Now, I ask, can it be supposed that this government can go on long in a course of successful operation, if no change can be produced without such an effort as that in which the people of this country are now engaged? I put it to the old-fashioned republicans of Virginia. I ask them, whether it can be supposed that this free republican government of ours can last for half a century longer, if its administration cannot be changed without such an excitement, I may say such a civil revolution, as is now in progress, and, I trust, is near its completion?

I present this case as the greatest and strongest of all proofs that executive power in this country has increased, and is become dangerous to liberty.

If this be so, then I ask, What are the causes which have given and have augmented this force of executive power? The disciples of the ancient school of Virginia long entertained the opinion, that there was great danger of encroachment by the general government on the just rights of the States; but they were also alarmed at the possibility of an undue augmentation of the executive power. It becomes us, at a crisis like the present, to recur to first principles, - to go back to our early history, and to see how the question actually stands.

You all well know that, in the formation of a constitution for the government of this country, the great difficulty its framers encountered was with regard to the executive power. It was easy to establish a House of Representatives, and a second branch of the government in the form of a Senate, for it was a very obvious principle, that the States should be represented in one House of Congress as the people were represented in the other. But the great and perplexing question was, how to limit and regulate the executive power in such a manner, that, while it should be sufficiently strong and effective for the purposes of government, it should not be able to endanger civil liberty. Our fathers had seen and felt the inconvenience, during the Revolutionary war, of a weak executive in government. The country had suffered much from that cause. There was no unity of purpose or efficiency of action in its executive power. As the country had just emerged from one war, and might be plunged into another, they were looking intently to such a constitution as should secure an efficient executive. Perhaps it remains to be seen whether, in this respect, they had not better have given

less power to this branch, and taken all the inconvenience arising from the want of it, rather than have hazarded the granting of so much as might prove dangerous, not only to the other departments of government, but to the safety and freedom of the country at large.

In the first place, it is the executive which confers all the favors of a government. It has the patronage in its hands, and if we look carefully at the proceedings of the past and present administrations, we shall see that in the course of things, and to answer the purposes of men, this patronage has greatly increased. We shall find that the expenditures for office have been augmented. We shall find that this is true of the civil and diplomatic departments; we shall find it is true of all the departments; of the post-office, and especially of the commercial department. Thus, to take an instance from one of our great commercial cities, in the custom-house at New York, the number of officers has, in twelve years, increased threefold, and the whole expense, of course, in the same proportion.

Then there is the power of removal, a power which, in some instances, has been exercised most remorselessly. By whatever party it is wielded, unless it be called for by the actual exigencies of the public service, Virginia, more than any State of the Union, has ever rejected, disowned, disavowed, the practice of removal for opinion's sake. I do honor to Virginia in this respect. That power has been far less practised in Virginia than in certain States where the spoils doctrine is known to be more popular. But this power of removal, sanctioned as it is by time, does exist, and I have seen it exercised, in every part of the country where public opinion tolerated it, with a most unsparing hand.

I will now say, however, that which I admit to be very presumptuous, because it is said notwithstanding the illustrious authority of one of the greatest of your great men, a man better acquainted with the Constitution of the United States than any other man; a man who saw it in its cradle, who held it in his arms, as one may say, in its infancy, who presented and recommended it to the American people, and who saw it adopted very much under the force of his own reasoning and the weight of his own reputation, who lived long enough to see it prosper

ous, to enjoy its highest honors, and who at last went down to the grave beneath ten thousand blessings, for which, morning and evening, he had thanked God; I mean James Madison. Yet even from this great and good man, whom I hold to be chief among the just interpreters of the Constitution, I am constrained, however presumptuous it may be considered, to differ in relation to one of his interpretations of that instrument. I refer to the opinion expressed by him, that the power of removal from office does exist in the Constitution as an independent power in the hands of the President, without the consent of the Senate. I wish he had taken a different view of it. I do not say that he was wrong; that in me would be too hazardous. I advert to this here, to show that I am not now for the first time preaching against the danger of an increase of executive power; for when the subject was in discussion before Congress, in 1835, I expressed there the same opinions which I have now uttered, and which have been only the more confirmed by recent experience. The power of removal places the hopes and fears, the living, the daily bread of men, at the disposal of the executive, and thereby produces a vast mass of executive influence and control. Then, again, from the very nature of things, the executive power acts constantly; it is always in being, always in the citadel and on the look-out; and it has, besides, entire unity of purpose. They who are in have but one object, which is to keep all others out; while those who are not in office, and who desire a change, have a variety of different objects, as they are to be found in different parts of the country. One complains of one thing, another of another; and, ordinarily, there is no strict unity of object, nor agreement on candidates, nor concert of action; and therefore it is that those wielding power within the fortress are able to keep the others out, though they may be more numerous. Hence we have seen an administration, though in a minority, yet, by the continued exercise of power, able to bring over a majority of the people's representatives to the support of such a measure as the sub-treasury, which, when it was first proposed, received but little favor in any part of the country.

Again; though it may appear comparatively inconsiderable, yet, when we are looking at the means by which the executive power has risen to its present threatening height, we must not overlook the power of, I will not say a pensioned, but of a patron

ized press. Of all things in a popular government, a government press is the most to be dreaded. The press furnishes the only usual means of public address; and if government, by supporting, comes to control it, then they take to themselves, at the public expense, the great channel of all communication with the people. Unless France be an exception, where the minister regularly demands so many. thousand francs for the management of the public press, I know of no government in the world where the press is avowedly patronized to the same extent as it is in this country. Have not you, men of Virginia, been mortified to witness the importance which is attached, at Washington, to the election of a public printer? to observe the great anxiety and solicitude which even your own friends have been obliged to exercise to keep that appointment out of the hands of executive power? One of the first things which, in my opinion ought to be done, is, when a new administration shall come in, to separate the government press from the politics of the country. I don't want the government printer to preach politics to the people; beause I know beforehand what politics he will preach; it will all be one Io triumphe from the beginning of the first page to the end of the last paragraph. I am for cutting off this power from the executive. Give the people fair play. I say, give the people fair play. If they think the govern ment is in error, or that better men may be found to administer it, give them a chance to turn the present men out, and put better men in; but don't let them be compelled to give their money to pay a man to persuade them not to change the government.

Well, there are still other modes by which executive power is established and confirmed. The first thing it seeks to do is to draw strict lines of party distinction, and then to appeal to the party feelings of men. This is a topic which might lead me very far into an inquiry as to the causes which have overturned all popular governments. It is the nature of men to be credulous and confiding toward their friends. If there exists in the country a powerful party, and if the head of that party be the head of the government, and, avowing himself the head of that party, gives thanks for the public honors he has received, not to the country, but to his party, then we can see the causes in operation, which, according to the well-known character and tendencies of man, lead us to give undue trust and confidence to

party favorites. Why, Gentlemen, kings and queens of old, and probably in modern times, have had their favorites, and they have placed unbounded trust in them. Well, there are sometimes among the people persons who are no wiser than kings and queens, who have favorites also, and give to those favorites the same blind trust and confidence. Hence it is very difficult, nay, sometimes impossible, to convince a party that the man at its head exercises an undue amount of power. They say,

66

is our friend; the more power he wields, the better for us, because he will wield it for our benefit." There are two sorts of republicans in the world: one is a very good sort; the other, I think, quite indifferent. The latter care not what power persons in office possess, if they have the election of those persons. They are quite willing their favorites should exercise all power, and are perfectly content with the tendencies of government to an elective despotism, if they may choose the man at the head of it, and more especially if they have a chance of being chosen themselves. That is one sort of republicanism. But that is not our American liberty; that is not the republicanism of the United States, and especially of the State of Virginia. Virginians do not rush out into that extravagant confidence in men; they are for restraining power by law; they are for hedging in and strictly guarding all who exercise it. They look upon all who are in office as limited agents, and will not repose too much trust in any. That is American republicanism. What was it that Thomas Jefferson said with so much emphasis? "Have we found angels in the form of men to govern us?" However it might have been then, we of this day may answer, No! No! We have found them at least like others, "a little lower than the angels." In the same spirit he has said, an elective despotism is not the government we fought for. And that is true. Our fathers fought for a limited government, a government hedged all round with securities, or, as I heard an eminent son of Virginia say, a government fenced in with ten rails and a top-rider.

Gentlemen, a distinguished lover of liberty of our own time, in another hemisphere, said, with apparent paradox, that the quantity of liberty in any country is exactly equal to the quantity of restraint; because, if government is restrained from putting its hand upon you, to that extent you are free; and all