A Biography of Henry Clay, the Senator from Kentucky / Containing Also, a Complete Report of All His Speeches; Selections From His Private Correspondence; Eulogies in the Senate and House; and a Poem, by George D. Prentice, Esq.

by Unknown

I have, nevertheless, persevered; and under every discouragement, during the short time that I expect to remain in the public councils, I will persevere. And if a bountiful Providence would allow an unworthy sinner to approach the throne of grace, I would beseech Him, as the greatest favor He could grant to me here below, to spare me until I live to behold the people rising in their majesty, with a peaceful and constitutional exercise of their power, to expel the Goths from Rome; to rescue the public treasury from pillage, to preserve the constitution of the United States; to uphold the union against the danger of the concentration and consolidation of all power in the hands of the executive; and to sustain the liberties of the people of this country against the imminent perils to which they now stand exposed.

[Here Mr. Clay, who was understood to have gone through the first part of his speech only, gave way, and Mr. Ewing of Ohio moved that the further consideration of the subject be postponed until Monday next; which was ordered accordingly. And then the senate adjourned to that day. December 30, Mr. Clay resumed his speech.]

Before I proceed to a consideration of the report of the secretary of the treasury, and the second resolution, I wish to anticipate and answer an objection, which may be made to the adoption of the first. It may be urged, that the senate, being, in a certain contingency, a court of impeachment, ought not to prejudge a question which it may be called upon to decide judicially. But by the constitution the senate has three characters, legislative, executive, and judicial. Its ordinary, and by far its most important character, is that of its being a component part of the legislative department. Only three or four cases, since the establishment of the government, (that is, during a period of nearly half a century,) have occurred, in which it was necessary that the senate should act as a judicial tribunal, the least important of all its characters. Now it would be most strange if, when its constitutional powers were assailed, it could not assert and vindicate them, because, by possibility, it might be required to act as a court of justice. The first resolution asserts only, that the president has assumed the exercise of a power over the public treasury not granted by the constitution and laws. It is silent as to motive; and without the quo animo—the deliberate purpose of usurpation—the president would not be liable to impeachment. But if a concurrence of all the elements be necessary to make out a charge of wilful violation of the constitution, does any one believe that the president will now be impeached? And shall we silently sit by and see ourselves stripped of one of the most essential of our legislative powers, and the exercise of it assumed by the president, to which it is not delegated, without effort to maintain it, because, against all human probability, he may be hereafter impeached?

The report of the secretary of the treasury, in the first paragraph, commences with a misstatement of the fact. He says, ‘I have directed’ that the deposits of the money of the United States shall not be made in the bank of the United States. If this assertion is regarded in any other than a mere formal sense, it is not true. The secretary may have been the instrument, the clerk, the automaton, in whose name the order was issued; but the measure was that of the president, by whose authority or command the order was given; and of this we have the highest and most authentic evidence. The president has told the world that the measure was his own, and that he took it upon his own responsibility. And he has exonerated his cabinet from all responsibility about it. The secretary ought to have frankly disclosed all the circumstances of the case, and told the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but thetruth. If he had done so, he would have informed congress, that the removal had been decided by the president on the eighteenth of September last; that it had been announced to the public on the twentieth; and that Mr. Duane remained in office until the twenty-third. He would have informed congress, that this important measure was decided before he entered into his new office, and was the cause of his appointment. Yes, sir, the present secretary stood by, a witness to the struggle in the mind of his predecessor, between his attachment to the president and his duty to the country; saw him dismissed from office, because he would not violate his conscientious obligations, and came into his place, to do what he could not, honorably, and would not perform. A son of one of the fathers of democracy, by an administration professing to be democratic, was expelled from office, and his place supplied by a gentleman, who, throughout his whole career, has been uniformly opposed to democracy!—a gentleman who, at another epoch of the republic, when it was threatened with civil war, and a dissolution of the union, voted, (although a resident of a slave state,) in the legislature of Maryland,against the admission of Missouri into the union without a restriction incompatible with her rights as a member of the confederacy![21] Mr. Duane was dismissed because the solemn convictions of his duty would not allow him to conform to the president’s will; because his logic did not bring his mind to the same conclusions with those of the logic of a venerable old gentleman, inhabiting a white house not distant from the capitol; because his watch, (here Mr. Clay held up his own,) did not keep time with that of the president. He was dismissed under that detestable system of proscription for opinion’s sake, which has finally dared to intrude itself into the halls of congress—a system under which three unoffending clerks, the husbands of wives, the fathers of families, dependent on them for support, without the slightest imputation of delinquency, have been recently unceremoniously discharged, and driven out to beggary, by a man, himself the substitute of a meritorious officer, who has not been in this city a period equal to one monthly revolution of the moon! I tell our secretary, (said Mr. Clay, raising his voice,) that, if he touch a single hair of the head of any one of the clerks of the senate, (I am sure he is not disposed to do it,) on account of his opinions, political or religious, if no other member of the senate does it, I will instantly submit a resolution for his own dismission.

The secretary ought to have communicated all these things; heought to have stated that the cabinet was divided two and two, and one of the members equally divided with himself on the question, willing to be put into either scale. He ought to have given a full account of this, the most important act of executive authority since the origin of the government; he should have stated with what unsullied honor his predecessor retired from office, and on what degrading conditions he accepted his vacant place. When a momentous proceeding like this, varying the constitutional distribution of the powers of the legislative and executive departments, was resolved on, the ministers against whose advice it was determined, should have resigned their stations. No ministers of any monarch in Europe, under similar circumstances, would have retained the seals of office. And if, as nobody doubts, there is a cabal behind the curtain, without character and without responsibility, feeding the passions, stimulating the prejudices, and moulding the actions of the incumbent of the presidential office, it was an additional reason for their resignations. There is not a maitre d’hotel in christendom, who, if the scullions were put into command in the parlor and dining-room, would not scorn to hold his place, and fling it up in disgust with indignant pride!

I shall examine the report before us, first, as to the power of the secretary over the deposits; secondly, his reasons for the exercise of it; and, thirdly, the manner of its exercise.

First. The secretary asserts that the power of removal is exclusively reserved to him; that it is absolute and unconditional, so far as the interests of the bank are concerned; that it is not restricted to any particular contingencies; that the reservation of the power to the secretary of the treasury exclusively, is a part of the compact; that he may exercise it, if the public convenience or interest would in any degree be promoted; that this exclusive power, thus reserved, is so absolute, that the secretary is not restrained by the considerations that the public deposits in the bank are perfectly safe; that the bank promptly meets all demands upon it; and that it faithfully performs all its duties; and that the power of congress, on the contrary, is so totally excluded, that it could not, without a breach of the compact, order the deposits to be changed, even if congress were satisfied that they were not safe, or should be convinced that the interests of the people of the United States imperiously demanded the removal.

Such is the statement which this unassuming secretary makes of his own authority. He expands his own power to the most extravagant dimensions; and he undertakes to circumscribe that of congress in the narrowest and most restricted limits! Who would have expected that, after having so confidently maintained for himself such absolute, exclusive, unqualified, and uncontrollable power, he would have let in any body else to share with him its exercise? Yet he says, ‘as the secretary of the treasury presides over one ofthe executive departments of the government, and his power over this subject forms a part of the executive duties of his office, the manner in which it is exercised must be subject to the supervision of the officer,’ (meaning the president, whose official name his modesty would not allow him to pronounce,) ‘to whom the constitution has confided the whole executive power, and has required to take care that the laws be faithfully executed.’ If the clause in the compact exclusively vests the power of removal in the secretary of the treasury, what has the president to do with it? What part of the charter conveys to him any power? If, as the secretary contends, the clause of removal, being part of the compact, restricts its exercise to the secretary, to the entire exclusion of congress, how does it embrace the president? especially since both the president and secretary conceive, that ‘the power over the place of deposit for the public money would seem properly to belong to the legislative department of the government?’ If the secretary be correct in asserting that the power of removal is confined to the secretary of the treasury, then Mr. Duane, while in office, possessed it; and his dismission, because he would not exercise a power which belonged to him exclusively, was itself a violation of the charter.

But by what authority does the secretary assert that the treasury department is one of the executive departments of the government? He has none in the act which creates the department; he has none in the constitution. The treasury department is placed by law on a different footing from all the other departments, which are, in the acts creating them, denominated executive, and placed under the direction of the president. The treasury department, on the contrary, is organized on totally different principles. Except the appointment of the officers, with the coöperation of the senate, and the power which is exercised of removing them, the president has neither by the constitution nor the law creating the department, any thing to do with it. The secretary’s reports and responsibility are directly to congress. The whole scheme of the department is one of checks, each officer acting as a control upon his associates. The secretary is required by the law to report, not to the president, but directly to congress. Either house may require any report from him, or command his personal attendance before it. It is not, therefore, true, that the treasury is one of the executive departments, subject to the supervision of the president. And the inference drawn from that erroneous assumption entirely fails. The secretary appears to have no precise ideas either of the constitution or duties of the department over which he presides. He says:

‘The treasury department being intrusted with the administration of the finances of the country, it was always the duty of the secretary, in the absence of any legislate provision on the subject, to take care that the public money was deposited in safe-keeping, in the hands of faithful agents,’ and so forth.