HENRY CLAY

DICTATORS IN AMERICAN POLITICS

[Henry Clay was born in Hanover County, Va., 1777. Left alone at an early age, he had very few educational advantages, and what he possessed of learning was acquired by reading. In 1797 he removed to Lexington, Ky., and began to practice law. In 1803 he became a member of the legislature. In 1811 he was again elected to the House of Representatives. He was chosen as speaker, and held the office from the twelfth to the sixteenth Congress inclusive. He belonged to the Young Republican party that forced the declaration of war with England in 1812, but became one of the peace commissioners who negotiated the treaty at Ghent in 1814. The further work of that mission was the negotiating a treaty of commerce with England, after effecting which he returned to America in 1815, and reëntered Congress, where, in the slavery agitation beginning in 1819, he became the most ardent supporter of the measure known as the Missouri Compromise, that became a law in 1821. In 1831 he entered the U. S. Senate, where with the compromise tariff measure of 1833 he earned the title of the "Great Pacificator." He died at Washington, June 29, 1852. The first of the following speeches was delivered in the Senate in 1834; the second and third, also in the Senate, in 1832 and 1850, respectively; the fourth and fifth, in the House of Representatives, in 1818 and 1819.]

NEV

TEVER, Mr. President, have I known or read of an administration which expires with so much agony, and so little composure and resignation, as that which now, unfortunately, has the control of public affairs in this country. It exhibits a state of mind feverish, fretful, and fidgety, bounding recklessly from one desperate expedient to another, without any sober or settled purpose. Ever since the dog days of last summer it has been making a succession of the most extravagant plunges, of which the extraordinary cabinet paper, a sort of appeal from a dissenting cabinet to the people, was the first; and the protest,

a direct appeal from the Senate to the people, is the last and the worst.

A new philosophy has sprung up within a few years past called phrenology. There is, I believe, something in it, but not quite as much as its ardent followers proclaim. According to its doctrines, the leading passion, propensity, and characteristics of every man are developed in his physical conformation, chiefly in the structure of his head. Gall and Spurzheim, its founders, or most eminent propagators, being dead, I regret that neither of them can examine the head of our illustrious chief magistrate. But if it could be surveyed by Dr. Caldwell of Transylvania University, I am persuaded that he would find the organ of destructiveness prominently developed. Except an enormous fabric of executive power for himself, the President has built up nothing, constructed nothing, and will leave no enduring monument of his administration. He goes for destruction, universal destruction, and it seems to be his greatest ambition to efface and obliterate every trace of the wisdom of his predecessors. He has displayed this remarkable trait throughout his whole life, whether in private walks or in the public service. He signally and gloriously exhibited that peculiar organ when contending against the enemies of his country in the battle of New Orleans. For that brilliant exploit no one has ever been more ready than myself to award him all due honor. At the head of our armies was his appropriate position, and most unfortunate for his fame was the day when he entered on the career of administration as the chief executive officer. He lives by excitement, perpetual, agitating excitement, and would die in a state of perfect repose and tranquillity. He has never been without some subject of attack, either in individuals, or in masses, or in institutions. I myself have been one of his favorites, and I do not know but that I have recently recommended myself to his special regard. During his administration this has been his constant course. The Indians and Indian policy, internal improvements, the colonial trade, the Supreme Court, Congress, the bank, have successively experienced the attacks of his haughty and imperious spirit. And if he tramples the bank in the dust, my word for it, we shall see him quickly in chase of some new subject of his

vengeance. This is the genuine spirit of conquerors and of conquest. It is said by the biographer of Alexander the Great that, after he had completed his Asiatic conquests, he seemed to sigh because there were no more worlds for him to subdue; and, finding himself without further employment for his valor or his arms, he turned within himself to search the means to gratify his insatiable thirst of glory. What sort of conquest he achieved of himself the same biographer tragically records.

Already has the President singled out and designated, in the Senate of the United States, the new object of his hostile pursuit; and the protest which I am now to consider is his declaration of war. What has provoked it? The Senate, a component part of the Congress of the United States, at its last adjournment left the Treasury of the United States in the safe custody of the persons and places assigned by law to keep it. Upon reassembling, it found the treasure removed; some of its guardians displaced; all, remaining, brought under the immediate control of the President's sole will; and the President having free and unobstructed access to the public money. The Senate believes that the purse of the nation is, by the Constitution and laws, entrusted to the exclusive legislative care of Congress. It has dared to avow and express this opinion, in a resolution adopted on the twenty-eighth of March last. That resolution was preceded by a debate of three months' duration, in the progress of which the able and zealous supporters of the executive in the Senate were attentively heard. Every argument which their ample resources, or those of the members of the executive, could supply was listened to with respect and duly weighed. After full deliberation, the Senate expressed its conviction that the executive had violated the Constitution and laws. cautiously refrained, in the resolution, from all examination into the motives or intention of the executive; it ascribed no bad ones to him; it restricted itself to a simple declaration of its solemn belief that the Constitution and laws had been violated. This is the extent of the offense of the Senate. This is what it has done to excite the executive indignation and to bring upon it the infliction of a denunciatory protest.

It

The President comes down upon the Senate and demands that it record upon its journal this protest. He recommends no measure-no legislation whatever. He proposes no executive proceeding on the part of the Senate. He requests the recording of his protest, and he requests nothing more nor less. The Senate has abstained from putting on its own record any vindication of the resolution of which the President complains. It has not asked of him to place it where he says he has put his protest, in the archives of the executive. He desires, therefore, to be done for him, on the journal of the Senate, what has not been done for itself. The Senate keeps no recording office for protests, deeds, wills, or other instruments. The Constitution. enjoins that "each house shall keep a journal of its proceedings. In conformity with this requirement, the Senate does keep a journal of its proceedings-not the proceedings of the executive or any other department of the government, except so far as they relate directly to the business of the Senate. The President sometimes professes to favor a strict construction of the Constitution, at least in regard to the powers of all the departments of the government other than that of which he is the chief. As to that, he is the greatest latitudinarian that has ever filled the office of President. Upon any fair construction of the Constitution, how can the Senate be called upon to record upon its journal any proceedings but its own? It is true that the ordinary messages of the President are usually inserted at large in the journal. Strictly speaking, it perhaps ought never to have been done; but they have been heretofore registered, because they relate to the general business of the Senate, either in its legislative or executive character, and have been the basis of subsequent proceedings. The protest stands upon totally distinct ground.

The President professes to consider himself as charged by the resolution with "the high crime of violating the laws and Constitution of my country." He declares that "one of the most important branches of the government, in its official capacity, in a public manner, and by its recorded. sentence, but without precedent, competent authority, or just cause, declares him guilty of a breach of the laws and Constitution." The protest further alleges that such an

act as the Constitution describes "constitutes a high crime -one of the highest, indeed, which the President can commit a crime which justly exposes him to an impeachment by the House of Representatives; and, upon due conviction, to removal from office, and to the complete and immutable disfranchisement prescribed by the Constitution." It also asserts: "The resolution, then, was an impeachment of the President, and in its passage amounts to a declaration by a majority of the Senate that he is guilty of an impeachable offense." The President is also of opinion that to say that the resolution does not expressly allege that the assumption of power and authority which it condemns was intentional and corrupt, is no answer to the preceding view of its character and effect. The act thus condemned necessarily implies volition and design in the individual to whom it is imputed; and, being lawful in its character, the legal conclusion is, that it was prompted by improper motives and committed with an unlawful intent."

"The President of the United States, therefore, has been, by a majority of his constitutional triers, accused and found guilty of an impeachable offense."

Such are the deliberate views entertained by the President of the implications, effects, and consequences of the resolution. It is scarcely necessary to say that they are totally different from any which were entertained by the Senate or by the mover of the resolution. The Senate carefully abstained from looking into the quo animo, from all examination into the motives or intention with which the violation of the Constitution and laws was made. No one knows those motives and intentions better than the President himself. If he chooses to supply the omission of the resolution, if he thinks proper to pronounce his own self-condemnation, his guilt does not flow from what the Senate has done, but from his own avowal. Having cautiously avoided passing upon his guilt by prejudgment, so neither ought his acquittal to be pronounced by anticipation.

But, I would ask, in what tone, temper, and spirit does the President come to the Senate? As a great state culprit who has been arraigned at the bar of justice, or sentenced as guilty? Does he manifest any of those compunctious visitings of conscience which a guilty violator of the Con