ON THE EXPUNGING RESOLUTION.
IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES, JANUARY 16, 1837.
[ON the twenty-eighth of March, 1834, the senate of the United States adopted, by a vote of twenty-six to twenty, the following resolution, which was offered by Mr. Clay, relative to the removal of the public deposits from the bank of the United States.
‘Resolved, that the president, in the late executive proceedings in relation to the public revenue, has assumed upon himself authority and power not conferred by the constitution and laws, but in derogation of both.’
This resolution Mr. Benton, of Missouri, in February, 1835, brought forward a motion to expunge from the journals of the senate; but that body, on the third of March, by a vote of thirty-nine to seven, refused to sustain the motion. Mr. Benton, however, continued to agitate the subject, and, at the session of 1836–7, the majority of the senate having been changed in favor of president Jackson, an expunging resolution was offered by Mr. Benton, and, after an exciting debate, carried. On this occasion Mr. Clay addressed the senate in the following speech, which may be numbered among his most powerful efforts in the cause of the constitution, and the rights of the legislative against executive power.]
CONSIDERING that I was the mover of the resolution of March, 1834, and the consequent relation in which I stood to the majority of the senate by whose vote it was adopted, I feel it to be my duty to say something on this expunging resolution, and I always have intended to do so when I should be persuaded that there existed a settled purpose of pressing it to a final decision. But it was so taken up and put down at the last session—taken up one day, when a speech was prepared for delivery, and put down when it was pronounced—that I really doubted, whether there existed any serious intention of ever putting it to the vote. At the very close of the last session, it will be recollected that the resolution came up, and in several quarters of the senate a disposition was manifested to come to a definitive decision. On that occasion, I offered to waive my right to address the senate, and silently to vote upon the resolution; but it was again laid upon the table, and laid there for ever, as the country supposed, and as I believed. It is, however, now revived; and sundry changes having taken place in the members of this body, it would seem that the present design is to bring the resolution to an absolute conclusion.
I have not risen to repeat at full length the argument by which the friends of the resolution of March, 1834, sustained it. That argument is before the world, was unanswered at the time, andis unanswerable. And I here, in my place, in the presence of my country and my God, after the fullest consideration and deliberation of which my mind is capable, reassert my solemn conviction of the truth of every proposition contained in that resolution. But whilst it is not my intention to commit such an infliction upon the senate as that would be, of retracing the whole ground of argument formerly occupied, I desire to lay before it at this time, a brief and true state of the case. Before the fatal step is taken, of giving to the expunging resolution the sanction of the American senate, I wish, by presenting a faithful outline of the real questions involved in the resolution of 1834, to make a last, even if it is to be an ineffectual appeal, to the sober judgments of senators. I begin by reasserting the truth of that resolution.
Our British ancestors understood perfectly well the immense importance of the money power in a representative government. It is the great lever by which the crown is touched, and made to conform its administration to the interests of the kingdom, and the will of the people. Deprive parliament of the power of freely granting or withholding supplies, and surrender to the king the purse of the nation, he instantly becomes an absolute monarch. Whatever may be the form of government, elective or hereditary, democratic or despotic, that person who commands the force of the nation, and at the same time has uncontrolled possession of the purse of the nation, has absolute power, whatever may be the official name by which he is called.
Our immediate ancestors, profiting by the lessons on civil liberty, which had been taught in the country from which we sprung, endeavored to encircle around the public purse, in the hands of congress, every possible security against the intrusion of the executive. With this view, congress alone is invested by the constitution with the power to lay and collect the taxes. When collected, not a cent is to be drawn from the public treasury, but in virtue of an act of congress. And among the first acts of this government, was the passage of a law establishing the treasury department, for the safe keeping and the legal and regular disbursement of the money so collected. By that act a secretary of the treasury is placed at the head of the department; and varying in respect from all the other departments, he is to report, not to the president, but directly to congress, and is liable to be called to give information in person before congress. It is impossible to examine dispassionately that act, without coming to the conclusion that he is emphatically the agent of congress in performing the duties assigned by the constitution of congress. The act further provides that a treasurer shall be appointed to receive and keep the public money, and none can be drawn from his custody but under the authority of a law, and in virtue of a warrant drawn by the secretary of the treasury, countersigned by the comptroller, and recordedby the register. Only when such a warrant is presented can the treasurer lawfully pay one dollar from the public purse. Why was the concurrence of these four officers required in disbursements of the public money? Was it not for greater security? Was it not intended that each, exercising a separate and independent will, should be a check upon every other? Was it not the purpose of the law to consider each of these four officers, acting in his proper sphere, not as a mere automaton, but as an intellectual, intelligent, and responsible person, bound to observe the law, and to stop the warrant, or stop the money, if the authority of the law were wanting?