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

Why is the plough deserted, the tools of the mechanic laid aside, and all are seen rushing to gatherings of the people? What occasions those vast and unusual assemblages, which we behold in every state, and in almost every neighborhood? Why those conventions of the people, at a common centre, from all the extremities of this vast union, to consult together upon the sufferings of the community, and to deliberate on the means of deliverance? Why this rabid appetite for public discussions? What is the solution of the phenomenon, which we observe, of a great nation agitated upon its whole surface, and at its lowest depths, like the ocean when convulsed by some terrible storm? There must be a cause, and no ordinary cause.

It has been truly said, in the most memorable document that ever issued from the pen of man, that ‘all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.’ The recent history of our people furnishes confirmation of that truth. They are active, enterprising, and intelligent; but arenot prone to make groundless complaints against public servants. If we now every where behold them in motion, it is because they feel that the grievances under which they are writhing can be no longer tolerated. They feel the absolute necessity of a change, that no change can render their condition worse, and that any change must better it. This is the judgment to which they have come; this the brief and compendious logic which we daily hear. They know that, in all the dispensations of Providence, they have reason to be thankful and grateful; and if they had not, they would be borne with fortitude and resignation. But there is a prevailing conviction and persuasion, that, in the administration of government, there has been something wrong, radically wrong, and that the vessel of state has been in the hands of selfish, faithless, and unskilful pilots, who have conducted it amidst the breakers.

In my deliberate opinion, the present distressed and distracted state of the country may be traced to the single cause of the action, the encroachments, and the usurpations of the executive branch of the government. I have not time here to exhibit and to dwell upon all the instances of these, as they have occurred in succession, during the last twelve years. They have been again and again exposed, on other more fit occasions. But I have thought this a proper opportunity to point out the enormity of the pretensions, principles, and practices of that department, as they have been, from time to time, disclosed, in these late years, and to show the rapid progress which has been made in the fulfilment of the remarkable language of our illustrious countryman, that the federal executive had an awful squinting towards monarchy. Here, in the county of his birth, surrounded by sons, some of whose sires with him were the first to raise their arms in defence of American liberty against a foreign monarch, is an appropriate place to expose the impending danger of creating a domestic monarch. And may I not, without presumption, indulge the hope, that the warning voice of another, although far humbler, son of Hanover, may not pass unheeded?

The late president of the United States advanced certain new and alarming pretensions for the executive department of the government, the effect of which, if established and recognised by the people, must inevitably convert it into a monarchy. The first of these, and it was a favorite principle with him, was, that the executive department should be regarded as a unit. By this principle of unity, he meant and intended, that all the executive officers of government should be bound to obey the commands and execute the orders of the president of the United States, and that they should be amenable to him, and he be responsible for them. Prior to his administration, it had been considered that they were bound to observe and obey the constitution and laws, subject only to the general superintendence of the president, and responsible byimpeachment, and to the tribunals of justice, for injuries inflicted on private citizens.

But the annunciation of this new and extraordinary principle was not of itself sufficient for the purpose of president Jackson; it was essential that the subjection to his will, which was its object, should be secured by some adequate sanction. That he sought to effect by an extension of another principle, that of dismission from office, beyond all precedent, and to cases and under circumstances which would have furnished just grounds of his impeachment, according to the solemn opinion of Mr. Madison, and other members of the first congress, under the present constitution.

Now, if the whole official corps, subordinate to the president of the United States, are made to know and to feel that they hold their respective offices by the tenure of conformity and obedience to his will, it is manifest, that they must look to that will, and not to the constitution and laws, as the guide of their official conduct. The weakness of human nature, the love and emoluments of office, perhaps the bread necessary to the support of their families, would make this result absolutely certain.

The development of this new character to the power of dismission, would have fallen short of the aims in view, without the exercise of it were held to be a prerogative, for which the president was to be wholly irresponsible. If he were compelled to expose the grounds and reasons upon which he acted, in dismissals from office, the apprehension of public censure would temper the arbitrary nature of the power, and throw some protection around the subordinate officer. Hence the new and monstrous pretension has been advanced, that, although the concurrence of the senate is necessary by the constitution, to the confirmation of an appointment, the president may subsequently dismiss the person appointed, not only without communicating the grounds on which he has acted to the senate, but without any such communication to the people themselves, for whose benefit all offices are created! And so bold and daring has the executive branch of the government become, that one of its cabinet ministers, himself a subordinate officer, has contemptuously refused, to members of the house of representatives, to disclose the grounds on which he has undertaken to dismiss from office persons acting as deputy postmasters in his department!

As to the gratuitous assumption, by president Jackson, of responsibility for all the subordinate executive officers, it is the merest mockery that was ever put forth. They will escape punishment by pleading his orders, and he, by alleging the hardship of being punished, not for his own acts, but for theirs. We have a practical exposition of this principle in the case of the two hundred thousand militia. The secretary of war comes out to screen the president, by testifying that he never saw what he strongly recommended;and the president reciprocates that favor by retaining the secretary in place, notwithstanding he has proposed a plan for organizing the militia, which is acknowledged to be unconstitutional. If the president is not to be held responsible for a cabinet minister, in daily intercourse with him, how is he to be rendered so for a receiver; in Wisconsin or Iowa? To concentrate all responsibility in the president, is to annihilate all responsibility. For who ever expects to see the day arrive when a president of the United States will be impeached; or, if impeached, when he cannot command more than one third of the senate to defeat the impeachment?

But to construct the scheme of practical despotism, whilst all the forms of free government remained, it was necessary to take one further step. By the constitution, the president is enjoined to take care that the laws be executed. This injunction was merely intended to impose on him the duty of a general superintendence; to see that offices were filled; officers at their respective posts, in the discharge of their official functions; and all obstructions to the enforcement of the laws were removed, and, when necessary for that purpose, to call out the militia. No one ever imagined, prior to the administration of president Jackson, that a president of the United States was to occupy himself with supervising and attending to the execution of all the minute details of every one of the hosts of offices in the United States.

Under the constitutional injunction just mentioned, the late president put forward that most extraordinary pretension that the constitution and laws of the United States were to be executed as he understood them; and this pretension was attempted to be sustained, by an argument equally extraordinary, that the president, being a sworn officer, must carry them into effect, according to his sense of their meaning. The constitution and laws were to be executed, not according to their import, as handed down to us by our ancestors, as interpreted by contemporaneous expositions, as expounded by concurrent judicial decisions, as fixed by an uninterrupted course of congressional legislation, but in that sense in which a president of the United States happened to understand them!