I have not risen to repeat at full length the argument by which the friends of the resolution of March, 1834, sustained it. That argument is before the world, was unanswered at the time, and is unanswerable. And I here, in my place, in the presence of my country and my God, after the fullest consideration and deliberation of which my mind is capable, reassert my solemn conviction of the truth of every proposition contained in that resolution. But while it is not my intention to commit such an infliction upon the Senate as that would be, of retracing the whole ground of argument formerly occupied, I desire to lay before it at this time, a brief and true state of the case. Before the fatal step is taken, of giving to the expunging resolution the sanction of the American Senate, I wish, by presenting a faithful outline of the real questions involved in the resolution of 1834, to make a last, even if it is to be an ineffectual appeal, to the sober judgments of the senators. I begin by reasserting the truth of that resolution.

Our British ancestors understood perfectly well the immense importance of the money power in a representative government. It is the great lever by which the crown is touched, and made to conform its administration to the interests of the kingdom, and the will of the people. Deprive Parliament of the power of freely granting or withholding supplies, and surrender to the king the purse of the nation, he instantly becomes an absolute monarch. Whatever may be the form of government, elective or hereditary, democratic or despotic, that person who commands the force of the nation, and at the same time has uncontrolled possession of the purse of the nation, has absolute power, whatever may be the official name by which he is called.

Our immediate ancestors, profiting by the lessons on civil liberty, which had been taught in the country from which we sprung, endeavored to encircle around the public purse, in the hands of Congress, every possible security against the intrusion of the executive. With this view, Congress alone is invested by the Constitution with the power to lay and collect the taxes. When collected, not a cent is to be drawn from the public treasury, but in virtue of an act of Congress. And among the first acts of this government, was the passage of a law establishing the treasury department, for the safe keeping and the legal and regular disbursement of the money so collected. By that act a Secretary of the Treasury is placed at the head of the department; and varying in one respect from all the other departments, he is to report, not to the president, but directly to Congress, and is liable to be called to give information in person before Congress. It is impossible to examine dispassionately that act, without coming to the conclusion that he is emphatically the agent of Congress in performing the duties assigned by the Constitution of Congress. The act further provides that a treasurer shall be appointed to receive and keep the public money, and none can be drawn from his custody but under the authority of a law, and in virtue of a warrant drawn by the Secretary of

the Treasury, countersigned by the comptroller, and recorded by the register. Only when such a warrant is presented can the treasurer lawfully pay one dollar from the public purse. Why was the concurrence of these four officers required in disbursements of the public money? Was it not for greater security? Was it not intended that each, exercising a separate and independent will, should be a check upon every other? Was it not the purpose of the law to consider each of these four officers, acting in his proper sphere, not as a mere automaton, but as an intellectual, intelligent, and responsible person, bound to observe the law, and to stop the warrant, or stop the money, if the authority of the law were wanting?

Thus stood the treasury from 1789 to 1816. During that long time no president had ever attempted to interfere with the custody of the public purse. It remained where the law placed it, undisturbed, and every chief magistrate, including the father of his country, respected the law.

In 1816 an act passed to establish the late bank of the United States for the term of twenty years; and, by the sixteenth section of the act, it is enacted,

"That the deposits of the money of the United States in places in which the said bank and the branches thereof may be established, shall be made in said bank or branches thereof, unless the Secretary of the Treasury shall at any time otherwise order and direct; in which case the Secretary of the Treasury shall immediately lay before Congress, if in session, and if not, immediately after the commencement of the next session, the reasons of such order or direction."

Thus it is perfectly manifest, from the express words of the law, that the power to make any order or direction for the removal of the public deposits, is confided to the secretary alone, to the absolute exclusion of the president, and all the world besides. And the law proceeding upon the established principle, that the Secretary of the Treasury, in all that concerns the public purse, acts as the direct agent of Congress, requires, in the event of his ordering or directing a removal of the deposits, that he shall immediately lay his reasons therefor before whom? the president? No: before Congress.

So stood the public treasury and the public deposits from the year 1816 to September, 1833. In all that period of seventeen years, running through or into four several administrations of the government, the law had its uninterrupted operation, no chief magistrate having assumed upon himself the power of diverting the public purse from its lawful custody, or of substituting his will to that of the officer to whose care it was exclusively intrusted.

In the session of Congress of 1832-3, an inquiry had been instituted by the House of Representatives into the condition of the bank of the United States. It resulted in a conviction of its entire safety, and a declaration by the House, made only a short time before the adjournment of Congress

on the 4th of March, 1833, that the public deposits were perfectly secure. This declaration was probably made in consequence of suspicions then afloat of a design on the part of the executive to remove the deposits. These suspicions were denied by the press friendly to the administration. Nevertheless, the members had scarcely reached their respective homes, before measures were commenced by the executive to effect a removal of the deposits from that very place of safety which it was among the last acts of the House to declare existed in the bank of the United States.

In prosecution of this design, Mr. McLane, the Secretary of the Treas ury, who was decidedly opposed to such a measure, was promoted to the Department of State, and Mr. Duane was appointed to succeed him. But Mr. Duane was equally convinced, with his predecessor, that he was forbidden by every consideration of duty to execute the power with which the law had intrusted the Secretary of the Treasury, and refused to remove the deposits; whereupon he was dismissed from office, a new Secretary of the Treasury was appointed, and, in September, 1833, by the command of the president, the measure was finally accomplished. That it was the president's act was never denied, but proclaimed, boasted, defended. It fell upon the country like a thunderbolt, agitating the Union from one extremity to the other. The stoutest adherents of the administration were alarmed; and all thinking men, not blinded by party prejudice, beheld in the act a bold and dangerous exercise of power; and no human sagacity can now foresee the tremendous consequences which will ensue. The measure was adopted not long before the approaching session of Congress; and, as the concurrence of both branches might be necessary to compel a restoration of the deposits, the object was to take the chance of a possible division between them, and thereby defeat the restoration.

And where did the president find the power for this most extraordinary act? It has been seen that the Constitution, jealous of all executive interference with the treasury of the nation, had confined it to the exclusive care of Congress by every precautionary guard, from the first imposition of the taxes to the final disbursement of the public money.

It has been seen that the language of the sixteenth section of the law of 1816 is express and free from all ambiguity; and that the Secretary of the Treasury is the sole, exclusive depository of the authority which it confers.

Those who maintain the power of the president, have to support it against the positive language of the Constitution, against the explicit words of the statute, and against the genius and theory of all our institutions.

And how do they surmount these insuperable obstacles? By a series of far-fetched implications, which, if every one of them were as true as they are believed to be incorrect or perverted, would stop far short of maintaining the power which was exercised.

The first of these implied powers is, that of dismissal, which is claimed

for the president. Of all the questioned powers ever exercised by the government, this is the most questionable. From the first Congress down to the present administration, it had never been examined. It was carried then, in the Senate, by the casting vote of the vice-president. And those who, at that day, argued in behalf of the power, contended for it upon conditions which have been utterly disregarded by the present chief magistrate. The power of dismissal is nowhere in the Constitution granted, in express terms, to the president. It is not a necessary incident to any granted power; and the friends of the power have never been able to agree among themselves as to the precise part of the Constitution from which it springs.

But, if the power of dismissal was as incontestable as it is justly controvertible, we utterly deny the consequences deduced from it. The argument is, that the president has, by implication, the power of dismissal. From this first implication, another is drawn, and that is, that the president has the power to control the officer, whom he may dismiss, in the discharge of his duties, in all cases whatever; and that this power of control is so comprehensive as to include even the case of a specific duty expressly assigned by law to the designated officer.

Now, we deny these results from the dismissing power. That power, if it exists, can draw after it only a right of general superintendence. It can not authorize the president to substitute his will to the will of the officer charged with the performance of official duties. Above all, it can not justify such a substitution in a case where the law, as in the present instance, assigns to a designated officer exclusively the performance of a particular duty, and commands him to report, not to the president, but to Congress, in a case regarding the public purse of the nation, committed to the exclusive control of Congress.

Such a consequence as that which I am contesting would concentrate in the hands of one man the entire executive power of the nation, uncontrolled and unchecked.

It would be utterly destructive of all official responsibility. Instead of each officer being responsible, in his own separate sphere, for his official acts, he would shelter himself behind the orders of the president. And what tribunal, in heaven above or on earth below, could render judgment against any officer for an act, however atrocious, performed by the express command of the president, which, according to the argument, he was absolutely bound to obey?

While all other official responsibility would be utterly annihilated in subordinated officers, there would be no practical or available responsibility in the president himself.

But the case has been supposed, of a necessity for the removal of the deposits, and a refusal of the Secretary of the Treasury to remove them; and it is triumphantly asked if, in such a case, the president may not remove him, and command the deed to be done. That is an extreme case,

which may be met by another. Suppose the president, without any necessity, orders the removal from a place of safety to a place of hazard. If there be danger that a president may neglect his duty, there is equal danger that a president may abuse his authority. Infallibility is not a human attribute. And there is more security for the public in holding the Secretary of the Treasury to the strict performance of an official duty specially assigned to him, under all his official responsibility, than to allow the president to wrest the work from his hands, annihilate his responsibility, and stand himself practically irresponsible. It is far better that millions should be lost by the neglect of a Secretary of the Treasury, than to establish the monstrous principle that all the checks and balances of the executive government shall be broken down, the whole power absorbed by one man, and his will become the supreme rule. The argument which I am combating places the whole treasury of the nation at the mercy of the executive. It is in vain to talk of appropriations by law, and the formalities of warrants upon the treasury. Assuming the argument to be correct, what is to prevent the execution of an order from the president to the Secretary of the Treasury to issue a warrant, without the sanction of a previous legal appropriation, to the comptroller to countersign it, to the register to register it, and to the treasurer to pay it? What becomes of that quadruple security which the precaution of the law provided? Instead of four substantive and independent wills, acting under legal obligations, all are merged in the executive orders.

But there was in point of fact, no cause, none whatever, for the measure. Every fiscal consideration, (and no other had the secretary or the president a right to entertain), required the deposits to be left undisturbed in the place of perfect safety where by law they were. We told you so at the time. We asserted that the charges of insecurity and insolvency of the bank were without the slightest foundation. And time, that great arbiter of human controversies, has confirmed all that we said. The bank, from documents submitted to Congress by the Secretary of the Treasury at the present session, appears to be able not only to return every dollar of the stock held in its capital by the public, but an addition of eleven per centum beyond it.

Those who defend the executive act, have to maintain not only that the president may assume upon himself the discharge of a duty especially assigned to the Secretary of the Treasury, but that he may remove that officer, arbitrarily, and without any cause, because he refused to remove the public deposits without cause.

My mind conducts me to a totally different conclusion. I think, I solemnly believe, that the president" assumed upon himself authority and power not conferred by the Constitution and laws, but in derogation of both," in the langnage of the resolution. I believed them in the truth of the resolution; and I now in my place, and under all my responsibility, re-avow my unshaken conviction of it.