PUBLIC DOCUMENTS. 



591 



Executive by the Constitution for the interest and 

 protection of the people, and exercised by Washing- 

 ton and his successors, has been rendered nugatory 

 by a partisan majority of two-thirds in each branch 

 of the national Legislature. The Constitution evi- 

 dently contemplates that, when a bill is returned with 

 the President's objections, it will be calmly recon- 

 sidered by Congress. Such, however, has not been 

 the practice under present party rule. It has become 

 evident that men who pass a bill under partisan in- 

 fluences are not likely, through patriotic motives, to 

 admit their error, and thereby weaken their own or- 

 ganizations by solemnly confessing it under an official 

 oath. Pride of opinion, if nothing else, has inter- 

 vened, and prevented a calm and dispassionate re- 

 consideration of a bill disapproved by the Executive. 



Much as I venerate the Constitution, it must be ad- 

 mitted that this condition of affairs has developed a 

 defect which, under the aggressive tendency of the 

 legislative department of the Government, may 

 readily work its overthrow. It may, however, be 

 remedied, without disturbing the harmony of the 

 instrument. 



The veto-power is generally exercised upon consti- 

 tutional grounds, and whenever it is so applied, and 

 the bill returned with the Executive's reasons for 

 withholding his signature, it ought to be immediate- 

 ly certified to the Supreme Court of the United States 

 for its decision. If its constitutionality shall be 

 declared by that tribunalj it should then become a 

 law ; but, if the decision is otherwise, it should fail, 

 without power in Congress to reenact and make it 

 valid. 



In cases in which the veto rests upon hasty and in- 

 considerate legislation, and in which no constitutional 

 question is involved, I would not change the funda- 

 mental law ; for in such cases no permanent evil can 

 be incorporated into the Federal system. 



It is obvious that, without such an amendment, the 

 Government, as it existed under the Constitution 

 prior to the rebellion, may be wholly subverted and 

 overthrown by a two-thirds majority in Congress. 

 It is not, therefore, difficult to see' how easily and how 

 rapidly the people may lose shall I not say have 

 lost ? their liberties by an unchecked and uncontrol- 

 lable majority in the law-making power ; and, when 

 once deprived of their rights, how powerless they are 

 to regain them. 



Let us turn for a moment to the history of the ma- 

 jority in Congress, which has acted in such utter dis- 

 regard of the Constitution. While public attention 

 has been carefully and constantly turned to the past 

 and expiated sins of the South, the servants of the 

 people, in high places, have boldly betrayed their 

 trust, broken their paths of obedience to the Consti- 

 tution, and undermined the very foundations of lib- 

 erty, justice, and good government. When the 

 rebellion was being suppressed by the volunteered 

 services of patriot soldiers amid the dangers of the 

 battle-field, these men crept, without question, into 

 place and power in the national councils. After all 

 dangers had passed, when no armed foe remained, 

 when a punished and repentant people bowed their 

 heads to the flag and renewed their allegiance to the 

 Government of the United States, then it was that 

 pretended patriots appeared before the nation and 

 began to prate about the thousands of lives and mill- 

 ions of treasure sacrificed in the suppression of the 

 rebellion. They have since persistently sought to in- 

 flame the prejudices engendered between the sections, 

 to retard the restoration of peace and harmony, and 

 by every means to keep open and exposed to the 

 poisonous breath of party passion the terrible wounds 

 of a four-years' war. They have prevented the re- 

 turn of peace and the restoration of the Union, in 

 every way rendered delusive the purposes, promises, 

 and pledges by which the arrny was marshalled, trea- 

 son rebuked, and rebellion crushed, and made the 

 liberties of the people and the rights and powers of 

 the President objects of constant attack. They have 



wrested from the President his constitutional power 

 of supreme command of the Army and Navy. They 

 have destroyed the strength and efficiency of the 

 Executive Department by making subordinate officers 

 independent of and able to defy their chief. They 

 have attempted to place the President under the 

 power of a bold, defiant, and treacherous Cabinet 

 officer. They have robbed the Executive of the pre- 

 rogative of pardon, rendered null and void acts of 

 clemency granted to thousands of persons under the 

 provisions of the Constitution, and committed gross 

 usurpation by legislative attempts to exercise this 

 power in favor of party adherents. They have con- 

 spired to change trie system of our Government by 

 preferring charges against the President in the form 

 of articles of impeachment, and contemplating, 

 before hearing or trial, that he should be placed in 

 arrest, held in durance, and, when it became their 

 pleasure to pronounce his sentence, driven from place 

 and power in disgrace. They have in time of peace 

 increased the national debt by a reckless expenditure 

 of the public moneys, and thus added to the burdens 

 which already weigh upon the people. They have 

 permitted the nation to suffer the evils of a deranged 

 currency, to the enhancement in price of all the 

 necessaries of life. They have maintained a large 

 standing army for the enforcement of their measures 

 of oppression. They have engaged in class legisla- 

 tion, and built up and encouraged monopolies, that 

 the few might be enriched at the expense of the 

 many. They have failed to act upon important 

 treaties, thereby endangering our present peaceful 

 relations with foreign powers. 



Their course of usurpation has not been limited to 

 inroads upon the Executive Department. 



By unconstitutional and oppressive enactments, 

 the people of ten States of the Union have been re- 

 duced to a condition more intolerable than that from 

 which the patriots of the Eevolution rebelled. Mill- 



ors, with more truth than our fathers did of British 

 tyrants, that they have " forbidden the governors to 

 pass laws of immediate and pressing importance, un- 

 less suspended until their assent should be ob- 

 tained ; " that they have " refused to pass other laws 

 for the accommodation of large districts of people, 

 unless those people would relinquish the right of 

 representation in the Legislature a right inestimable 

 to them, and formidable to tyrants only j " that they 

 have " made judges dependent upon their will alone 

 for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and 

 payment of their salaries ; " that they have " erected 

 a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of 

 officers to harass our people and eat out their sub- 

 stance ; " that they have "affected to render the mili- 

 tary independent of and superior to the civil power," 

 " combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction 

 foreign to our Constitution, and unacknowledged by 

 our laws," " quartered large bodies of armed troops 

 among us," " protected them by a mock trial from 

 punishment for any murders which they should com- 

 mit on the inhabitants of these States," imposed 

 " taxes upon us without our consent," deprived us in 

 many cases of the benefit of trial by jury," " faken 

 away our charters, excited domestic insurrection 

 among us, abolished our most valuable laws, altered 

 fundamentally the forms of our Government, sus- 

 pended our own Legislatures, and declared them- 

 selves invested with power to legislate for us in all 

 cases whatsoever." 



This catalogue of crimes, long as it is, is not yet 

 complete. The Constitution vests the judicial power 

 of the United States "in one Supreme Court," whose 

 iurisdiction " shall extend to all cases arising under 

 this Constitution" and u the laws of the United 

 States." Encouraged by this promise of a refuge 

 from tyranny, a citizen of the United States, who, by 

 the order of a military commander, given under the 

 sanction of a cruel and deliberate edict of Congress, 

 had been denied the constitutional rights of liberty 



