39 6 DANIEL WEBSTER 



finance. His consummate mastery of statement is 

 nowhere more thoroughly exemplified than in these 

 speeches. Constitutional questions were brought up by 

 Mr. Clay's resolutions censuring the President for the 

 removal of the deposits and for dismissing William J. 

 Duane, Secretary of the Treasury. In reply to the 

 resolutions, President Jackson sent to the Senate his 

 remarkable " Protest," in which he maintained that 

 in the mere discussion of such resolutions that body 

 transcended its constitutional prerogatives, and that 

 the President is the "direct representative of the 

 American people," charged with the duty, if need be, 

 of protecting them against the usurpations of Con- 

 gress. The Whigs maintained, with much truth, that 

 this doctrine, if carried out in all its implications, 

 would push democracy to the point where it merges 

 in Caesarism. It was now that the opposition began 

 to call themselves Whigs, and tried unsuccessfully 

 to stigmatize the President's supporters as " Tories." 

 Mr. Webster's speech on the President's protest, 

 May 7, 1834, was one of great importance, and should 

 be read by every student of our constitutional history. 

 In another elaborate speech, February 16, 1835, he 

 tried to show that under a proper interpretation of 

 the Constitution the power of removal, like the power 

 of appointment, was vested in the President and Sen- 

 ate conjointly, and that " the decision of Congress in 

 1789, which separated the power of removal from the 

 power of appointment, was founded on an erroneous 

 construction of the Constitution." But subsequent 

 opinion has upheld the decision of 1789, leaving the 

 speech to serve as an illustration of the way in which, 

 under the stress of a particular contest, the Whigs 



