted for argument's sake to be legal,
yet at all events it was a violent, unnecessary, unjust, un
justifiable stretch of executive authority ; and so, if not ac
tual usurpation, yet upon your own case it was the spirit
and temper of usurpation. Not even the drilled majority
of the House of Representatives, although endued with
saintlike meekness and obsequiousness, and a capacity of
licking the rod above all praise, not even they could be
screwed up to the sticking point of boiling this portion of
their lord and master's prescription. They perseveringly
skulked the question of the sufliciency of the reasons as
signed for removing the deposites, through all the by-paths
and dark passages of parliamentary obliquity. Il was, in
deed, cruel to ask of them to ratify directly the main rea
son of the removal, their own imputed venality ; they

54
were willing to seal this charge indirectly, by sanctioning
the removal ; but to do this directly and upon express
yote, — by yea, and nay, and every pretty oath ! — that was
passing the bounds of reasonable vassalage. Tory servil
ity hung its head in shame, passive obedience itself shyed
off, in view of such crouched submission lo the humbling
behests of the President.
Whether unconstitutionally, then, or only by a despotic
abuse of constitutional power, — for one or the other it un
deniably was, — the President got possession of the public
treasure. The use intended to be made of it, the use ac
tually made of it, we all know: To reward political par
tisans by giving to them the use of the public fiinds with
out interest, — to organize a great association of state-
banks, responsible only to the President, — and thus to
forge a new set of golden fetters for the enslaving of the
whole Union. But how much of that treasure has been
squandered in perquisites and bribes, — we do not know.
We feel, that the use of it is lost to the people, to whom,
if left undisturbed in its lawful depository, it might be
loaned for employment in the business of life ; while, ut
terly unavailable as it now is to the people, its flights from
one State to another, on the wings of transfer drafts, to
sustain pet institutions here and there, are abundant evi
dence of its magic activity in the electioneering service
of the Administration.
Contemporaneously with these proceedings, the secon
dary circumstances, usually appertaining to the career of
an usurping chief magistrate, have distinguished the acts
and writings of the Administration. One of the villainous
badges of despotism is the existence of back-stair advisers,
attaching themselves to power by mean and base arts, —
cringing, busy, fawning, slaves, — parasites or bravos, — the
cankers of a commonwealth. Such an appendage, we
know, clings to the skirts of the President. And the per-

65
sonal adulation, lavished on the President unto very nau
sea, — the man-worship characteristic of his party, — is an
other of its anti-republican traits. This foot-stool-kissing
spirit of theirs, by the way, — this their servility of adula-
lationitwas, — filling the object of it with such exaggerat
ed ideas of his own power, — which misled him into em
pirical experiments upon the rights and happiness of the
people. And why should Csesar be a tyrant then ?
Poor man ! I know he would not be a wolf,
But that he sees the Roraans are but sheep :
He were no lion, were not Romans hinds.
And he himself, in official acts and in conversation,
adopts the style and port of a master. He needs no
cabinet of constitutional advisers ; not he ; secretaries
and clerks are sufificient for him. Then, the government
is his government ; the secretaries of department are his
secretaries ; they compose his cabinet ; all the public ofifi
cers, except the judges, are his personal servants, not the
servants of the people and the laws. When the people
repair to him with petitions, they are bid go home and
work, and leave public affairs to him, who was ' born to
command.' — He, Andrew Jackson, wills a thing, and
therefore, right or wrong, it shall be done. The necessi
ties or sufferings of the people, are nothing to him ; the
wishes of the Legislature nothing. His will is the law, —
his experiment is to be tried, lawful or unlawful, and cost
what it may to the nation. — Heretofore, it has been es
teemed the only policy consistent with republicanism that
the Constitution and the laws should in seeming as in fact
be the government of the Republic. In conformity where
with, Washington broke the dies having his efifigy engrav
en upon them, and the features of personified Liberty only
appear on our coin. But now, this wise policy is coming
to be no longer observed. The Man who administers the
executive authority is prominent in every thing, while the

56
Constitution and the laws are thrown into the shade.
The symbols of monarchy, with its dialect, are insinuat
ing themselves inlo the affairs of this Republic. Even
she, conqueress of so many glorious fights, the pride of our
gallant navy, — she, the triumphant mistress of the sea,
who dissipated the charm of British ascendancy upon the
Atlantic, in the blaze and smoke of her cannon, — the world-
renowned Constitution herself, is made to bear on her
brow the ignominious sign of servitude. — Are these the
' shadows' cast before ' coming events .'' ' For it is an
omen of fearful import, that in the slate-papers, speeches,
essays and newspapers, emanating from the side of the
Adnainistration, whilst legislative assemblies in the ab
stract are the frequent theme of depreciation and scorn, all
the courtly phrases of kingcraft are pul in requisition lo
exhibit the excellence of government by one man, and that
man, Andrew Jackson.
It remains only that I remark upon one other topic, as
illustrative of the spirit and tendency of usurpation, ex
emplified in the conduct of the President, namely, his di
rect encroachments upon the constitutional authority of
Congress. His disregard of the rights of the Senate is
no new trait of character. It is Well remembered that,
many years ago, he threatened, and seriously designed, to
' cut ofif the ears ' of Abner Lacock, a member of the
Senate, in revenge of acts done or words uttered by that
Senator in his place. It is also remembered that Thomas
Hart Benton, who certainly had ample means of personal
knowledge, predicted that ' If General Jackson should
ever be elected President of the United States, the Con
gressmen would have to legislate with pistols in their
bells.' And his first invasion of the constitutional rights of
the Senate dates from the first week of his Administra
tion. The Constitution intended that the power of the
Senate, in the appointment of public officers, should be

57
co-extensive with that of the President. He nominates :
the Senate confirms. Each acts upon his or its own
judgement. Their concurrent act makes the office. So it
is with treaties. And, but for these checks on the power of
the President, our government would be an elective
monarchy. The Constitution further provides that he shall
have power to fill, temporarily, ' all vacancies that may
happen during the recess of the Senate.' Of course, the
Constitution, which did not even authorize removals ex
pressly, never dreamed that the President would create
vacancies by removal of an incumbent, in order lo make
appointments in derogation of the Senate's constitutional
authority. And. yet the President has done this, not once
or twice, but habitually, and as of system. You yourself
have indicated this clause in the Constitution as suscepti
ble of executive abuse ; and have mentioned cases arising
under it, which you deem dangerous abuses of power.
Others, among the best friends or most fulsome flatter
ers of the President, — such as Thomas Ritchie and An
drew Stevenson, — were of the same opinion, as appeared
in the published proceedings of the Senate on Mr. Ste
venson's nomination to England.* And I intreat you to
turn you attention to the host of such cases, occurring,
not upon the resignation or death of a public officer, but
upon the mere wanton exercise of the executive will.
And to such flagitious extreme has the President pushed
this form of usurpation, that we have recently seen three
of the departments filled, by means of executive jugglery,
for one whole year, without the approbation of the Sen
ate. Akin to which evasion of the constitutional author-
* You signalize one abuse of power on, the part of our national representatives
in Europe, examples of which have fallen under laj own observation, namely,
dispensing the narae and privileges of attachi without due consideration, so that
sometimes it devolves on young men without any pretensions on the score of
character, who are thus ehabled to parade a false diplomatic dignity in Fra,nce or
Italy, Tery little to the honor of their country
8

58
ity of the Senate by dishonorable shifts and tricks of
back-stair legerdemain, is the repeated nomination of re
jected individuals, such a nomination accompanied in one
place with insulting impeachment of the Senate's right
of independent opinion and action. The direct tendency
of this encroachment, I repeat, is to make of the Presi
dent an elective monarch.
I charge upon the Administration, you remember, a plan
of usurpation, consisting in the abuse of the public rev
enues to cement together a corrupt combination of ofifice-
holders, made wholly dependent upon the President. The
unsparing exercise of the questionable power of removal ;
the appointment of political partisans only to ofifice ; the
creation of vacancies in the recess of the Senate ; the
¦putting ofif the nominations to the Senate, until the closing
days even of the long session ; and the assertion that all
the ofificers of the government are the mere personal agents
of the President : these acts and pretences constitute one
part of the plan. Dovetailed into this part, was the other,
which consisted in getting control of the public treasure, —
squandering it in rewards bestowed on presses and persons
meritorious in electioneering for the Administration, —
using the Bank of the United States as a party-hack if
possible, — if not, then a catenation of state-banks, —
causing the Bank of the United States, or the state-banks
as the case might be, to convert the credit-system of the
country into a stupendous engine of electioneering, — and
so devoting the public money, and all the credit capable
of being raised upon it by bank-agency, to the perpetual
and exclusive maintenance of a particular set of persons
in the government of the Union.
Of the incidental and subsidiary parts of this plan, I do
not speak. For although the vindictive passions gratified,
and the anti-social projects betrayed, in sorae of the pro
ceedings against the Bank, are curious and instructive in-

69
cidents in the history of the Administration, they are for
eign to the inquiry in hand ; and so are the details of cor
ruption, as exhibited in the Post Ofifice and in the sub
ordinate offices of the Treasury Department.
Now, to give this plan of corruption the color of con
stitutional right, without which its authors well knew it
would not be tolerated by any considerable body of the
disinterested people of the country, it was necessary to
put forward two false pretences, — one, that the President
had, by the Constitution, absolute control of all public of
ficers, — another, that, by the Constitution, he had absolute
and indefeasible control of the public treasure. These
are the monstrous doctrines, audaciously avowed in the
Protest. In which deplorable state-paper, also, these
functions are scandalously claimed as a branch of royal
prerogative acquired by descent or succession, as ' an ori
ginal'^ executive power,' left in the President's hands ' un
checked by the Constitution.' And to crown the whole, to
give us a dictator in right good earnest, the President tells
us that he, — not he and Congress, but he as distinguished
from Congress, that is, he alone, — is ' the direct represen
tative of the American people.' If this be so, then he
wants of king but the name, and there is an end of the
American Republic.
Furthermore, it is to be noted, that the President does
not content himself with claiming exclusive possession and
control of the public treasure, the funds of the govern
ment in actual being ; but he arrogates and actually exer
cises the power to raise money on the public credit. The
States and people of the Union gave to Congress alone,
* ' The power of removal, which, like that of appointment, is an original ex
ecutive power, is left unchecked by the Constitution, in relation to all executive
officers, for whose conduct the President is responsible.' Andeew Jackson.
' This change from immediate state of procuration and delegation to a course
of acting as from original power, is the way in which all the popular magistracies
in the world have been perverted from their purposes.' Edmund Burke.

60
power ' to borrow money on the credit of the United
Slates.' The provision is explicit. If the President may
borrow money when he pleases, and bind the United
Slates to repay the loan, it is evident that all the proper
ty and labor of the country are at his absolute disposal.
Yet this braggart Administration, which has boasted year
after year about paying off the national debt, as if it were
a personal merit oflhe President, has the effrontery, in the
face of all this, to borrow money, to a large amount, with
out authority of Congress, in order to squander it in pay
ment of electioneering services, through the agency of that
pestilential reservoir of corruption, the Post Ofifice De
partment. Il is loo late to say this was not the direct
act of the President. Deliberately, — ostentatiously even,
as if it were matter of pride to do wrong,^ — he assumes
the responsibility for whatever is transacted in either
of the departments. He tells us the public ofificers
are all cap-in-hand subalterns, obeying his orders ; the sec
retaries are his secretaries. Of course, the impeachable
misconduct of the Postmaster-General is the President's
misconduct. Seeking lo throw the odium of it on the
Postmaster-General only, is unspeakably base and mean :
ils blazing ' glory' belongs to the entire Administration.
Sir Robert Walpole's ministry is memorable as the era,
when using the public treasure to make partisans became
a methodical and regular business of administration in
Great-Britain. Of such a state of things it was that Ju
nius said : ' Corruption glitters in the van, collects and
maintains a standing army of mercenaries, and at the same
moment impoverishes and enslaves the country.' It is to
raise up, — not a true aristocracy, for that implies a gov
ernment by men possessed of some personal claims of dis
tinction, but — an oligarchy of placemen to govern the
nation. They talk of a moneyed aristocracy, while they
themselves constitute the very worst species of moneyed

61
aristocracy, because the money, which feeds and upholds
it, is not their money, but the misapplied money oflhe peo
ple. Walpole professed to know every man's price. You
may find his political theory in Lord Byron.
'T is pleasant purchasing our fellow-creatures ;
And all are to be sold, if you consider
Their passions, and are dexterous ; some by features
Are bought up, others by a warlike leader.
Some by a place, — as tend their years and natures ;
The most by ready cash. —
Walpole dealt in ready cash, places, honors, as occasion
served ; but he had not the advantage of making purchas
es with the glitter of ' a warlike leader.' In other re
spects, however, he proceeded in a way comprehensible at
the present time ; for, as a standard historian tells us, ' close
ly connected with stock-jobbers, and other adventurers, in
the acquisition of money, he found, through loans and oth
er government transactions, various opportunities of be
stowing indirect donatives ;' and so, by the dexterous man
agement of secret service money, and of the government
patronage and contracts, he ' established an influence more
despolical than the power which the most tyrannical of
the Stuarts ever sought.' An influence, not founded on
the wisdom of acts, nor measured by the limits of law, but
derived from a corrupt and prodigal dispensation of the pub
lic treasure. And this exorbitant influence of the crown
thus acquired, and wielded by an oligarchy, not adversely
to the Crown, but in the name of the Crown for their joint
benefit, was, you well know, a virtual subversion of the
British Constitution. And the same thing, as practised
here to the same effect, is, in spirit and tendency, a sub
version of the American Constitution.
Intelligent observers in Europe have justly remarked on
the recent conduct of the President, as literally, and without
exaggeration in phrase, monarchical. ' He appears to us,'
says the London Courier, ' in the whole proceeding, to have

62
preferred his own convictions and views to the legally and
constitutionally expressed opinion of his fellow-citizens ;
acting rather as a European Sovereign than as the Head
of a Representative Government.' — ' Certain it is,' says
the London Globe, ' that no King in Europe could have
ventured to so cavalierly treat the feelings and convictions
of a large minority of his subjects, as the American Pres
ident has done those of the free citizens of the United
States.' — And lest you should reject these opinions as be
ing the result of mere European prejudice and misconcep
tion, I would remind you that you yourself, in your Letter,
say the President ' can do what the King of England can
not do.' — He has done, unconstitutionally, what the King
of England dare not do constitutionally ; and he has been
prompted to il, and borne out in it, by party-corruption. —
Our hope rests in the virtue and intelligence of the people,
to step forward for the salvation of their liberties. The will
of one man, illegally exerted, and sus tained by the arts and
impositions of paid advocates, and mercenary party-mana
gers, has filled the country, from one end to the other, wilh
misery and confusion. If we are ambitious to continue
freemen, — if we desire to see prosperity and domestic
peace restored to us, — it behoves us, in such constitution
al modes of action as remain to us, to arrest the career
of executive usurpation, by stripping the Administration of
its ill gotten dominion of the public offices and public
treasure, the means whereby il reaches towards tyranny.
For the President hiniself, the elected Chief Magistrate
of our common country, — would that his name had been
permitted to descend to posterity unspotted by the bad
uses, which bad men have made of it, — would that he
might even now abandon the misdirected career he has
been prompted to tread, and consult only the true glory of
himself and of the Republic !
No weight of popularity in their ruler, no artfully coii-

63
ceived combination of corrupt influences, can wean this
people from their devoted attachment to the liberties be
queathed them by their sires. — 'Free our land came
down to us, and free it shall descend to our children.' —
Persevering executive usurpations may, as here, break up
the peaceful pursuits of industry, and throw the whole
machine of society inlo confusion ; they may, as else
where, lead to civil strife and domestic bloodshed ; but
not here, as elsewhere, can they succeed to their end.
And brilliant in seeming as may be the destiny of success
ful usurpers, think of the infamy of those who fail. Csesar
mastered the liberties of his country, and is famous : had
his fortune sunk at Pharsalia, he were but another Cati
line.* And, though all but impious to imagine of Wash
ington a purpose of tyranny, it is yet safe to say, that, if
such a purpose could enter into his pure and noble spirit,
and could he rise from the dead to accomplish it, the at
tempt would be utterly vain. The Union riven asUnder
by fratricide-arms,— long years of sanguinary contention, —
this great Republic made the scorn of the world, — such
are probable consequences of a scheme of usurpation per
tinaciously pursued by a popular party-chief ; but ultimate
success in it is not a possible consequence, for so much as
one of these twenty-four States. He that should first
move in it, were he Washington himself, if he did not fall
in the attempt, — if he did not die the~ death of a felon
with Iturbide and Guerrero, must live to see his utter
failure, and to pine away at last under that broken-heart-
edness- of a glorious reputation squandered, which bore
Bolivar the gravef.
* Nie sia alucno che s' inganni'per la gloria de Cesare. Chi vuole conoscere
quelle che gli scrittori liberi ne direbbono, vegga quelle che dicono di Catilina.
E tanto ^ piii detestabile Cesare, quanto piii 6 da biasimare quelle che ha fatto,
che quello che ha voluto fare un male. [Machiavelli, Discorsi sopra Tito Livio,
t One of the raost patriotic and spirited compositions of the time is a piece, en-

64
In approaching the close of this Letter, I desire to sub
join a word of qualification, touching the expressions here
in applied to the dealings of the Administration with the
newspaper-press. The President pays the advocates of
himself and his measures, not out of his own salary or
patrimony, but out of my money and your money ; out of
the contributions we have made, not to feed the rapacity
of a party, but to defray the expenses of the government.
Such an one shall issue a paper filled with virtuous in
dignation against the Bank ; but he holds some lucrative
contract or well-paid ofifice, by the tenure of concocting,
and publishing a daily or weekly quota of electioneering
falsehoods in his paper. This is thrice-distilled fraud. It
is three-piled corruption. Il is corrupt appropriation of
the public treasure ; it is also an application of it to cor
rupt uses ; and it is over and above hateful, because being
corruptly drawn from the treasury, and corruptly taken by
the recipient, it is then by him corruptly employed to dis
seminate false intelligence among the people. I rejoice
that the great body of the conductors of the press, de-
spile the gilded lures held out to them by the President,
are patriotic and right-minded citizens, who, susceptible,
as by the necessities of their position they must be, of
strong impressions either for good or bad, yet regard with
honest indignation the flagitious conduct of those few
among their number, who make it their business to gloss
over misrule, and to fabricate false accusations of their
opponents, for the stipend of the Administration.
And a word of qualification, touching persons who hold
titled, ' Esposieion de los Sentimientos de los Funcionarios Publicos, asi Nacion-
ales como Departaraentales y Municipales, y djmos Halitantes de la Ciud ad de
Bogota, hecha para ser presentada al Libertador Presidente de la Republica,' *
•written to dissuade Bolivar from that series of unconstitutional acts, which ter
minated in the dissolution of the Republic of Colombia. Had Bolivar listened to
its thrilling appeals, — had he respected the rights of the Senate and of Congress,—
had he scrupulously observed the Constitution of his country ,— he would not havft-
been doomed to outlive his own honor and the integrity of the Republic.

65
ofifice at the will of the President, is also due to fairness
and truth. In the expressions applied to them, I desire to
be understood as speaking, not so much of individuals, as
of the general spirit and influence of the system of parly-
rewards and punishments adopted by the Administration.
Far be it from me to insinuate that there is any thing dis
honorable or corrupt in accepting executive offices, even
those which are merely administrative, and which are of
fices of emolument, not of honor. Some of the best
men in the nation have held such offices. Originally they
were bestowed as the rewards of virtue and patriotism,
and earned* by genuine merit. Nay, in the executive ser
vices of this Administration individuals now are not want
ing, distinguished by courage in the field, or wisdom in
council, and fitted to adorn any station or ofifice which
their country can bestow. — Heretofore, all such ofificers,
being appointed by the President and Senate concurrent
ly, and commissioned in the name oflhe United States,
might well deem themselves honored in the places they
occupied, as the ministers of the Constitution and of the
People-. But, as Americans, as freemen, as men of hon
or and conscious worth, do they not,— such of them as
possess one spark of manly independence,— must they not
feel insulted, degraded, by the arrogant pretensions of the
President that they are merely his agents .'' The servants
of his caprice .'' To truckle to his bidding like bond-slaves ?
To have it their main official excellence to electioneer for
Andrew Jackson, not to honor their country, or serve
the American Union ? To have no conscience but his
conscience ? No will but his will .'—I appeal to them,
the Forsyths, the Casses, the Millers, the McNeils, will
they not throw ofif the galling yoke of that ignominious
Kitchen-cabinet, which they were never born to wear ?
For the rest, the rank and file of those holding offices of
mere emolument, too many of them asked for office as the
9

66
specific pecuniary reward of party-services ; and in setting
up tory newspapers, or busying themselves in elections,
they do but labor at their chosen, vocation. Taught by
daily observation how ' thrift may follow fawning,' and
skilled by diligent practice ' to crook the pliant hinges of
the knee,' they are Tories upon a nice calculation of profit
and loss, in wear and tear of conscience and compensating
orders on the Treasury. — Many others, doubtless, wilh
better feelings and independent wishes, are forced to be
co-workers in the system of corruption, sometimes by the
overwhelming tyranny of party-discipline, sometimes by
the irresistible call of domestic exigencies. It is one of
the detestable qualities of the system, thus to place honor
and necessity in perpetual conflict. Good and bad are
mixed up in the motives of men, as they are in the com
position of the great stream of life. Not a few public
employes have given in lo the corrupt maxims of their
party-leaders from the mere habit of yielding support lo
government ; — contractors or others, who are in fact, and
ought to be in principle, altogether above sacrificing their
convictions of the true welfare of the country to the gam
bling schemes of a desperate cabal for power. — And I re
joice to know, that there are, in the ranks even of the great
organized army of public office-holders, men, who appre
ciate and value their own respectability ; who bear in
mind the pledge of the President not lo bring ' the pat
ronage of the federal government into conflict wilh the
freedom of elections ; ' who remember the terms of re
probation applied by Thomas Jefiferson to electioneering
government officers ; and who accordingly devote them
selves to their official duties. Would that all were equal
ly pure and conscientious : then would the Administration
stand or sink by its own deserts.
Our government exhibits the strange phenomenon, at
the present time, of men totally without standing, general

67
qualifications, or a local constituency, who receive exor
bitant salaries in the post-office and customs, of three,
four, five, and six thousand dollars annually, for mere
clerical or ministerial services in office, — when the judges,
district-attorneys, many of the diplomatic agents of the
country, and numerous other public officers, whose duties
require the very highest order of intelligence and social
standing, for the most part receive salaries and appoint
ments but just adequate to their bare subsistence. It
needs no sphinx to unriddle the secret of this anomaly.
And there is a remedy for this great plague-spot in the
government. Let the Senate fearlessly discharge its consti
tutional duty. It has begun nobly. It has given a great
example of its capacity to deal wilh those members of
Congress, who misrepresent and oppress their constitu
ents, relying upon executive favor, and who legislate with
the price of marketed patriotism in their pockets. Such
men are commemorated by Hudibras,
Who, by their precedents of wit
T' out-fast, out-loiter, and out-sit,
Can order matters underhand
To put all business to a stand ; —
Know what a leading voice is worth,
A seconding, a third or fourth ;
How much a casting voice comes to.
That turns up trump, of ay, or rw ;
And, by adjusting all at th' end,
Share every one his dividend.
Let the Senate nobly proceed, as it has nobly begun.
During its late session, the Senate rejected seventeennova-
inations : it confirmed four hundred and forty-nine.
Some of the spoilers have the cool impudence to speak
of these acts of rejection, or part of them, a% factious in
the Senate. Why factious ?— Because, say they, the re
jections were party rejections. — Good. — The argument
is worthy of ils hireling authors. — They forget that an
appointment consists of two parts, nomination and confir
mation, each equally essential wilh the other, and each

68
equally resting upon a separate will. The will to nomi
nate, and the will to confirm, should each depend upon
the general and particular fitness of the nominee for the
office to which he is named. — Is it faction for the Senate
to deem corrupt Jacksonism unfitness ? Then it is equally
faction for the President to deem Jacksonism fitness —
If party-motive be reprehensible in the former, it is at
least equally reprehensible in the latter , and so where
¦the Senate has been factious seventeen times, the Presi
dent has been factious four hundred and sixty-six times.
For the President to act in the system of removing faith
ful incumbents from ofifice, in order to substitute in their
place mere brawling partisans, — for him to contract for
the purchase of factionaries, whether in Congress or out
of it, — ^this, indeed, is the worst of all faction, because it
is the establishment of a practical tyranny by the corrupt
use of the nominating power. — Whatever the Senators do
or can do, constitutionally, to cripple this machinery of
executive usurpation by the proper use of the rejecting
power, they are bound by their oaths and their honor to
do ; for if the President has a constitutional right to nomin
ate individuals to ofifice because of their party-services, the
Senate has exactly the same constitutional right to reject
thera because of the same party-services ; and thus we
keep straight the balance of the Constitution.
No man, or set of men, high or low, attached to the
party in power, has any right to complain of whatever
severity of language applied to the corrupt use, which the
Administration have made of the public funds. First, no
severity of language can outgo the truth of the case.
Then, being a truth of universal public concernment, it is to
be published. And to publish it is but retributive justice.
For the last ten years, they and their organs have been
perpetually clamoring about corruption. It was shocking
corruption in Adams to appoint one member of Congress

69
to office where Jackson has appointed a dozen. Then, it
was shocking corruption to pay a newspaper one dollaf for a
government advertisement, for which three times that sum
shall now be paid. Then, it was shocking corruption for
the government to expend thirteen millions annually : now
it expends twenty-two millions. — It is shocking corrup
tion for a member of Congress to have a note discounted
at the Bank of the United Slates ; but all right, for the
Postmaster General or his subordinates to borrow money,
or even receive presents, from mail-contractors who are
suitors for extra-allowances. Newspapers, got up with
government-funds subscribed by office-holders, and cor
ruptly sustained by ofificial patronage, are incessantly
charging other newspapers with bank-corruption. And
as a member of the Legislature of Massachusetts, — a
hody totally independent of the Bank, and having nothing
to gain or lose by it except as the whole country may gain
or lose, — I treasure it in memory that when, last winter,
that body raised its voice against executive usurpation, —
there were men fattened upon the ' spoils of victory,' —
men openly bought and sold in the market, and branded
on the forehead with the broad-arrow of the Treasury, —
who, in a deliberate purpose of wanton falsehood, imputed
bank-corruption to the members of that Legislature. At
the present time, the presses of the Administration, —
writhing under the recent exposure of the corruptions of
the Post Office, — and having before them the unanimous
vote of the Senate, condemning the open and gross
violations of the Constitution committed by the Post
master-General, are yet pouring forth torrents of abuse
against that magnanimous assembly, the last stay of the
liberties of the Union. In denouncing the corruptions of
the Administration, then, — truly, although with language
of indignant justice, — we do but ' plague the inventor'
with his own devices, and commend the ' ingredients of
his poisoned ^chalice' to his own lips.

70
Such, then, is the question of usurpation under our gov
ernment, — of coraparative tendency in its parts to encroach
one on the other, — as tried by the conduct of the pres
ent Administration. Its friends, its newspapers, ils paid
emissaries in taverns and at street-corners, are imputing
encroachment to the Senate. That imputed encroach
ment consists, according to their and your showing, in
uttering an opinion without, as you and they say, express
or specific authority so to do, set down in the Constitu
tion. There is a short way to test the merits of the question.
To begin, I challenge any impugner of the constitutional
right of the Senate in passing the Resolutions under de
bate between us, to a fair comparison, itera by item, of
independent opinions uttered by the Senate as a body
without express constitutional authority as to manner or
fact, — and of opinions uttered by the President, not in
loose conversation, but in solemn state-papers, which are
in like manner unsanctioned as to manner or fact by express
authority in the Constitution. Of such opinions on the
part of the Senate, you will find, I think, two, between
which there is no distinction in principle, but a re
markable distinction in one other respect. The Senate,
by a majority vote, expressed an opinion, in the form of
resolution, that in the removal of the deposites the Pres
ident had acted ' in derogation ' of the Constitution and
laws. To this vote, a minority objects, as being a prema
ture and irregular decision of the Senate upon impeacha
ble matter. The sarae Senate, by an unanimous vote,
expressed an opinion in the form of resolutions, that in
borrowing money on the credit of the United States, the
Postmaster-General had acted in violation of the Consti
tution. — What had become of the constitutional scruples
of the minority ? — Is il not clear ? They dare not med
dle with the sacrosanct person of the President, the false
idol of their worship ; but the Postmaster-General is made

71
of our own common earth ; and him they may touch.—
Well, then, having set down both or neither of these two
votes of the Senate on your side of the question, proceed
to consider the pronounced opinions of the President.
Some of them, as the so called ' Read-lo-the-Cabinet,' the
Protest, the messages accompanying Mr. Clay's return
ed Land Bill, and the re-nomination of the Government
Directors of the Bank, are, equally in matter and occasion,
without constitutional authority, being in truth mere elec
tioneering essays of the Kitchen-Cabinel, tricked ofif with
the President's name for popular effect. Most of the
many other executive state-papers, fabricated in his name
by the same reputable craftsmen, are distinguished for
this curious trait. During the ten or twelve years that
the President has been prominently before the American
people, whether as Chief Magistrate or as candidate for
the ofifice, he has, either in acts or words, pronounced a
solemn judgement upon diametrically opposite sides of
nearly all the great constitutional questions of the day ;
deliberately contradicting, at some one time, whatever
doctrine he may have deliberately affirmed at some other
time. You may ascribe this to the make-shift schemes
of unprincipled favorites practising upon the mind of their
victim,-;— or to the capriciousness of change, which usually
accompanies wilfulness of temper, as distinguished from
the consistent comprehension and far-seeing perseverance
of true moral greatness, — whichever alternative be most'
acceptable. It is hard if part of these opposite opinions
of the President may not be counted on our leaf of the
leger. One just half of them, it would seem, are uncon
stitutional. But, however this be, strike the balance as you
please between the opinions of the Senate and of the
President, and when you shall have pondered that balance
well, proceed to a comparison of independent acts of the

¦72
Senate, and of independent acts of the President, per
formed without express authority from the Constilution.
You shall find, if I mistake not, a reckoning against the
President, in the ratio of thousands to none. Consider^
also, that while the Senators, like the conscript fathers of
the Roman Republic awaiting in their curule chairs the
approach of the Gauls, sit in the Capitol defended only by
the moral grandeur of their presence, as the representa-*
tion of the American States, — the President, on the olhfcr
hand, comes to the conflict wilh an army of forty thousand
mercenaries at his back, ready, it may be, with Brennus
of old, to fling his sword into the scales, and hold our lib
erties at a ransom, except tiiere be some Camillus in
reserve, vouchsafed by Heaven for the salvation of our
Republic. Beside which, tbe President has at beck that .
long-sufifering majority oflhe House of Representatives, —
Issachar-like, ' an ass crouching down betwixt' uncon
scionable ' burdens,' — composed of patent ' democrats,'
disobeying the positive instructions of their constiluents,y
or high-minded ' patriots,' acting against their known con
victions of the public good, out of disinterested respect
for the will of the enlightened tenant of the White House.*
These are plain elements for deciding the question of
usurpation, commended to the consideration of all, who
have consciences to feel, and heads lo think.
We, of the regicide race of the English Common-
* ' A vigilant and jealous eye over executory and judicial magistracy ; an anx
ious care of public money ; an openness approaching towards facility, to public-
complaint : these seem to be the true characteristics of a House of Commons.
But an addressing House of Commons, and a petitioning nation ; a House of
Commons full of confidence, when the nation is plunged in despair ; in the utmost
harmony with the ministers, whom the people regard with the utmost abhorrence j.
who vote thanks, when the public opinion calls upon them for impeachments ;
who are eager to grant, when the general voice demands account ; who, in all
disputes between the administration and the people, presume against the people ;
who punish their disorders, but refuse even to inquire into the provocations to
them; this is an unnatural, a monstrous state of things in this Constitution.'
Burke's Thoughts on the present Discontents.

73
wealth, with blood ' fetched from fathers' not only ' of
war-proof,' but of usurpation-proof, challenge and defy
open assault on our liberties ; and as for insidious tyran
ny, whether it approach us unseen along the slimy paths
of reptile corruption, or boldly face its front with false
colors of pretended patriotism, we trust ourselves in the
keeping of that Providence, which brought hither men
of such differing stock, united only by community of
transatlantic wrongs, the Puritans of Massachusetts, the
Catholics of Maryland, the Huguenots of Carolina andNew-
York, and the Quakers of Pennsylvania, and made them
to found this great Republic in the wilds of America. We
believe, with them, that ' the waves of the sea do not
more certainly waste the shore,' than power tends to en
croachment. Forewarned is forearmed. Maugre the for
ty thousand streams of corruption welling out over the
country in golden sands from the copious fount of the
Federal Treasury, there still remain those among us, who
continue to hold in verdant honor the times, when our
fathers stood on the ice-bound beach of Plymouth, or by
the rude clififs of Salem, ' with no benefactor around them
but nature, no present sovereign but God.' Not all, who
look forth from Boston to the lines of Dorchester and
Charlestown, are yet recreant to the Whig spirit that
breathes round about us from those immortal heights ; not
all, have sold their souls for a price to the service of Martin
Van Buren. Doubtless every engine of imposition will
be set in play by the Administration, to palliate its iniqui
ty, to disguise its tyranny, to conceal its corruption, from
a suflfering-roused and thoughtful people. But, though
the millions, which our industry pours into the public
chest, be returned upon us in lavish bribes for our destruc
tion, — though the Post Ofifice and the Treasury scatter
abroad their lie-stufifed sheets, like the falling leaves in
autumn, thick enough to plaster every inch of the soil of
10

74
America, with their rottneness, still, if we be but true to
ourselves, true to 'the purity and fame of our fathers, we
shall strike down that impersonated Corruption, which now
rides roughshod over the people, and by its baleful influ
ence benumbs and deadens the best energies of the Re
public. To accomplish this, it needs but that the people under
stand the true facts of the case. The Chief Magistrate"
commits a mad assault upon our liberties and our means
of subsistence, convulsing the whole Union wilh the an
guish of present misery and apprehension of greater
coming wo. Pensioned editors and wealthy placemen
tell us it is all as it should be,, because Andrew Jackson
has done it. These disinterested gentry, grown fat upon
treasury-pap, laugh at the idea of a pressure in the money-
market. — Good easy souls, plundering the Treasury with
one hand, and the Post Office with another, what know
or care they of public distress ? — Under the specious pre-
te3^t of driving corruption from the Capitol and the White
House, as . Ate was cast down from heaven, they have
nearly doubled the public charges, and organized a system
of pecuniary and party-corruption worthy of the licen
tious courts of Europe. They, a mere oligarchy, banded
together to convert themselves into a permanent privileged
order, and stickling at no scruple of faith or honor in the
perpetration of their flagitious plans, — they, forsooth, pre
tend, wilh brazen effrontery, to be the exclusive democ
racy of this Nation. But the truth can be not longer
disguised. In the wanton pride of their self-intoxication,
they and their master have done that, which compels men
to think. Already, of those who judge for themselves,
there are two distinct parlies in the country, the suffering
people, and the full-fed ofifice-holders. Is a newspaper clam
orous for Jackson ? It derives its being, directly or indi
rectly, from the public treasure. — Is an election pending .''

75 .
Qustom-house ofificers are foremost in the work. — h a
memorial in favor of the President needed.? The Ad
ministration' has tools that can forge you a thousand sub
scribers to order. — These things, I say, are beginning to
be understood ; and tbe people are rising in the majesty
of their might tb shake ofif this tyranny of the hireling
Swiss Guards of the President. — Ere long, it will be
deemed, as it ought, dishonorable, ignominious, to prosti
tute a public ofifice to 4;he indiscriminate party-support of
the Administration.
Indeed, the wonder is, how any man of honor and
worth can palliate, to his own sense of self-respect, the
participating personally in such a corrupt system. What is
it, but to barter the birthright of one's liberties for a mess
of pottage ? In that exquisite Virgilian episode of the
descent of iEneas to the Shades, which Bishop Warbur-
ton justly esteemed one of the noblest pieces in the whole
range of uninspired composition, there is mention of them,
¦who lend their aid to schemes of usurpation for sordid in
ducement. Vendidit hie auro patriam, dominumque potentera
Imposuit. 
And where is he, who sold his country for gold, and im
posed on it a powerful master ? Is it not amid the shrieks
of agony, the dull-echoing lash, the clank of chains, ever
sounding up from the realms of Gnossian Rhadamanthus ?
Beside the mantling cup which Tantalus may not touch,
Ixion's revolving wheel, the still-impending clifif of the
Lapithse, the rock of Sisyphus perpetually rolled up in
Tain, the unsaled vulture gnawing at the heart of
Tityus ? — This, poetic fiction though it be, is the expres
sion of the unbiased judgement of mankind touching cor
rupt support of an usurping chief magistrate.
And I call upon you, — you, who, in the Spy, have car
ried back our imaginations to the morning of our indepen-

76
deuce, — who, and in the Pioneers and the Prairie, have'
so admirably illustrate^ the manners and the history
of the people of this Continent, — who, in the Heiden-^
mauer, the Bravo, and the Headsman, have given great
lessons of social wisdom, — ^yho, in the Notions of the
Americans, have deliberately assumed the defence of our
institutions,-^I call upon you, a Republican and an Ameri
can, — not to throw your weight into the scale of executive
encroachment. I know that minstrel voices are too prone
to sing the praises of power. They not always love the
empire of the people. The lordly dais, the pomp of courts,
the largesses of the great, pensions, and epicurean ease,
are not without a charm for over-fanciful minds. But you,
a liberal inprinciple, are not of such as they. — Join your
self, then, to the friends of liberty and their country, whoj
drawn forth out of their retirement in thousands by the
impending peril of the Constitution, are rallying on all
sides to rescue our Ark of Covenant from the usurping
and sacrilegious hands of the Administration. •
One of your Countrymen^. •

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