Thirty Years' View (Vol. 1 of 2) / or, A History of the Working of the American Government for Thirty Years, from 1820 to 1850

by Thomas Hart Benton

It is objected, also, that we have no right to destroy a part of the journal; and that to expunge is to destroy and to prevent the expunged part from being known in future. Not so the fact, said Mr. B. The matter expunged is not destroyed. It is incorporated in the expunging resolution, and lives as long as that lives; the only effect of the expurgation being to express, in the most emphatic manner, the opinion that such matter ought never to have been put in the journal.

Mr. B. said he would support these positions by authority, the authority of eminent examples; and would cite two cases, out of a multitude that might be adduced, to show that expunging was the proper course, the parliamentary course, in such a case as the one now before the Senate, and that the expunged matter was incorporated and preserved in the expunging resolution.

Mr. B. then read, from a volume of British Parliamentary History, the celebrated case of the Middlesex election, in which the resolution to expel the famous John Wilkes was expunged from the journal, but preserved in the expurgatory resolution, so as to be just as well read now as if it had never been blotted out from the journals of the British House of Commons. The resolution ran in these words: "That the resolution of the House of the 17th February, 1769, 'that John Wilkes, Esq., having been, in this session of Parliament, expelled this House, was and is incapable of being elected a member to serve in the present Parliament,' be expunged from the journals of this House, as being subversive of the rights of the whole body of electors of this kingdom." Such, said Mr. B., were the terms of the expunging resolution in the case of the Middlesex election, as it was annually introduced from 1769 to 1782; when it was finally passed by a vote of near three to one, and the clause ordered to be expunged was blotted out of the journal, and obliterated, by the clerk at the table, in the presence of the whole House, which remained silent, and all business suspended until the obliteration was complete. Yet the history of the case is not lost. Though blotted out of one part of the journal, it is saved in another; and here, at the distance of half a century, and some thousand miles from London, the whole case is read as fully as if no such operation had ever been performed upon it.

Having given a precedent from British parliamentary history, Mr. B. would give another from American history; not, indeed, from the Congress of the assembled States, but from one of the oldest and most respectable States of the Union; he spoke of Massachusetts, and of the resolution adopted in the Senate of that State during the late war, adverse to the celebration of our national victories; and which, some ten years afterwards, was expunged from the journals by a solemn vote of the Senate.

A year ago, said Mr. B., the Senate tried President Jackson; now the Senate itself is on trial nominally before itself; but in reality before America, Europe, and posterity. We shall give our voices in our own case; we shall vote for or against this motion; and the entry upon the record will be according to the majority of voices. But that is not the end, but the beginning of our trial. We shall be judged by others; by the public, by the present age, and by all posterity! The proceedings of this case, and of this day, will not be limited to the present age; they will go down to posterity, and to the latest ages. President Jackson is not a character to be forgotten in history. His name is not to be confined to the dry catalogue and official nomenclature of mere American Presidents. Like the great Romans who attained the consulship, not by the paltry arts of electioneering, but through a series of illustrious deeds, his name will live, not for the offices he filled, but for the deeds which he performed. He is the first President that has ever received the condemnation of the Senate for the violation of the laws and the constitution, the first whose name is borne upon the journals of the American Senate for the violation of that constitution which he is sworn to observe, and of those laws which he is bound to see faithfully executed. Such a condemnation cannot escape the observation of history. It will be read, considered, judged! when the men of this day, and the passions of this hour, shall have passed to eternal repose.

Before he proceeded to the exposition of the case which he intended to make, he wished to avail himself of an argument which had been conclusive elsewhere, and which he trusted could not be without effect in this Senate. It was the argument of public opinion. In the case of the Middlesex election, it had been decisive with the British House of Commons; in the Massachusetts case, it had been decisive with the Senate of that State. In both these cases many gentlemen yielded their private opinions to public sentiment; and public sentiment having been well pronounced in the case now before the Senate, he had a right to look for the same deferential respect for it here which had been shown elsewhere.

Mr. B. then took up a volume of British parliamentary history for the year 1782, the 22d volume, and read various passages from pages 1407, 1408, 1410, 1411, to show the stress which had been laid on the argument of public opinion in favor of expunging the Middlesex resolutions; and the deference which was paid to it by the House, and by members who had, until then, opposed the motion to expunge. He read first from Mr. Wilkes' opening speech, on renewing his annual motion for the fourteenth time, as follows:

"If the people of England, sir, have at any time explicitly and fully declared an opinion respecting a momentous constitutional question, it has been in regard to the Middlesex election in 1768." * * * * "Their voice was never heard in a more clear and distinct manner than on this point of the first magnitude for all the electors of the kingdom, and I trust will now be heard favorably."

He then read from Mr. Fox's speech. Mr. Fox had heretofore opposed the expunging resolution, but now yielded to it in obedience to the voice of the people.

"He (Mr. Fox) had turned the question often in his mind, he was still of opinion that the resolution which gentlemen wanted to expunge was founded on proper principles." * * * * "Though he opposed the motion, he felt very little anxiety for the event of the question; for when he found the voice of the people was against the privilege, as he believed was the case at present, he would not preserve the privilege." * * * * "The people had associated, they had declared their sentiments to Parliament, and had taught Parliament to listen to the voice of their constituents."