In addition to the establishment of this power of unlimited and causeless removal, another doctrine has been put forth, more vague, it is true, but altogether unconstitutional, and tending to like dangerous results. In some loose, indefinite, and unknown sense, the President has been called the representative of the whole American people. He has called himself so repeatedly, and been so denominated by his friends a thousand times. Acts, for which no specific authority has been found either in the Constitution or the laws, have been justified on the ground that the President is the representative of the whole American people. Certainly, this is not constitutional language. Certainly, the Constitution nowhere calls the President the universal representative of the people. The constitutional representatives of the people are in the House of Representatives, exercising 361 powers of legislation. The President is an executive officer, appointed in a particular manner, and clothed with prescribed and limited powers. It may be thought to be of no great consequence, that the President should call himself, or that others should call him, the sole representative of all the people, although he has no such appellation or character in the Constitution. But, in these matters, words are things. If he is the people’s representative, and as such may exercise power, without any other grant, what is the limit to that power? And what may not an unlimited representative of the people do? When the Constitution expressly creates representatives, as members of Congress, it regulates, defines, and limits their authority. But if the executive chief magistrate, merely because he is the executive chief magistrate, may assume to himself another character, and call himself the representative of the whole people, what is to limit or restrain this representative power in his hands?

I fear, Gentlemen, that if these pretensions should be continued and justified, we might have many instances of summary political logic, such as I once heard in the House of Representatives. A gentleman, not now living, wished very much to vote for the establishment of a Bank of the United States, but he had always stoutly denied the constitutional power of Congress to create such a bank. The country, however, was in a state of great financial distress, from which such an institution, it was hoped, might help to extricate it; and this consideration led the worthy member to review his opinions with care and deliberation. Happily, on such careful and deliberate review, he altered his former judgment. He came, satisfactorily, to the conclusion that Congress might incorporate a bank. The argument which brought his mind to this result was short, and so plain and obvious, that he wondered how he should so long have overlooked it. The power, he said, to create a bank, was either given to Congress, or it was not given. Very well. If it was given, Congress of course could exercise it; if it was not given, the people still retained it, and in that case, Congress, as the representatives of the people, might, upon an emergency, make free to use it.

Arguments and conclusions in substance like these, Gentlemen, will not be wanting, if men of great popularity, commanding characters, sustained by powerful parties, and full of good 362 intentions towards the public, may be permitted to call themselves the universal representatives of the people.

But, Gentlemen, it is the currency, the currency of the country,—it is this great subject, so interesting, so vital, to all classes of the community, which has been destined to feel the most violent assaults of executive power. The consequences are around us and upon us. Not unforeseen, not unforetold, here they come, bringing distress for the present, and fear and alarm for the future. If it be denied that the present condition of things has arisen from the President’s interference with the revenue, the first answer is, that, when he did interfere, just such consequences were predicted. It was then said, and repeated, and pressed upon the public attention, that that interference must necessarily produce derangement, embarrassment, loss of confidence, and commercial distress. I pray you, Gentlemen, to recur to the debates of 1832, 1833, and 1834, and then to decide whose opinions have proved to be correct. When the treasury experiment was first announced, who supported, and who opposed it? Who warned the country against it? Who were they who endeavored to stay the violence of party, to arrest the hand of executive authority, and to convince the people that this experiment was delusive; that its object was merely to increase executive power, and that its effect, sooner or later, must be injurious and ruinous? Gentlemen, it is fair to bring the opinions of political men to the test of experience. It is just to judge of them by their measures, and their opposition to measures; and for myself, and those political friends with whom I have acted, on this subject of the currency, I am ready to abide the test.

But before the subject of the currency, and its present most embarrassing state, is discussed, I invite your attention, Gentlemen, to the history of executive proceedings connected with it. I propose to state to you a series of facts; not to argue upon them, not to mystify them, nor to draw any unjust inference from them; but merely to state the case, in the plainest manner, as I understand it. And I wish, Gentlemen, that, in order to be able to do this in the best and most convincing manner, I had the ability of my learned friend, (Mr. Ogden,) whom you have all so often heard, and who usually states his case in such a manner that, when stated, it is already very well argued.

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Let us see, Gentlemen, what the train of occurrences has been in regard to our revenue and finances; and when these occurrences are stated, I leave to every man the right to decide for himself whether our present difficulties have or have not arisen from attempts to extend the executive authority. In giving this detail, I shall be compelled to speak of the late Bank of the United States; but I shall speak of it historically only. My opinion of its utility, and of the extraordinary ability and success with which its affairs were conducted for many years before the termination of its charter, is well known. I have often expressed it, and I have not altered it. But at present I speak of the bank only as it makes a necessary part in the history of events which I wish now to recapitulate.

Mr. Adams commenced his administration in March, 1825. He had been elected by the House of Representatives, and began his career as President under a powerful opposition. From the very first day, he was warmly, even violently, opposed in all his measures; and this opposition, as we all know, continued without abatement, either in force or asperity, through his whole term of four years. Gentlemen, I am not about to say whether this opposition was well or ill founded, just or unjust. I only state the fact as connected with other facts. The Bank of the United States, during these four years of Mr. Adams’s administration, was in full operation. It was performing the fiscal duties enjoined on it by its charter; it had established numerous offices, was maintaining a large circulation, and transacting a vast business in exchange. Its character, conduct, and manner of administration were all well known to the whole country.

Now there are two or three things worthy of especial notice. One is, that during the whole of this heated political controversy, from 1825 to 1829, the party which was endeavoring to produce a change of administration in the general government brought no charge of political interference against the Bank of the United States. If any thing, it was rather a favorite with that party generally. Certainly, the party, as a party, did not ascribe to it undue attachment to other parties, or to the then existing administration. Another important fact is, that, during the whole of the same period, those who had espoused the cause of General Jackson, and who sought to bring about a revolution under his name, did not propose the destruction of the bank, or 364 its discontinuance, as one of the objects which were to be accomplished by the intended revolution. They did not tell the country that the bank was unconstitutional; they did not declare it unnecessary; they did not propose to get along without it, when they should come into power themselves. If individuals entertained any such purposes, they kept them much to themselves. The party, as a party, avowed none such. A third fact, worthy of all notice, is, that during this period there was no complaint about the state of the currency, either by the country generally or by the party then in opposition.

In March, 1829, General Jackson was inaugurated as President. He came into power on professions of reform. He announced reform of all abuses to be the great and leading object of his future administration; and in his inaugural address he pointed out the main subjects of this reform. But the bank was not one of them. It was not said by him that the bank was unconstitutional. It was not said that it was unnecessary or useless. It was not said that it had failed to do all that had been hoped or expected from it in regard to the currency.