GIFT-MAKERS APPOINTED TO OFFICE.
The allowances voted by Parliament to Marlborough and Wellington on account of their victories can be no precedent for the acceptance of gifts from fellow-citizens. The distinction is clear. But the case against the present incumbent is not only that while holding high office he accepted gifts from fellow-citizens, but subsequently appointed the gift-makers to office,—thus using the Presidency to pay off his own personal obligations. Please bear this in mind; and when some apologist attempts to defend the taking of gifts, let him know that he must go still further, and show that the Presidency, with all its patronage, is a perquisite to be employed for the private advantage of the incumbent.
SAN DOMINGO.
Next in illustration of the prevailing misrule is the San Domingo business, with its eccentricities of wrong-doing; and this, too, is now in issue. At the thought of this unprecedented enormity, where wrong assumes such various forms, it is hard to be silent; but I shall be brief. The case is clear, and stands on documents which cannot be questioned. I keep within the line of moderate statement, when I say, that, from the beginning of our Government, nothing in our foreign relations has been so absolutely indefensible. It will not do to call it simply a fault and an insolence; it was an elaborate contrivance, conceived in lust of territory, pursued in ignorance, maintained in open violation of the National Constitution, pushed forward in similar violation of International Law in fundamental principles, and crowned by intolerable indignity to the Black Republic, even to the extent of menacing hostilities and the sinking of its ships,—all without authority of Congress, and by Presidential prerogative alone. In this drama the President, like a favorite actor, assumed every part. In negotiating the treaty he was President; in declaring war he was Congress; in sending ships and men he was Commander-in-Chief; and then in employing private influence with Senators to promote his scheme—according to the promise in the protocol with Baez, signed in his name by Orville E. Babcock, entitled therein “Aide-de-Camp to his Excellency General Ulysses S. Grant, President of the United States of America”—he was lobbyist. That such things can be done by a President without indignant condemnation, loud and universal, shows a painful demoralization in the country. That their author can be presented for reëlection to the Presidency, whose powers he has thus misused, shows a disheartening insensibility to public virtue.
Here I remark, that, so long as the President confined himself to negotiation, he was strictly within the line of the Constitution. Even if indiscreet in character and impolitic in object, it was not unconstitutional. But in seizing war powers without the authority of Congress, in upholding the usurper Baez that he might sell his country, in menacing the Black Republic, and then in playing the lobbyist to promote the contrivance, the President did what no other President ever did before, and what, for the sake of Republican Institutions, should be rebuked by the American people. It was the knowledge of these proceedings that changed essentially my relations to the question.
PERSONAL MISREPRESENTATIONS.
I allude with hesitation to personal misrepresentations on the matter. It has been said that I promised originally to support the treaty. This is a mistake. I knew nothing of the treaty, and had no suspicion of it, until several months after the protocol, and some time after the negotiation was completed; and then my simple promise was that it should have from me “the most careful and candid consideration”; and such I gave it most sincerely. At first my opposition was reserved and without allusion to the President. It was only when the strange business was fully disclosed in official documents communicated in confidence to the Senate, and it was still pressed, that I felt impelled to a sterner resistance. Especially was I constrained, when I found how much the people of Hayti suffered. It so happened that I had reported the bill acknowledging their independence and establishing diplomatic relations between our two countries, assuring that equality which had been violated. Not unmoved could I witness the wrong inflicted upon them. And has it come to this, that the President of the Great Republic, instead of carrying peace and good tidings to Africans commencing the experiment of self-government, should become to them an agent of terror?
It is difficult to see how I could have done otherwise. Anxious to excuse the anger towards me, it has been said that I opposed the treaty because Mr. Motley was unceremoniously removed from the mission at London; and here you will see the extent to which misrepresentation has gone. It so happens that Mr. Motley was removed on the day immediately following the rejection of the treaty. Evidently my opposition was not influenced by the removal: was the removal influenced by my opposition?
Equally absurd is the story that I am now influenced by personal feelings. I am a public servant, trained to duty; and now, as always before, I have yielded only to this irresistible mandate. With me there is no alternative. The misconduct of the President, so apparent in the San Domingo device, became more conspicuous in the light of illustrative facts, showing it to be part of a prevailing misrule, which, for the sake of our country, should not be prolonged. As a patriot citizen, anxious for the national welfare and renown, am I obliged to declare these convictions.