The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster / With an Essay on Daniel Webster as a Master of English Style

by Daniel Webster; Edwin Percy Whipple

Now, Sir, this paragraph, I am bound to say, is a total misrepresentation of the proceedings of the Senate. A majority of the Senate have not anticipated the House of Representatives; they have not assumed the functions of that body; they have not converted themselves into accusers, witnesses, counsel, or judges; they have made no ex parte investigation; they have given no sentence. This paragraph is an elaborate perversion of the whole design and the whole proceedings of the Senate. A Protest, sent to us by the President, against votes which the Senate has an unquestionable right to pass, and containing, too, such a misrepresentation of these votes as this paragraph manifests, is a breach of privilege.

But there is another breach of privilege. The President interferes between the members of the Senate and their constituents, and charges them with acting contrary to the will of those constituents. He says it is his right and duty to look to the journals of the Senate to ascertain who voted for the resolution of the 28th of March, and then to show that individual Senators have, by their votes on that resolution, disobeyed the instructions or violated the known will of the legislatures who appointed them. All this he claims as his right and his duty. And where does he find any such right or any such duty? What right has he to send a message to either house of Congress telling its members that they disobey the will of their constituents? Has any English sovereign since Cromwell's time dared to send such a message to Parliament? Sir, if he can tell us that some of us disobey our constituents, he can tell us that all do so; and if we consent to receive this language from him, there is but one remaining step, and that is, that since we thus disobey the will of our constituents, he should disperse us and send us home. In my opinion, the first step in this process is as distinct a breach of privilege as the last. If Cromwell's example shall be followed out, it will not be more clear then than it is now that the privileges of the Senate have been violated. There is yet something, Sir, which surpasses all this; and that is, that, after this direct interference, after pointing out those Senators whom he would represent as having disobeyed the known will of their constituents, he disclaims all design of interfering at all! Sir, who could be the writer of a message, which, in the first place, makes the President assert such monstrous pretensions, and, in the next line, affront the understanding of the Senate by disavowing all right to do that very thing which he is doing? If there be any thing, Sir, in this message, more likely than the rest of it to move one from his equanimity, it is this disclaimer of all design to interfere with the responsibility of members of the Senate to their constituents, after such interference had already been made, in the same paper, in the most objectionable and offensive form. If it were not for the purpose of telling these Senators that they disobeyed the will of the legislatures of the States they represent, for what purpose was it that the Protest has pointed out the four Senators, and paraded against them the sentiments of their legislatures? There can be no other purpose. The Protest says, indeed, that "these facts belong to the history of these proceedings"! To the history of what proceedings? To any proceeding to which the President was party? To any proceeding to which the Senate was party? Have they any thing to do with the resolution of the 28th of March? But it adds, that these facts are important to the just development of the principles and interests involved in the proceedings. All this might be said of any other facts. It is mere words. To what principles, to what interests, are these facts important? They can be important but in one point of view; and that is as proof, or evidence, that the Senators have disobeyed instructions, or acted against the known will of their constituents in disapproving the President's conduct. They have not the slightest bearing in any other way. They do not make the resolution of the Senate more or less true, nor its right to pass it more or less clear. Sir, these proceedings of the legislatures were introduced into this Protest for the very purpose, and no other, of showing that members of the Senate have acted contrary to the will of their constituents. Every man sees and knows this to have been the sole design; and any other pretence is a mockery to our understandings. And this purpose is, in my opinion, an unlawful purpose; it is an unjustifiable intervention between us and our constituents; and is, therefore, a manifest and flagrant breach of privilege.

In the next place, the assertions of the Protest are inconsistent with the just authority of Congress, because they claim for the President a power, independent of Congress, to possess the custody and control of the public treasures. Let this point be accurately examined; and, in order to avoid mistake, I will read the precise words of the Protest.

"The custody of the public property, under such regulations as may be prescribed by legislative authority, has always been considered an appropriate function of the executive department in this and all other governments. In accordance with this principle, every species of property belonging to the United States, (excepting that which is in the use of the several co-ordinate departments of the government, as means to aid them in performing their appropriate functions,) is in charge of officers appointed by the President, whether it be lands, or buildings, or merchandise, or provisions, or clothing, or arms and munitions of war. The superintendents and keepers of the whole are appointed by the President, and removable at his will.

"Public money is but a species of public property. It cannot be raised by taxation or customs, nor brought into the treasury in any other way except by law; but whenever or howsoever obtained, its custody always has been, and always must be, unless the Constitution be changed, intrusted to the executive department. No officer can be created by Congress, for the purpose of taking charge of it, whose appointment would not, by the Constitution, at once devolve on the President, and who would not be responsible to him for the faithful performance of his duties."

And, in another place, it declares that "Congress cannot, therefore, take out of the hands of the executive department the custody of the public property or money, without an assumption of executive power, and a subversion of the first principles of the Constitution." These, Sir, are propositions which cannot receive too much attention. They affirm, that the custody of the public money constitutionally and necessarily belongs to the executive; and that, until the Constitution is changed, Congress cannot take it out of his hands, nor make any provision for its custody, except by such superintendents and keepers as are appointed by the President and removable at his will. If these assertions be correct, we have, indeed, a singular constitution for a republican government; for we give the executive the control, the custody, and the possession of the public treasury, by original constitutional provision; and when Congress appropriates, it appropriates only what is already in the President's hands.

Sir, I hold these propositions to be sound in neither branch. I maintain that the custody of the public money does not necessarily belong to the executive, under this government; and I hold that Congress may so dispose of it, that it shall be under the superintendence of keepers not appointed by the President, nor removable at his will. I think it competent for Congress to declare, as Congress did declare in the bank charter, that the public deposits should be made in the bank. When in the bank, they were not kept by persons appointed by the President, or removable at his will. He could not change that custody; nor could it be changed at all, but according to provisions made in the law itself. There was, indeed, a provision in the law authorizing the Secretary to change the custody. But suppose there had been no such provision; suppose the contingent power had not been given to the Secretary; would it not have been a lawful enactment? Might not the law have provided that the public moneys should remain in the bank, until Congress itself should otherwise order, leaving no power of removal anywhere else? And if such provision had been made, what power, or custody, or control, would the President have possessed over them? Clearly, none at all. The act of May, 1800, directed custom-house bonds, in places where the bank which was then in existence was situated, or in which it had branches, to be deposited in the bank or its branches for collection, without the reservation to the Secretary, or anybody else, of any power of removal. Now, Sir, this was an unconstitutional law, if the Protest, in the part now under consideration, be correct; because it placed the public money in a custody beyond the control of the President, and in the hands of keepers not appointed by him, nor removable at his pleasure. One may readily discern, Sir, the process of reasoning by which the author of the Protest brought himself to the conclusion that Congress could not place the public moneys beyond the President's control. It is all founded on the power of appointment and the power of removal. These powers, it is supposed, must give the President complete control and authority over those who actually hold the money, and therefore must necessarily subject its custody, at all times, to his own individual will. This is the argument.

It is true, that the appointment of all public officers, with some exceptions, is, by the Constitution, given to the President, with the consent of the Senate; and as, in most cases, public property must be held by some officer, its keepers will generally be persons so appointed. But this is only the common, not a necessary consequence, of giving the appointing power to the President and Senate. Congress may still, if it shall so see fit, place the public treasure in the hand of no officer appointed by the President, or removable by him, but in hands quite beyond his control. Subject to one contingency only, it did this very thing by the charter of the present bank; and it did the same thing absolutely, and subject to no contingency, by the law of 1800. The Protest, in the first place, seizes on the fact that all officers must be appointed by the President, or on his nomination; it then assumes the next step, that all officers are, and must be, removable at his pleasure; and then, insisting that public money, like other public property, must be kept by some public officer, it thus arrives at the conclusion that it must always be in the hands of those who are appointed by the President, and who are removable at his pleasure. And it is very clear that the Protest means to maintain that the tenure of office cannot be so regulated by law, as that public officers shall not be removable at the pleasure of the President.

The President considers the right of removal as a fixed, vested, constitutional right, which Congress cannot limit, control, or qualify, until the Constitution shall be altered. This, Sir, is doctrine which I am not prepared to admit. I shall not now discuss the question, whether the law may not place the tenure of office beyond the reach of executive pleasure; but I wish merely to draw the attention of the Senate to the fact, that any such power in Congress is denied by the principles and by the words of the Protest. According to that paper, we live under a constitution by the provisions of which the public treasures are, necessarily and unavoidably, always under executive control; and as the executive may remove all officers, and appoint others, at least temporarily, without the concurrence of the Senate, he may hold those treasures, in the hands of persons appointed by himself alone, in defiance of any law which Congress has passed or can pass. It is to be seen, Sir, how far such claims of power will receive the approbation of the country. It is to be seen whether a construction will be readily adopted which thus places the public purse out of the guardianship of the immediate representatives of the people.

But, Sir, there is, in this paper, something even yet more strange than these extraordinary claims of power. There is a strong disposition, running through the whole Protest, to represent the executive department of this government as the peculiar protector of the public liberty, the chief security on which the people are to rely against the encroachment of other branches of the government. Nothing can be more manifest than this purpose. To this end, the Protest spreads out the President's official oath, reciting all its words in a formal quotation; and yet the oath of members of Congress is exactly equivalent. The President is to swear that he will "preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution"; and members of Congress are to swear that they will "support the Constitution." There are more words in one oath than the other, but the sense is precisely the same. Why, then, this reference to his official oath, and this ostentatious quotation of it? Would the writer of the Protest argue that the oath itself is any grant of power; or that, because the President is to "preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution," he is therefore to use what means he pleases for such preservation, protection, and defence, or any means except those which the Constitution and laws have specifically given him? Such an argument would be absurd; but if the oath be not cited for this preposterous purpose, with what design is it thus displayed on the face of the Protest, unless it be to support the general idea that the maintenance of the Constitution and the preservation of the public liberties are especially confided to the safe discretion, the sure moderation, the paternal guardianship, of executive power? The oath of the President contains three words, all of equal import; that is, that he will preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution. The oath of members of Congress is expressed in shorter phrase; it is, that they will support the Constitution. If there be any difference in the meaning of the two oaths, I cannot discern it; and yet the Protest solemnly and formally argues thus: "The duty of defending, so far as in him lies, the integrity of the Constitution, would, indeed, have resulted from the very nature of his office; but by thus expressing it in the official oath or affirmation, which, in this respect, differs from that of every other functionary, the founders of our republic have attested their sense of its importance, and have given to it a peculiar solemnity and force."