I do not know whether the advocates of this doctrine of instructions extend it to trials or impeachments before the Senate. If they do not, I would ask on what distinct principle do they exempt such cases from this legislative right of dictation? The claim is broad and general, covering all the powers, duties, and acts of a Senator. Who is authorized to make the exceptions? By what known rule are they to be made, or do they depend upon an arbitrary will? Is this will or power lodged in the State Legislatures? Then they make the exception or not, at their pleasure; they may forbear to interfere in one impeachment—and they may send in their dictation in another, according as, in their discretion, it may or may not be a case calling for their interference. Their power over their Senator, to compel him to obey or resign, is in their own hands, and they may issue their mandate to him to condemn or acquit the accused, or they may leave him to his own judgment and conscience as they may deem it to be expedient. Such is the state of the case, if the right of discrimination, of making exceptions from the general power of control, is vested in the Legislatures themselves. Is it then given to the other party, that is, to the Senator? Then the power resolves itself into an empty name; or rather into just what I say it should be, a recommendation entitled to great deference and respect, but with no obligation to obedience. If the Senator has an admitted discretion to obey or not to obey the instructions of his Legislature, according to the nature of the case in which they are given, then the right of the Legislature to give them is not absolute in any case, but it is left to the judgment of the Senator to decide for himself whether the case be one in which he can and ought to follow their instructions or not. There is no special exception of impeachments, and the right to exempt them from this legislative control, if it exist at all, must depend upon the nature of the case, and, of consequence, what is the nature of a case which entitles it to this exemption must be decided by the Legislature or by their Senator. We have seen the effect of either alternative. In truth, this power of control must be co-extensive with the powers and duties of the Senator, or it is nothing.
To give you the strongest case against my argument, I will suppose that the Constitution had said—“The State Legislatures may instruct their Senators,” and had said no more; would this have created an imperious obligation on the Senator implicitly to obey the instructions? Would disobedience forfeit his office directly, or virtually by making it his duty to resign it? I think not. It would have been no more than a constitutional, perhaps a superfluous, recognition of the right of the State Legislatures to interfere so far and in this way, with the measures of the federal government, to give their opinions, their recommendation, their counsel, to their Senators; but the Senators would afterwards be at liberty, nay it would be their duty, to act and vote according to their own judgment and consciences, on the responsibility which they constitutionally owe to their constituents, which is found, as Mr. Madison says, in the periodical change of the members of the Senate. The Constitution knows no other check upon the Senators; no other responsibility to the State Legislature, while the Senator acts within and by the admitted powers of his office.
But I am wearying you to death. Let me conclude this interminable epistle by referring to an authority which no man living holds in higher reverence than you do. About a week or ten days before the death of that great and pure man, a true and fearless patriot, Chief Justice Marshall, I called to see him. This question of instructions was then in high debate in your papers. I said to him that I thought the Virginia doctrine of instructions was inconsistent with all the principles of our government, and subversive of the stability of its foundations. He replied in these words—“It is so; indeed the Virginia doctrines are incompatible not only with the government of the United States, but with any government.” These were the last words I heard from the lips of John Marshall.
H..
PERDICARIS.
Mr. Editor,—In introducing the following pieces to your notice, permit me to say a few words of the gentleman whose lectures on the condition and prospects of his native Greece have occasioned them to be offered to you. Perdicaris is a native of Berea in Macedonia, a place memorable not only for classic but for sacred associations. He left his country while a youth, about the commencement of the Greek revolution; and after travelling for some time in Syria and Egypt, was brought off by an American vessel of war, from Smyrna, where his situation as a Greek was extremely perilous. His education having been completed in this country, he engaged as a teacher of the Greek language, first at the Mount Pleasant Institution, Amherst, Massachusetts, and subsequently at Washington College, Hartford, Connecticut. Being now about to return to his native country, he is perfecting his acquaintance with the United States and their institutions, by travel; while at the same time he aims by lectures delivered in the various cities, to excite an interest in the public mind in the prospects and condition of his own country. It appears to be his most earnest wish, to remove some false ideas with respect to his native land, which have been too generally prevalent, and which even the tone of Byron's poetry—friend of Greece as he was—has tended to confirm. In the accounts of Perdicaris, we discover that his country is still worthy of her ancient fame, that she possesses, and has possessed for years, numerous and eminent scholars, noble institutions of learning, a national poetry of no ordinary merit, an active and intelligent population, and a general diffusion of enlightened public spirit, of which it is as gratifying as it is unexpected, to be informed.
Of the two following pieces, the one is a translation, executed with Mr. Perdicaris's assistance, from Christopoulos, who has been styled the Modern Anacreon. It has in the original, an amusing and touching simplicity, which I have not, I fear, succeeded in preserving. The second piece must speak for itself.