| The Senate's censure of the President and Secretary of the Treasury. |
The Senate, however, took a different view of the subject. It considered the act of the Secretary to have been done under the order of the President, and in condemnatory resolutions held the President responsible therefor. These resolutions of censure connected the Secretary with the President, however, by declaring the reasons offered by the Secretary for the change in regard to the deposits to be "unsatisfactory and insufficient." The President made a vigorous protest against the Senate's resolution charging him with usurpation, and flung the accusation back at the body. He certainly showed that the Senate had no constitutional power to make any such charge against the President; and Senator Benton immediately gave notice that he should move the expunging of the resolutions from the journal at every session of Congress until it should be accomplished.
| National Republicans take the name of Whigs. |
It was in the midst of this conflict, and in consequence of it, a conflict in principle between the legislative and executive departments of the Government, in regard to the extent of their respective powers, that Mr. James Watson Webb, the editor of the New York Courier and Enquirer, began, about February, 1834, to denominate, in his newspaper articles, the opposition party to the President, led by Mr. Clay, Whigs. This title signified opposition to high executive prerogative, and approval of strong Congressional control over the President. The name was gradually substituted for that of National Republicans, as the different members and factions of the party came together upon the principle involved in the name.
| The cardinal doctrine of the Whigs. |
It seemed, for the moment, as if the parties had returned to the condition of bands of retainers under the lead of Clay and Jackson respectively, but this was more apparent than real. There was a real and comprehensive question at issue, one of the most fundamental questions of political science, the question of parliamentary government or presidential government in the United States. The triumph of President Jackson in this conflict—for the Bank was not rechartered, the deposits were not restored, and the President was not impeached, but the Senate's resolutions of censure were expunged—settled that question, and preserved the American system of government from further following the tendency which, from the accession of Jefferson to that of Jackson, had been slowly asserting itself, the tendency toward Congressional control over the Administration.
The original character of the Whig party explains many important things in its composition and subsequent history. In the first place, it explains why the party was composed, as to its leading element, of high-toned, courteous gentlemen—the larger part of the aristocracy of the land—since it is the instinct of the aristocracy to control the executive through the legislature. It explains further why the Whig party was unable to cope with the problem of slavery, since its fundamental principle was not a doctrine of rights, but of governmental form. It explains, lastly, why, in the development of the country's history, the defeat of the Whig party was necessary to the very existence of the country, when the great struggle should come, since its principle of Congressional control of the Administration would, if realized, have greatly weakened that executive independence, power, and unity, without which victory could hardly have been won.