members, out of eighty-two, who thought it was competent to the House to expunge. Had the yeas and nays been called and recorded, as they were on the resolution of March, 1834, there would not have been a solitary vote in the House of Representatives of Pennsylvania in support of the power of expunging. And if you can expunge the resolution, why may you not expunge also the recorded yeas and nays attached to it?

But if the matter of expunction be contrary to the truth of the case, reproachful for its base subserviency, derogatory to the just and necessary powers of the Senate, and repugnant to the Constitution of the United States, the manner in which it is proposed to accomplish this dark deed is also highly exceptionable. The expunging resolution, which is to blot out or enshroud the four or five lines in which the resolution of 1834 stands recorded, or rather the recitals by which it is preceded, are spun out into a thread of enormous length. It runs, whereas, and whereas, and whereas, and whereas, and so forth, into a formidable array of nine several whereases. One who should have the courage to begin to read them, unaware of what was to be their termination, would think that at the end of such a tremendous display he must find the very devil. It is like a kite or a comet, except that the order of nature is inverted, and the tail, instead of being behind, is before the body to which it is appended.

I shall not trespass on the Senate by inquiring into the truth of all the assertions of fact and of principle, contained in these recitals. It would not be difficult to expose them all, and to show that not one of them has more than a colorable foundation. It is asserted by one of them, that the president was put upon his trial and condemned, unheard, by the Senate, in 1834. Was that true? Was it a trial? Can the majority now assert, upon their oaths, and in their consciences, that there was any trial or condemnation? During the warmth of debate, senators might endeavor to persuade themselves and the public, that the proceeding of 1834 was, in its effects and consequences, a trial, and would be a condemnation of the president; but now, after the lapse of nearly three years, when the excitement arising from an animated discussion has passed away, it is marvelous that any one should be prepared to assert, that an expression of the opinion of the Senate upon the character of an executive act was an arraignment, trial, and conviction of the President of the United States.

Another fact, asserted in one of those recitals, is, that the resolution of 1834, in either of the forms in which it was originally presented, or subsequently modified prior to the final shape which it assumed when adopted, would have been rejected by a majority of the Senate. What evidence is there in support of this assertion? None. It is, I verily believe, directly contrary to the fact. In either of the modifications of the resolution, I have not a doubt, that it would have passed! They were all made in that spirit of accommodation by which the mover of the resolution has ever regulated his conduct as a member of a deliberative body. In not one single instance did he understand from any senator at whose request he

made the modification, that, without it, he would vote against the resolu tion. How, then, can even the senators, who were of the minority of 1834, undertake to make the assertion in question? How can the new senators, who have come here since, pledge themselves to the fact asserted, in the recital of which they could not have any connusance? But all the members of the majority; the veterans and the raw recruits-the six years men and six weeks men-are required to concur in this most unfounded assertion, as I believe it to be. I submit it to one of the latter (looking toward Mr. Dana, from Maine, here by a temporary appointment from the executive) whether, instead of inundating the Senate with a torrent of fulsome and revolting adulation poured on the president, it would not be wiser and more patriotic to illustrate the brief period of his senatorial existence by some great measure, fraught with general benefit to the whole Union? Or, if he will not or can not elevate himself to a view of the interests of the entire country, whether he had not better dedicate his time to an investigation into the causes of an alien jurisdiction being still exercised over a large part of the territory of the State which he represents ? And why the American carrying trade to the British colonies, in which his State was so deeply interested, has been lost by a most improvident and bungling arrangement.

Mr. President, what patriotic purpose is to be accomplished by this expunging resolution? What new honor or fresh laurels will it win for our common country? Is the power of the Senate so vast that it ought to be circumscribed, and that of the president so restricted, that it ought to be extended? What power has the Senate? None, separately. It can only act jointly with the other House, or jointly with the executive. And although the theory of the Constitution supposes, when consulted by him, it may freely give an affirmative or negative response according to the practice, as it now exists, it has lost the faculty of pronouncing the negative monosyllable. When the Senate expresses its deliberate judgment, in the form of resolution, that resolution has no compulsory force, but appeals only to the dispassionate intelligence, the calm reason, and the sober judgment of the community. The Senate has no army, no navy, no patronage, no lucrative offices, nor glittering honors to bestow. Around us there is no swarm of greedy expectants, rendering us homage, anticipating our wishes, and ready to execute our commands.

How is it with the president? Is he powerless? He is felt from one extremity to the other of this vast republic. By means of principles which he has introduced, and innovations which he has made in our institutions, alas! but too much countenanced by Congress and a confiding people, he exercises uncontrolled the power of the State. In one hand he holds the purse, and in the other brandishes the sword of the country. Myriads of dependents and partisans, scattered over the land, are ever ready to sing hosannas to him, and to laud to the skies whatever he does. He has swept over the government, during the last eight years, like a tropical tornado.

Every department exhibits traces of the ravages of the storm. Take, as one example, the bank of the United States. No institution could have been more popular with the people, with Congress, and with State Legislatures. None ever better fulfilled the great purposes of its establishment. But it unfortunately incurred the displeasure of the president; he spoke, and the bank lies prostrate. And those who were loudest in its praise are now loudest in its condemnation. What object of his ambition is unsatisfied? When disabled from age any longer to hold the scepter of power, he designates his successor, and transmits it to his favorite. What more does he want? Must we blot, deface, and mutilate the records of the country to punish the presumptuousness of expressing an opinion contrary to his own?

What patriotic purpose is to be accomplished by this expunging resolution? Can you make that not to be which has been? Can you eradicate from memory and from history the fact, that in March, 1834, a majority of the Senate of the United States passed the resolution which excites your enmity? Is it your vain and wicked object to arrogate to yourselves that power of annihilating the past which has been denied to omnipotence itself? Do you intend to thrust your hands into our hearts, and to pluck out the deeply-rooted convictions which are there? or is it your design merely to stigmatize us? You can not stigmatize us:

"Ne'er yet did base dishonor blur our name."

Standing securely upon our conscious rectitude, and bearing aloft the shield of the Constitution of our country, your puny efforts are impotent, and we defy all your power. Put the majority of 1834 in one scale, and that by which this expunging resolution is to be carried in the other, and let truth and justice, in heaven above and on the earth below, and liberty and patriotism, decide the preponderance.

What patriotic purpose is to be accomplished by thus expunging? Is it to appease the wrath, and to heal the wounded pride, of the chief magistrate? If he be really the hero that his friends represent him, he must despise all mean condescension, all groveling sycophancy, all self-degradation and self-abasement. He would reject with scorn and contempt, as unworthy of his fame, your black scratches, and your baby lines in the fair records of his country. Black lines! Black lines! Sir, I hope the Secretary of the Senate will preserve the pen with which he may inscribe them, and present it to that senator of the majority whom he may select, as a proud trophy, to be transmitted to his descendants. And hereafter, when we shall lose the forms of our free institutions, all that now remain to us, some future American monarch, in gratitude to those by whose means he has been enabled, upon the ruins of civil liberty, to erect a throne, and to commemorate especially this expunging resolution, may institute a new order of knighthood, and confer on it the appropriate name of the knight of the black lines.

But why should I detain the Senate or needlessly waste my breath in fruitless exertions. The decree has gone forth. It is one of urgency, too. The deed is to be done; that foul deed, like the blood-stained hands of the guilty Macbeth, all ocean's waters will never wash out. Proceed, then, to the noble work which lies before you, and like other skillful executioners, do it quickly. And when you have perpetrated it, go home to the people, and tell them what glorious honors you have achieved for our common country. Tell them that you have extinguished one of the brightest and purest lights that ever burned at the altar of civil liberty. Tell them that you have silenced one of the noblest batteries that ever thundered in defense of the Constitution, and bravely spiked the cannon. Tell them that, henceforward, no matter what daring and outrageous act any president may perform, you have for ever hermetically sealed the mouth. of the Senate. Tell them that he may fearlessly assume what power he pleases; snatch from its lawful custody the public purse, command a military detachment to enter the halls of the capitol, overawe Congress, trample down the Constitution, and raze every bulwark of freedom; but that the Senate must stand mute, in silent submission, and not dare to raise its opposing voice. That it must wait until a House of Representatives, humbled and subdued like itself, and a majority of it composed of the partisans of the president, shall prefer articles of impeachment. Tell them, finally, that you have restored the glorious doctrine of passive obedience and non-resist ance, and, if the people do not pour out their indignation and imprecations, I have yet to learn the character of American freemen.

ON THE SUB TREASURY BILL.

IN SENATE, SEPTEMBER 25, 1837.

[THE policy of General Jackson, so far as it was his own, was a system of State quackery, forced upon the country by his popularity and indomitable will; and the calamitous consequences of his pet measures came in quick and rapid succession. The eight years of his two terms of office reduced a most prosperous nation to the verge of ruin; and Mr. Van Buren, his nominee— virtually his appointee had not been inaugurated three months before he was obliged to call a special session of Congress, on account of the universal distress of the country; all which went on under his administration accumulating, until, in 1840, both he and his, that is, the Jackson, policy, were overthrown by a signal triumph of the Whigs, who, by reason of the treachery of John Tyler, were unable to carry out their own policy in any thing of importance, except the tariff of 1842. They passed a bank bill through Congress, to be vetoed by Mr. Tyler, which left the government without a national fiscal agent. The bank and tariff acts together would have set the nation on its legs again; and the tariff alone nearly accomplished that object, till the treason of John Tyler gave the government to the opponents of the Whigs, and James K. Polk restored the Jackson policy in the tariff of 1846, in re-enacting the Sub-Treasury, and in other corresponding measures. In all this time, from 1829 to 1845, there was no fair experiment of any policy, except that of Jackson and that of the tariff of 1842; the former of which broke the nation down, and the latter repaired these mischiefs with amazing rapidity, so long as it lasted-four years.

The popularity of General Jackson was so great, that the people could never be made to believe that their sufferings were owing chiefly to Jackson's veto of the bank bill in 1832, to his removal of the deposits in 1833, and to other kindred measures of his administration and public policy. The state of the country was so thoroughly deranged and thrown into disorder by