Another object of the Constitution I take to be such as is common to all written constitutions of free governments; that is, to fix limits to delegated authority, or, in other words, to impose constitutional restraints on political power. Some, who esteem themselves republicans, seem to think no other security for public liberty necessary than a provision for a popular choice of rulers. If political power be delegated power, they entertain little fear of its being abused. The people’s servants and favorites, they think, may be safely trusted. Our fathers, certainly, were not of this school. They sought to make assurance 314 doubly sure, by providing, in the first place, for the election of political agents by the people themselves, at short intervals, and, in the next place, by prescribing constitutional restraints on all branches of this delegated authority. It is not among the circumstances of the times most ominous for good, that a diminished estimate appears to be placed on those constitutional securities. A disposition is but too prevalent to substitute personal confidence for legal restraint; to put trust in men rather than in principles; and this disposition being strongest, as it most obviously is, whenever party spirit prevails to the greatest extent, it is not without reason that fears are entertained of the existence of a spirit tending strongly to an unlimited, if it be but an elective, government.
Surely, Gentlemen, this government can go through no such change. Long before that change could take place, the Constitution would be shattered to pieces, and the Union of the States become matter of past history. To the Union, therefore, as well as to civil liberty, to every interest which we enjoy and value, to all that makes us proud of our country, or which renders our country lovely in our own eyes, or dear to our own hearts, nothing can be more repugnant, nothing more hostile, nothing more directly destructive, than excessive, unlimited, unconstitutional confidence in men; nothing worse, than the doctrine that official agents may interpret the public will in their own way, in defiance of the Constitution and the laws; or that they may set up any thing for the declaration of that will except the Constitution and the laws themselves; or that any public officer, high or low, should undertake to constitute himself or to call himself the representative of the people, except so far as the Constitution and the laws create and denominate him such representative. There is no usurpation so dangerous as that which comes in the borrowed name of the people. If from some other authority, or other source, prerogatives be attempted to be enforced upon the people, they naturally oppose and resist it. It is an open enemy, and they can easily subdue it. But that which professes to act in their own name, and by their own authority, that which calls itself their servant, although it exercises their power without legal right or constitutional sanction, requires something more of vigilance to detect, and something more of stern patriotism to repress; and if it be not seasonably both detected 315 and repressed, then the republic is already in the downward path of those which have gone before it.
I hold, therefore, Gentlemen, that a strict submission, by every branch of the government, to the limitations and restraints of the Constitution, is of the very essence of all security for the preservation of liberty; and that no one can be a true and intelligent friend of that liberty, who will consent that any man in public station, whatever he may think of the honesty of his motives, shall assume to exercise an authority above the Constitution and the laws. Whatever government is not a government of laws, is a despotism, let it be called what it may.
Gentlemen, on an occasion like this, I ought not to detain you longer. Let us hope for the best, in behalf of this great and happy country, and of our glorious Constitution. Indeed, Gentlemen, we may well congratulate ourselves that the country is so young, so fresh, and so vigorous, that it can bear a great deal of bad government. It can take an enormous load of official mismanagement on its shoulders, and yet go ahead. Like the vessel impelled by steam, it can move forward, not only without other than the ordinary means, but even when those means oppose it; it can make its way in defiance of the elements, and
“Against the wind, against the tide,
Still steady, with an upright keel.”
There are some things, however, which the country cannot stand. It cannot stand any shock of civil liberty, or any disruption of the Union. Should either of these happen, the vessel of the state will have no longer either steerage or motion. She will lie on the billows helpless and hopeless, the scorn and contempt of all the enemies of free institutions, and an object of indescribable grief to all their friends.
FOOTNOTES
Remarks made to the Citizens of Bangor, Maine, on the 25th of August, 1835.