otherwise; but it did say that they should be made there, unless the Secretary of the Treasury should order otherwise. I put it to the plain sense and common candour of all men, whether the discretion which was thus to be exercised over the subject was not the Secretary's own personal discretion; and whether, therefore, the interposition of the authority of another, acting directly and conclusively on the subject, deciding the whole question, even in its particulars and details, be not an assumption of power.

The Senate regarded this interposition as an encroachment by the executive on other branches of the government; as an interference with the legislative disposition of the public treas

ure.

It was strongly and forcibly urged, yesterday, by the honourable member from South Carolina, that the true and only mode of preserving any balance of power, in mixed governments, is to keep an exact balance. This is very true; and to this end encroachment must be resisted at the first step. The question is, therefore, whether, upon the true principles of the Constitution, this exercise of power by the President can be justified. Whether the consequences be prejudicial or not, if there be an illegal exercise of power, it is to be resisted in the proper manner. Even if no harm or inconvenience result from transgressing the boundary, the intrusion is not to be suffered to pass unnoticed. Every encroachment, great or small, is important enough to awaken the attention of those who are intrusted with the preservation of a constitutional government. We are not to wait till great public mischiefs come, till the government is overthrown, or liberty itself put in extreme jeopardy. We should not be worthy sons of our fathers, were we so to regard great questions affecting the general freedom. Those fathers accomplished the Revolution on a strict question of principle. The Parliament of Great Britain asserted a right to tax the Colonies in all cases whatsoever; and it was precisely on this question that they made the Revolution turn. The amount of taxation was trifling, but the claim itself was inconsistent with liberty; and that was, in their eyes, enough. It was against the recital of an Act of Parliament, rather than against any suffering under its enactments, that they took up arms. They went to war against a preamble. They fought seven years against a declaration. They poured out their treasures and their blood like water, in a contest in opposition to an assertion which those less sagacious and not so well schooled in the principles of civil liberty would have regarded as barren phraseology, or mere parade of words. They saw in the claim of the British Parliament a seminal principle of mischief, the germ of unjust power; they detected it, dragged it

forth from underneath its plausible disguises, struck at it; nor did it elude either their steady eye or their well-directed blow till they had extirpated and destroyed it, to the smallest fibre. On this question of principle, while actual suffering was yet afar off, they raised their flag against a power, to which, for purposes of foreign conquest and subjugation, Rome, in the height of her glory, is not to be compared; a power which has dotted over the surface of the whole globe with her possessions and military posts, whose morning drum-beat, following the Sun, and keeping company with the hours, circles the Earth daily with one continuous and unbroken strain of the martial airs of England.

The necessity of holding strictly to the principle upon which free governments are constructed, and to the precise lines which fix the partitions of power between different branches, is as plain, if not as cogent, as that of resisting, as our fathers did, the strides of the parent country upon the rights of the Colonies; because, whether the power which exceeds its just limits be foreign or domestic, whether it be the encroachment of all branches on the rights of the people, or that of one branch on the rights of others, in either case the balanced and welladjusted machinery of free government is disturbed, and, if the derangement go on, the whole system must fall.

But the case before us is not a case of merely theoretic infringement; nor is it one of trifling importance. Far otherwise. It respects one of the highest and most important of all the powers of government; that is to say, the custody and control of the public money. The act of removing the deposits, which I now consider as the President's act, and which his friends on this floor defend as his act, took the national purse from beneath the security and guardianship of the law, and disposed of its contents, in parcels, in such places of deposit as he chose to select. At this very moment, every dollar of the public treasure is subject, so far as respects its custody and safe-keeping, to his unlimited control. We know not where it is to-day; still less do we know where it may be to-morrow.

But, Mr. President, this is not all. There is another part of the case, which has not been so much discussed, but which appears to me to be still more indefensible in its character. It is something which may well teach us the tendency of power to move forward with accelerated pace, if it be allowed to take the first step. The Bank of the United States, in addition to the services rendered to the treasury, gave for its charter, and for the use of the public deposits, a bonus or outright sum of one million and a half of dollars. This sum was paid by the bank into the treasury soon after the commencement of its charter.

In the Act which passed both Houses for renewing the charter, in 1832, it was provided that the bank, for the same consideration, should pay two hundred thousand dollars a-year, during the period for which it was proposed to renew it. A similar provision is in the bill which I asked leave to introduce some weeks ago. Now, Sir, this shows that the custody of the deposits is a benefit for which a bank may well afford to pay a large annual sum. The banks which now hold the deposits pay nothing to the public; they give no bonus, they pay no annuity. But this loss of so much money is not the worst part of the case, nor that which ought most to alarm us. Although they pay nothing to the public, they do pay, nevertheless, such sums, and for such uses, as may be agreed upon between themselves and the executive government. We are officially informed that an officer is appointed by the Secretary of the Treasury to inspect or superintend these selected banks; and this officer is compensated by a salary fixed by the executive, agreed to by the banks, and paid by them. I ask, Sir, if there can be a more irregular or a more illegal transaction than this? Whose money is it out of which this salary is paid? Is it not money justly due to the United States, and paid, because it is so due, for the advantage of holding the deposits? If a dollar is received on that account, is not its only true destination into the general treasury of the government? And who has authority, without law, to create an office, to fix a salary, and to pay that salary out of this money? Here is an inspector or supervisor of the deposit banks. But what law has provided for such an officer? What commission has he received? Who concurred in his appointment? What oath does he take? How is he to be punished or impeached, if he colludes with any of these banks to embezzle the public money or defraud the government? The value of the use of this public money to the deposit banks is probably two hundred thousand dollars a year; or, if less than that, it is yet, certainly, a very great sum. May the President appoint whatever officers he pleases, with whatever duties he pleases, and pay them as much as he pleases out of these moneys thus paid by the banks, for the sake of having the deposits?

Mr. President, the executive claim of power is exactly this, that the President may keep the money of the public in whatever banks he chooses, on whatever terms he chooses, and to apply the sums which these banks are willing to pay for its use to whatever purposes he chooses. These sums are not to come into the general treasury. They are to be appropriated before they get there; they are never to be brought under the control of Congress; they are to be paid to officers and agents not

known to the law, not nominated to the Senate, and responsible to nobody but the executive itself. I ask gentlemen if all this be lawful? Are they prepared to defend it? Will they stand up and justify it? In my opinion, Sir, it is a clear and a most dangerous assumption of power. It is the creation of office without law; the appointment to office without consulting the Senate; the establishment of a salary without law; and the payment of that salary out of a fund which is itself derived from the use of the public treasures. This, Sir, is my other reason for concurring in the vote of the 28th of March; and on these grounds I leave the propriety of that vote, so far as I am concerned with it, to be judged of by the country.

But, Sir, the President denies the power of the Senate to pass any such resolution, on any ground whatever. Suppose the declaration contained in the resolution to be true; suppose the President had, in fact, assumed powers not granted to him: does the Senate possess the right to declare its opinion, affirming this fact, or does it not? I maintain that the Senate does possess such a power; the President denies it.

Mr. President, we need not look far, nor search deep, for the foundation of this right in the Senate. It is clearly visible, and close at hand. In the first place, it is the right of self-defence. In the second place, it is a right founded on the duty of representative bodies, in a free government, to defend the public liberty against encroachment. We must presume that the Senate honestly entertained the opinion expressed in the resolution of the 28th of March; and, entertaining that opinion, its right to express it is but the necessary consequence of its right to defend its own constitutional authority, as one branch of the government. This is its clear right, and this, too, is its imperative duty.

If one or both the other branches of the government happen to do that which appears to us inconsistent with the constitutional rights of the Senate, will any one say that the Senate is yet bound to be passive, and to be silent? to do nothing, and to say nothing? Or, if one branch appears to encroach on the rights of the other two, have these two no power of remonstrance, complaint, or resistance? Sir, the question may be put in a still more striking form. Has the Senate a right to have an opinion in a case of this kind? If it may have an opinion, how is that opinion to be ascertained but by resolution and vote? The objection must go the whole length; it must maintain that the Senate has not only no right to express opinions, but no right to form opinions, on the conduct of the executive government, though in matters intimately affecting the powers and duties of the Senate itself. It is not possible, Sir, that such a

doctrine can be maintained for a single moment. All political bodies resist what they deem encroachments, by resolutions expressive of their sentiments, and their purpose to resist such encroachments. When such a resolution is presented for its consideration, the question is, whether it be true; not whether the body has authority to pass it, admitting it to be true. The Senate, like other public bodies, is perfectly justifiable in defending, in this mode, either its legislative or executive authority. The usages of Parliament, the practice in our State legislatures and assemblies, both before and since the Revolution, and precedents in the Senate itself, fully maintain this right. The case of the Panama mission is in point. In that case, Mr. Branch, from North Carolina, introduced a resolution, which, after reciting that the President, in his annual message, and in his communication to the Senate, had asserted that he possessed an authority to make certain appointments, although the appointments had not been made, went on to declare that "a silent acquiescence on the part of this body, may, at some future time, be drawn into dangerous precedent"; and to resolve, therefore, that the President does not possess the right or power said to be claimed by him. This resolution was discussed, and finally laid on the table. But the question discussed was, whether the resolution was correct, in fact and principle; not whether the Senate had any right to pass such resolution. So far as I remember, no one pretended that, if the President had exceeded his authority, the Senate might not so declare by resolution. No one ventured to contend that, whether the rights of the Senate were invaded or not, the Senate must hold its peace.

The Protest labours strenuously to show that the Senate adopted the resolution of the 28th of March, under its judicial authority. The reason of this attempt is obvious enough. If the Senate, in its judicial character, has been trying the President, then he has not had a regular and formal trial; and, on that ground, it is hoped the public sympathy may be moved. But the Senate has acted not in its judicial, but in its legislative capacity. As a legislative body, it has defended its own just authority, and the authority of the other branch of the legislature. Whatever attacks our own rights and privileges, or whatever encroaches on the power of both Houses, we may oppose and resist, by declaration, resolution, or other similar proceedings. If we look to the books of precedents, if we examine the journals of legislative bodies, we find everywhere instances of such proceedings.

It is to be observed, Sir, that the Protest imposes silence on the House of Representatives as well as on the Senate. It declares that no power is conferred on either branch of the legis