MR. CLAY'S SPEECH AGAINST PRESIDENT JACKSON ON THE REMOVAL OF THE
DEPOSITS--EXTRACTS.
"Mr. Clay addressed the Senate as follows: We are, said he,
in the midst of a revolution, hitherto bloodless, but rapidly
tending towards a total change of the pure republican character
of the government, and to the concentration of all power in the
hands of one man. The powers of Congress are paralyzed, except
when exerted in conformity with his will, by frequent and an
extraordinary exercise of the executive veto, not anticipated
by the founders of the constitution, and not practised by any
of the predecessors of the present Chief Magistrate. And, to
cramp them still more, a new expedient is springing into use, of
withholding altogether bills which have received the sanction of
both Houses of Congress, thereby cutting off all opportunity of
passing them, even if, after their return, the members should
be unanimous in their favor. The constitutional participation
of the Senate in the appointing power is virtually abolished,
by the constant use of the power of removal from office without
any known cause, and by the appointment of the same individual
to the same office, after his rejection by the Senate. How often
have we, senators, felt that the check of the Senate, instead
of being, as the constitution intended, a salutary control, was
an idle ceremony? How often, when acting on the case of the
nominated successor, have we felt the injustice of the removal?
How often have we said to each other, well, what can we do? the
office cannot remain vacant without prejudice to the public
interests; and, if we reject the proposed substitute, we cannot
restore the displaced, and perhaps some more unworthy man may be
nominated.
"The judiciary has not been exempted from the prevailing rage
for innovation. Decisions of the tribunals, deliberately
pronounced, have been contemptuously disregarded, and the
sanctity of numerous treaties openly violated. Our Indian
relations, coeval with the existence of the government, and
recognized and established by numerous laws and treaties, have
been subverted; the rights of the helpless and unfortunate
aborigines trampled in the dust, and they brought under
subjection to unknown laws, in which they have no voice,
promulgated in an unknown language. The most extensive and most
valuable public domain that ever fell to the lot of one nation
is threatened with a total sacrifice. The general currency of
the country, the life-blood of all its business, is in the most
imminent danger of universal disorder and confusion. The power
of internal improvement lies crushed beneath the veto. The
system of protection of American industry was snatched from
impending destruction at the last session; but we are now coolly
told by the Secretary of the Treasury, without a blush, 'that
it is understood to be _conceded on all hands_ that a tariff
for protection merely is to be finally abandoned.' By the 3d
of March, 1837, if the progress of innovation continue, there
will be scarcely a vestige remaining of the government and its
policy as they existed prior to the 3d of March, 1829. In a term
of years, a little more than equal to that which was required
to establish our liberties, the government will have been
transformed into an elective monarchy--the worst of all forms of
government.
"Such is a melancholy but faithful picture of the present
condition of our public affairs. It is not sketched or exhibited
to excite, here or elsewhere, irritated feeling; I have no such
purpose. I would, on the contrary, implore the Senate and the
people to discard all passion and prejudice, and to look calmly
but resolutely upon the actual state of the constitution and
the country. Although I bring into the Senate the same unabated
spirit, and the same firm determination, which have ever guided
me in the support of civil liberty, and the defence of our
constitution, I contemplate the prospect before us with feelings
of deep humiliation and profound mortification.
"It is not among the least unfortunate symptoms of the times,
that a large proportion of the good and enlightened men of
the Union, of all parties, are yielding to sentiments of
despondency. There is, unhappily, a feeling of distrust and
insecurity pervading the community. Many of our best citizens
entertain serious apprehensions that our Union and our
institutions are destined to a speedy overthrow. Sir, I trust
that the hopes and confidence of the country will revive. There
is much occasion for manly independence and patriotic vigor, but
none for despair. Thank God, we are yet free; and, if we put
on the chains which are forging for us, it will be because we
deserve to wear them. We should never despair of the republic.
If our ancestors had been capable of surrendering themselves
to such ignoble sentiments, our independence and our liberties
would never have been achieved. The winter of 1776-'77, was
one of the gloomiest periods of our revolution; but on this
day, fifty-seven years ago, the father of his country achieved
a glorious victory, which diffused joy, and gladness, and
animation throughout the States. Let us cherish the hope that,
since he has gone from among us, Providence, in the dispensation
of his mercies, has near at hand, in reserve for us, though yet
unseen by us, some sure and happy deliverance from all impending
dangers.
"When we assembled here last year, we were full of dreadful
forebodings. On the one hand, we were menaced with a civil war,
which, lighting up in a single State, might spread its flames
throughout one of the largest sections of the Union. On the
other, a cherished system of policy, essential to the successful
prosecution of the industry of our countrymen, was exposed to
imminent danger of destruction. Means were happily applied by
Congress to avert both calamities, the country was reconciled,
and our Union once more became a band of friends and brothers.
And I shall be greatly disappointed, if we do not find those who
were denounced as being unfriendly to the continuance of our
confederacy, among the foremost to fly to its preservation, and
to resist all executive encroachments.
"Mr. President, when Congress adjourned at the termination of
the last session, there was one remnant of its powers--that
over the purse--left untouched. The two most important powers
of civil government are those of the sword and purse; the
first, with some restrictions, is confided by the constitution
to the Executive, and the last to the legislative department.
If they are separate, and exercised by different responsible
departments, civil liberty is safe; but if they are united in
the hands of the same individual, it is gone. That clear-sighted
and revolutionary orator and patriot, Patrick Henry, justly
said, in the Virginia convention, in reply to one of his
opponents, 'Let him candidly tell me where and when did freedom
exist, when the sword and purse were given up from the people?
Unless a miracle in human affairs interposed, no nation ever
retained its liberty after the loss of the sword and the purse.
Can you prove, by any argumentative deduction, that it is
possible to be safe without one of them? If you give them up,
you are gone.'
"Up to the period of the termination of the last session of
Congress, the exclusive constitutional power of Congress over
the treasury of the United States had never been contested.
Among its earliest acts was one to establish the treasury
department, which provided for the appointment of a treasurer,
who was required to give bond and security, in a very large
amount, 'to receive and keep the moneys of the United States,
and disburse the same upon warrants drawn by the Secretary of
the Treasury, countersigned by the Comptroller, recorded by the
Register, and not otherwise.' Prior to the establishment of the
present Bank of the United States, no treasury or place had
been provided or designated by law for the safe keeping of the
public moneys, but the treasurer was left to his own discretion
and responsibility. When the existing bank was established, it
was provided that the public moneys should be deposited with
it, and, consequently, that bank became the treasury of the
United States; for, whatever place is designated by law for the
keeping of the public money of the United States, under the
care of the treasurer of the United States, is, for the time
being, the treasury. Its safety was drawn in question by the
Chief Magistrate, and an agent was appointed a little more
than a year ago to investigate its ability. He reported to the
Executive that it was perfectly safe. His apprehensions of its
solidity were communicated by the President to Congress, and
a committee was appointed to examine the subject; they, also,
reported in favor of its security. And, finally, among the last
acts of the House of Representatives, prior to the close of the
last session, was the adoption of a resolution, manifesting its
entire confidence in the ability and solidity of the bank.
"After all these testimonies to the perfect safety of the
public moneys in the place appointed by Congress, who could
have supposed that the place would have been changed? Who
could have imagined that, within sixty days of the meeting of
Congress, and, as it were, in utter contempt of its authority,
the change should have been ordered? Who would have dreamed that
the treasurer should have thrown away the single key to the
treasury, over which Congress held ample control, and accepted,
in lieu of it, some dozens of keys, over which neither Congress
nor he has any adequate control? Yet, sir, all this has been
done; and it is now our solemn duty to inquire, 1st. By whose
authority it has been ordered; and, 2d. Whether the order has
been given in conformity with the constitution and laws of the
United States.
"I agree, sir, and I am very happy whenever I can agree with the
President, as to the immense importance of these questions. He
says, in the paper which I hold in my hand, that he looks upon
the pending question as involving higher considerations than the
'mere transfer of a sum of money from one bank to another. Its
decision may affect the character of our government for ages to
come.' And, with him. I view it as 'of transcendent importance,
both in the principles and the consequences it involves.' It
is a question of all time, for posterity as well as for us--of
constitutional government or monarchy--of liberty or slavery.
As I regard it, I hold the bank as nothing, as perfectly
insignificant, faithful as it has been in the performance of all
its duties. I hold a sound currency as nothing, essential as it
is to the prosperity of every branch of business, and to all
conditions of society, and efficient as the agency of the bank
has been in providing the country with a currency as sound as
ever existed, and unsurpassed by any in Christendom. I consider
even the public faith, sacred and inviolable as it ever should
be, as comparatively nothing. All these questions are merged
in the greater and mightier question of the constitutional
distribution of the powers of the government, as affected by
the recent executive innovation. The real inquiry is, shall all
the barriers which have been erected by the caution and wisdom
of our ancestors, for the preservation of civil liberty, be
prostrated and trodden under foot, and the sword and the purse
be at once united in the hands of one man? Shall the power of
Congress over the treasury of the United States, hitherto never
contested, be wrested from its possession, and be henceforward
wielded by the Chief Magistrate? Entertaining these views of
the magnitude of the question before us, I shall not, at least
to-day, examine the reasons which the President has assigned for
his act. If he has no power to perform it, no reasons, however
cogent, can justify the deed. None can sanctify an illegal or
unconstitutional act.
"The question is, by virtue of whose will, power, dictation,
was the removal of the deposits effected? By whose authority
and determination were they transferred from the Bank of the
United States, where they were required by the law to be placed,
and put in banks which the law had never designated? And I
tell gentlemen opposed to me, that I am not to be answered by
the exhibition of a formal order bearing the signature of R.
B. Taney, or any one else. I want to know, not the amanuensis
or clerk who prepared or signed the official form, but the
authority or the individual who dictated or commanded it; not
the hangman who executes the culprit, but the tribunal which
pronounced the sentence. I want to know that power in the
government, that original and controlling authority, which
required and commanded the removal of the deposits. And, I
repeat the question, is there a senator, or intelligent man in
the whole country, who entertains a solitary doubt?
"Hear what the President himself says in his manifesto read to
his cabinet: 'The President deems it his duty to communicate
in this manner to his cabinet the final conclusions of his own
mind, and the reasons on which they are founded.' And, at the
conclusion of this paper, what does he say? 'The President
again repeats that he begs his cabinet to consider the proposed
measure as his own, in the support of which he shall require
no one of them to make a sacrifice of opinion or principle.
Its responsibility has been assumed, after the most mature
deliberation and reflection, as necessary to preserve the morals
of the people, the freedom of the press, and the purity of the
elective franchise, without which all will unite in saying that
the blood and treasure expended by our forefathers, in the
establishment of our happy system of government, will have been
vain and fruitless. Under these convictions, he feels that a
measure so important to the American people cannot be commenced
too soon; and he therefore names the 1st day of October next
as a period proper for the change of the deposits, or sooner,
provided the necessary arrangements with the State banks can be
made.' Sir, is there a senator here who will now tell me that
the removal was not the measure and the act of the President?
"Thus is it evident that the President, neither by the act
creating the treasury department, nor by the bank charter,
has any power over the public treasury. Has he any by
the constitution? None, none. We have already seen that
the constitution positively forbids any money from being
drawn from the treasury but in virtue of a previous act of
appropriation. But the President himself says that 'upon him
has been devolved, by the constitution, and the suffrages of
the American people, the duty of superintending the operation
of the executive departments of the government, and seeing that
the laws are faithfully executed.' If there existed any such
double source of executive power, it has been seen that the
treasury department is not an executive department; but that,
in all that concerns the public treasury, the Secretary is the
agent or representative of Congress, acting in obedience to
their will, and maintaining a direct intercourse with them. By
what authority does the President derive power from the mere
result of an election? In another part of this same cabinet
paper he refers to the suffrages of the people as a source of
power independent of a system in which power has been most
carefully separated, and distributed between three separate
and independent departments. We have been told a thousand
times, and all experience assures us, that such a division is
indispensable to the existence and preservation of freedom. We
have established and designated offices, and appointed officers
in each of those departments, to execute the duties respectively
allotted to them. The President, it is true, presides over the
whole; specific duties are often assigned by particular laws
to him alone, or to other officers under his superintendence.
His parental eye is presumed to survey the whole extent of the
system in all its movements; but has he power to come into
Congress, and to say such laws only shall you pass; to go
into the courts, and prescribe the decisions which they may
pronounce; or even to enter the offices of administration,
and, where duties are specifically confided to those officers,
to substitute his will to their duty? Or, has he a right,
when those functionaries, deliberating upon their own solemn
obligations to the people, have moved forward in their assigned
spheres, to arrest their lawful progress, because they have
dared to act contrary to his pleasure? No, sir; no, sir. His is
a high and glorious station, but it is one of observation and
superintendence. It is to see that obstructions in the forward
movement of government, unlawfully interposed, shall be abated
by legitimate and competent means.
"Such are the powers on which the President relies to justify
his seizure of the treasury of the United States. I have
examined them, one by one, and they all fail, utterly fail,
to bear out the act. We are brought irresistibly to the
conclusions, 1st, That the invasion of the public treasury
has been perpetrated by the removal of one Secretary of the
Treasury, who would not violate his conscientious obligations,
and by the appointment of another, who stood ready to subscribe
his name to the orders of the President; and, 2dly, That the
President has no color of authority in the constitution or laws
for the act which he has thus caused to be performed.
"And now let us glance at some of the tremendous consequences
which may ensue from this high-handed measure. If the President
may, in a case in which the law has assigned a specific duty
exclusively to a designated officer, command it to be executed,
contrary to his own judgment, under the penalty of an expulsion
from office, and, upon his refusal, may appoint some obsequious
tool to perform the required act, where is the limit to his
authority? Has he not the same right to interfere in every
other case, and remove from office all that he can remove, who
hesitate or refuse to do his bidding contrary to their own
solemn convictions of their duty? There is no resisting this
inevitable conclusion. Well, then, how stands the matter of the
public treasury? It has been seen that the issue of warrants
upon the treasury is guarded by four independent and hitherto
responsible checks, each controlling every other, and all bound
by the law, but all holding their offices, according to the
existing practice of the government, at the pleasure of the
President. The Secretary signs, the Comptroller countersigns,
the Register records, and the Treasurer pays the warrant. We
have seen that the President has gone to the first and highest
link in the chain, and coerced a conformity to his will. What is
to prevent, whenever he desires to draw money from the public
treasury, his applying the same penalty of expulsion, under
which Mr. Duane suffered, to every link of the chain, from the
Secretary of the Treasury down, and thus to obtain whatever he
demands? What is to prevent a more compendious accomplishment
of his object, by the agency of transfer drafts, drawn on the
sole authority of the Secretary, and placing the money at once
wherever, or in whatsoever hands, the President pleases?
"What security have the people against the lawless conduct of
any President? Where is the boundary to the tremendous power
which he has assumed? Sir, every barrier around the public
treasury is broken down and annihilated. From the moment that
the President pronounced the words, 'This measure is my own;
I take upon myself the responsibility of it,' every safeguard
around the treasury was prostrated, and henceforward it might as
well be at the Hermitage. The measure adopted by the President
is without precedent. I beg pardon--there is one; but we must go
down for it to the commencement of the Christian era. It will
be recollected by those who are conversant with Roman history,
that, after Pompey was compelled to retire to Brundusium, Cæsar,
who had been anxious to give him battle, returned to Rome,
'having reduced Italy,' says the venerable biographer, 'in sixty
days--[the exact period between the day of the removal of the
deposits and that of the commencement of the present session of
Congress, without the usual allowance of any days of grace]--in
sixty days, without bloodshed.' The biographer proceeds:
"'Finding the city in a more settled condition than he expected,
and many senators there, he addressed them in a mild and
gracious manner [as the President addressed his late Secretary
of the Treasury], and desired them to send deputies to Pompey
with an offer of honorable terms of peace,' &c. As Metellus, the
tribune, opposed his taking money out of the public treasury,
and cited some laws against it--[such, Sir, I suppose, as I have
endeavored to cite on this occasion]--Cæsar said 'Arms and laws
do not flourish together. If you are not pleased at what I am
about, you have only to withdraw. [Leave the office, Mr. Duane!]
War, indeed, will not tolerate much liberty of speech. When I
say this, I am renouncing my own right; for you, and all those
whom I have found exciting a spirit of faction against me, are
at my disposal.' Having said this, he approached the doors of
the treasury, and, as the keys were not produced, he sent for
workmen to break them open. Metellus again opposed him, and
gained credit with some for his firmness; but Cæsar, with an
elevated voice, threatened to put him to death if he gave him
any further trouble. 'And you know very well, young man,' said
he, 'that this is harder for me to say than to do.' Metellus,
terrified by the menace, retired; and Cæsar was afterwards
easily and readily supplied with every thing necessary for that
war.
"Mr. President (said Mr. C.) the people of the United States are
indebted to the President for the boldness of this movement; and
as one, among the humblest of them, I profess my obligations
to him. He has told the Senate, in his message refusing an
official copy of his cabinet paper, that it has been published
for the information of the people. As a part of the people, the
Senate, if not in their official character, have a right to its
use. In that extraordinary paper he has proclaimed that the
measure is _his_ own and that _he_ has _taken_ upon himself the
responsibility of it. In plain English, he has proclaimed an
open, palpable and daring usurpation!
"For more than fifteen years, Mr. President, I have been
struggling to avoid the present state of things. I thought
I perceived, in some proceedings, during the conduct of the
Seminole war, a spirit of defiance to the constitution and to
all law. With what sincerity and truth--with what earnestness
and devotion to civil liberty, I have struggled, the Searcher
of all human hearts best knows. With what fortune, the bleeding
constitution of my country now fatally attests.
"I have, nevertheless, persevered; and, under every
discouragement, during the short time that I expect to remain
in the public councils, I will persevere. And if a bountiful
Providence would allow an unworthy sinner to approach the
throne of grace, I would beseech Him, as the greatest favor
He could grant to me here below, to spare me until I live to
behold the people, rising in their majesty, with a peaceful and
constitutional exercise of their power, to expel the Goths from
Rome; to rescue the public treasury from pillage, to preserve
the constitution of the United States; to uphold the Union
against the danger of the concentration and consolidation of
_all_ power in the hands of the Executive; and to sustain the
liberties of the people of this country against the imminent
perils to which they now stand exposed.
"And now, Mr. President, what, under all these circumstances,
is it our duty to do? Is there a senator who can hesitate to
affirm, in the language of the resolutions, that the President
has assumed a dangerous power over the treasury of the United
States, not granted to him by the constitution and the laws; and
that the reasons assigned for the act by the Secretary of the
Treasury are insufficient and unsatisfactory?
"The eyes and the hopes of the American people are anxiously
turned to Congress. They feel that they have been deceived and
insulted; their confidence abused; their interests betrayed;
and their liberties in danger. They see a rapid and alarming
concentration of all power in one man's hands. They see that,
by the exercise of the positive authority of the Executive,
and his negative power exerted over Congress, the will of one
man alone prevails, and governs the republic. The question
is no longer what laws will Congress pass, but what will
the Executive not veto? The President, and not Congress, is
addressed for legislative action. We have seen a corporation,
charged with the execution of a great national work, dismiss
an experienced, faithful, and zealous president, afterwards
testify to his ability by a voluntary resolution, and reward
his extraordinary services by a large gratuity, and appoint
in his place an executive favorite, totally inexperienced and
incompetent, to propitiate the President. We behold the usual
incidents of approaching tyranny. The land is filled with spies
and informers, and detraction and denunciation are the orders of
the day. People, especially official incumbents in this place,
no longer dare speak in the fearless tones of manly freemen, but
in the cautious whispers of trembling slaves. The premonitory
symptoms of despotism are upon us; and if Congress do not apply
an instantaneous and effective remedy, the fatal collapse will
soon come on, and we shall die--ignobly die--base, mean, and
abject slaves; the scorn and contempt of mankind; unpitied,
unwept, unmourned!"