Mr. Botts, of Virginia, a member of the committee which had made the report, after some introductory remarks, went on to say:
"In 1834 the Senate had adopted certain resolutions, condemning the course of President Jackson in the removal of the deposits from the Bank of the United States to the State banks. In consequence of this movement on the part of the Senate, President Jackson sent to that body a protest against the right of the Senate to express any opinion censuring his public course; and, what made the case then stronger than the present case, was, that the Senate constituted the jury by whom he was to be tried, should any impeachment be brought against him. The Senate, after a long, elaborate discussion of the whole matter, and the most eloquent and overpowering torrent of debate that ever was listened to in this country, adopted the three following resolutions:
'1. Resolved, That, while the Senate is, and ever will be, ready to receive from the President all such messages and communications as the constitution and laws, and the usual course of business, authorize him to transmit to it; yet it cannot recognize any right in him to make a formal protest against votes and proceedings of the Senate, declaring such votes and proceedings to be illegal and unconstitutional, and requesting the Senate to enter such protests on its journal.'
"On this resolution the yeas and nays were taken; and it was adopted, by a vote of 27 to 16: and, among the recorded votes in its favor, stood the names of John Tyler, now acting President of the United States, and Daniel Webster, now his prime minister.
"The second resolution was as follows:
'2. Resolved, That the aforesaid protest is a breach of the privileges of the Senate, and that it be not entered on the journal.'
"The same vote, numerically, was given in favor of this resolution; and among the yeas stood the names of John Tyler, now acting President of the United States, and of Daniel Webster, now his prime minister.
"The third resolutions read as follows:
'3. Resolved, That the President of the United States has no right to send a protest to the Senate against any of its proceedings.'
"And in sanction of this resolution also, the record shows the names of the same John Tyler and Daniel Webster."
Mr. Botts forbore to make any remarks of his own in support of the adoption of these resolutions, but read copious extracts from the speech of Mr. Webster in support of the same resolutions when offered in the Senate; and, adopting them as his own, called for the previous question; which call was sustained; and the main question being put, and the vote taken on the resolutions separately, they were all carried by large majorities. The yeas and nays on the first resolve, were:
"Yeas—Messrs. Adams, Landaff W. Andrews, Arnold, Babcock, Barnard, Birdseye, Blair, Boardman, Borden, Botts, Brockway, Jeremiah Brown, Calhoun, William B. Campbell, Thomas J. Campbell, Caruthers, Chittenden, John C. Clark, Cowen, Garrett Davis, John Edwards, Everett, Fillmore, Gamble, Gentry, Graham, Granger, Green, Habersham, Hall, Halsted, Howard, Hudson, Joseph R. Ingersoll, Isaac D. Jones, John P. Kennedy, King, Linn, McKennan, S. Mason, Mathiot, Mattocks, Maxwell, Maynard, Mitchell, Moore, Morrow, Osborne, Owsley, Pope, Powell, Ramsey, Benj. Randall, A. Randall, Randolph, Rayner, Ridgway, Rodney, William Russell, James M. Russell, Saltonstall, Shepperd, Simonton, Slade, Truman Smith, Sprigg, Stanly, Stratton, Summers, Taliaferro, John B. Thompson, Richard W. Thompson, Tillinghast, Toland, Tomlinson, Triplett, Trumbull, Underwood, Van Rensselaer, Wallace, Warren, Washington, Thomas W. Williams, Joseph L. Williams, Yorke, and Augustus Young—87.
"Nays—Messrs. Arrington, Atherton, Black, Boyd, Aaron V. Brown, Burke, Wm. O. Butler, P. C. Caldwell, Casey, Coles, Cross, Cushing, Richard D. Davis, Dawson, Gordon, Harris, Hastings, Hays, Hopkins, Hubbard, William W. Irwin, Cave Johnson, John W. Jones, Abraham McClellan, Mallory, Medill, Newhard, Oliver, Parmenter, Payne, Proffit, Read, Reding, Reynolds, Riggs, Rogers, Shaw, Shields, Steenrod, Jacob Thompson, Van Buren, Ward, Weller, James W. Williams, Wise, and Wood—46."
The other two resolves were adopted by, substantially, the same vote—the whole body of the whigs voting for the adoption. And this may be considered, so far as Congress was concerned, as the authoritative answer to that idea of whig unity which had induced Mr. Webster to remain in the cabinet. General Jackson was then alive, and it must have looked to him like retributive justice to see two of those (Mr. Tyler and Mr. Webster) who had voted his protest to be a breach of privilege, when it was not, now receiving the same vote from their own party; and that in a case where the breach of privilege was real.
[CHAPTER CI.]
LORD ASHBURTON'S MISSION, AND THE BRITISH TREATY.
Sixty years had elapsed since the treaty of peace between the United States and Great Britain which terminated the war of the revolution, and established the boundaries between the revolted colonies, now independent States, and the remaining British possessions in North America. A part of these boundaries, agreed upon in the treaty of peace, remained without acknowledgment and without sanction on the part of the British government: it was the part that divided the (now) State of Maine from Lower Canada, and was fixed by the words of the treaty, "along the highlands which divide the waters which empty themselves into the river St. Lawrence from those which fall into the Atlantic Ocean." Nothing could be more simple, or of more easy ascertainment than this line. Any man that knew his right hand from his left, and who could follow a ridge, and not get off of it to cross any water flowing to the right or the left, could trace the boundary, and establish it in the very words of the treaty. In fact there was no tangible dispute about it. The British government had agreed to it under a misapprehension as to the course of these highlands; and as soon as their true course was found out, that government refused to carry that part of the treaty into effect, and for a reason which was very frankly told, after the treaty of 1842, by a British civil engineer who had been employed by his government to search out the course of the boundary along those highlands. He said:
"The treaty of 1783 proposed to establish the boundary between the two countries along certain highlands. The Americans claimed these highlands to run in a northeasterly direction from the head of the Connecticut River, in a course which would have brought the boundary within the distance of twenty miles from the river St. Lawrence, and which, besides cutting off the posts and military routes leading from the province of New Brunswick to Quebec, would have given them various military positions to command and overawe that river and the fortress of Quebec."