264 AVES ISLAND. 



Congress is the only immaculate and safe depository of public power. 

 If carried to its full extent, it annihilates all executive power whatever, 

 and places everything under the control of Congress; whereas, accord-* 

 ing to the true principles of the federal compact, the separate powers 

 of the executive branch of the government are as independent of those 

 of the legislative branch, and are as well defined and maintained, as 

 the latter. We are not informed of any case of special reprisals that 

 has occurred in this government since the adoption of the federal Con- 

 stitution. 



Cases of general and extraordinary reprisals have repeatedly occurred, 

 and in which the legislative as well as the executive power has been 

 exercised under the Constitution to authorize the issuance of such let- 

 ters, which were recognized as a kind of imperfect war. 



The act of Congress of July 9, 1T98, (1 Stat, at Large, pp. 574, 579,) 

 authorizing general reprisals against the French government, are of 

 this character. So, too, the act of February 6, 1802, (2 ib. 130;) and' 

 also the acts of June 18, and June 26, 1812, (ib., pp. 755, 759,) de- 

 claring and 'during the war with Great Britain. So, too, the act of 

 March 3, 1815, (3 ib., p. 230.) as to the letters against Algiers ; and 

 so also the message of General Jackson to Congress, (December 1, 

 1834,) with reference to the authorization of general reprisals against 

 the French government for the public debt due to the United States by 

 treaty stipulations, is of the same character ; and the distinction obvi- 

 ously exists between all these cases and the case of special reprisals to 

 enforce rights of individual citizens in time of peace, must be. apparent 

 to the most ordinary intellect. '■ ' 



No one contends that there is any special statute investing the exec- 

 utive branch of this government with power to grant special letters of 

 reprisal in time of peace, or with power to lay a blockade or embargo 

 in time of peace, in a case where by the law of nations such blockade 

 or embargo would be justified ; or to take possession, by armed force, 

 of territory in dispute between the United States and a foreign State ; 

 or of resenting by violence an insult to and outrage upon a public 

 diplomatic representative of the United States in a foreign .country ; or 

 of committing acts of hostility against another people for insults and 

 outrages upon the American flag and American citizens. Yet it hath 

 been found that such measures must be adopted, and such legitimate 

 executive functions fulfilled ; and though several such cases have 

 occurred, no Executive hath been arraigned and censured for violating 

 the Constitution in so doing, but in every instance he hath been ap- 

 plauded and sustained. 



We prefer to be strict constructionists of the Constitution, but not so 

 much with reference to the necessary powers of the federal government 

 for the protection of its citizens against the aggressions of foreign 

 States, as in regard to encroachments upon the rights of the individual 

 States of the Confederacy, or the rights of the individual citizen by the 

 federal government. By such liberal construction from the former, no 

 danger is to be apprehended : on the contrary, the greatest danger is, 

 that timid statesmen, holding the reins of federal authority in future 

 times, (when the doctrines of Exeter Hall shall more exclusively pre- 

 vail,) may be deterred from acts of necessary justice by the facility to find 



