tution which requires him to "recommend | he can confer a patent of office, a much to Congress such measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient." He is not merely to recommend subjects to their consideration, but "measures;" and there is nothing to hinder him from causing the measures he recommends to be put into form, and sent in in the shape of Legislative Bills, through the agency of the Executive Departments. This, it is well known, is not at all an uncommon thing in practice. And without the agency of these Departments, a legislative committee, if of his own party and principles, answer his purpose just as well. Nor is the initiative in legislation an unmeaning or unimportant thing. It is a substantial power, of great scope and magnitude. It is a power in legislation, if the President chooses to exercise it—at least it may be so under circumstances only a little less controlling and absolute than that of nomination in appointments to office. Under this very power, to name a single case by way of illustration, the President wrung from Congress a recognition of his war with Mexico-in effect a declaration of warwhen if Congress, composed though it was in both Houses of his own friends and party, in large majorities, had been allowed to deliberate, and the members to inform themselves of the true state of things, by the reading and consideration of the public documents in the case, nothing more would have been done, at that time, than to authorize the President to repel any invasion of our proper soil and territory, and for which purpose alone supplies and means would have been placed at his disposal. Instead of this, a war of invasion and conquest on our part, begun by him, was adopted and sanctioned by Congress, and even a legislative declaration obtained, dictated in hæc verba by the Executive, that the war existed "by the act of Mexico!" The President has the power of the Veto --a negative which the Constitution, in terms, makes equal to the affirmative votes of two-thirds of the members of both branches of the Congress, but which practically, as experience shows, is little less than an absolute negative on any and all legislation with which he chooses to interfere. He is, like monarchs under other systems, the fountain of appointment and of honor. He cannot confer a patent of nobility, but more substantial thing, and quite as much coveted and hankered after, and prized when obtained, in this country, as titles of nobility ever were in any other country. Official rank and station, in truth, constitute our republican noble orders, and are, of course, the only noble orders we have according to law. Our Excellencies and Honorables receive, too, by their commissions, the estate along with the title, which the Peer of other countries, at least in modern times, does not always receive with his new dignity. The President creates his own ministry, and changes them at his will. His will in regard to his ministers is altogether more independent and more absolute than that of the King or Queen of England in the same matter. The Queen cannot keep a ministry in place for a day after the Commons have declared against them upon any important part of their policy of government. A declaration of "want of confidence" by the Commons puts an end to them and their policy. It must be this, or there must be an immediate appeal to the country in a new election. The Queen, or King, reigns, but does not govern, as the French maxim has it. If there be not an agreement between the Commons and the ministry, the government does not go on. It must take a new tack. It is different here. With us the ministers must take care to be in accord with the President if they mean to keep their places-and generally they do mean to keep their places. If he be a man to have a will of his own, it is his will that governs. President Jackson declared that these cabinet officers were only his agents and instruments, to aid him in his government of the country. This makes the President and his cabinet together "a unit," and gives him the virtual command of all the vast patronage of the Executive government in all its departments, in addition to his own direct power of appointment. And with such a power as this in his hands, he knows well enough how to manage a reluctant or refractory Congress. "I have found, sir," said Mr. Webster, in his late noble speech on Mexican affairs, "in the course of thirty years' experience, that whatever measure the Executive Government embraces and pushes, is quite likely to succeed. There is a giving way somewhere. If the Executive Government acts with uniformity, steadiness, and entire unity of purpose, sooner or later it is quite apt enough, according to my construction of history too apt, to effect its purpose.' The cases which illustrate this position-annexation-the war--the further acquisition of territory--are too recent and too remarkable to escape anybody's attention. The President is the fountain of Appointment, of Honor, of Patronage; and no monarch in the world, in any country, employs this power more freely, or more effectively for his own purposes. This is the practice of our Presidents of late years. His Constitutional power is that of nomination, but in effect and in practice, it is the power of appointment. He creates the Ministry; he creates the Judiciary; he creates all foreign ministers and consuls; he creates or controls the creation of the functionaries of civil administration all over the country; he is himself the Commander-in-chief of the army and navy, and every commission held in either arm of the public service, is held under his nomination. Nor is the power of the President bounded by the geographical limits of the States of this Union. Our government, from bcing merely national, has become imperial. We have our provinces and colonies, disguised under the name of territories, and we are multiplying these possessions. They are no part of the nation, are not represented in it, and have no share in its government. We govern them precisely as colonies are governed in other parts of the world. They are our dependencies, and our sway over them is strictly imperial; and to that extent ours has become an Imperial Republic. We send them governors, and judges, and public attornies, and marshalls; and the President creates them alljust as Victoria sends royal governers and judges, a complete Executive and Judicial Government, at this day, to our neighbors in Canada. But we have said enough, perhaps, to indicate what we mean when we speak of the attributes of true sovereignty with which a President of the United States is clothed. As the head of the nation, he is invested with great authority, even within the letter of the Constitution; and he is now the head of a great empire also. When we come to add to all this, the power which the President now-a-days is accustomed to assume, without any warrant of the Con stitution, and against its express provisions and injunctions, as his personal purposes or inclinations may prompt or push him on, we cannot fail to see that the President of the United States is what I have called him, a great Potentate, wielding a political authority of tremendous magnitude and importance. The election of such a Potentate becomes, then, a matter of the greatest interest to a people loving liberty and calling themselves free. It is true, the President is elected only for a short term; and he cannot, by the Constitution, transmit his office, or nominate his successor. Practically, however, he may go far towards nominating his successor. Everybody knows that Gen. Jackson did in fact nominate his successor. No Emperor Augustus ever more explicitly named his Cæsar. But a President may do more than this; he may in his short term of office stamp a policy upon the government and country--a new policy which can never afterwards be shaken off, and by which the destiny of the whole country shall be changed. This very thing has been done, and, what is remarkable, it was begun by the weakest individual, personally, who has ever filled the office, who was in by accident, and who went through his term without a party. Mr. Tyler carried the measure of Annexation, though it is perfectly certain, that opinion in Congress, by a strong majority, was against him upon it when he began the movement, and opinion in the country was still more strongly against him. In that measure began a departure from the line and limits of the Constitution, from the objects for which the National Government was established, and the proper destiny of the country under it, which has been promptly working out its legitimate consequences-war, public debt, more territory, and a vast increase of Executive Power. It has brought death into the world and all our woe." The War, and all that comes in its train, sprang from Annexation. The War, too, like Annexation, was purely an Executive measure, literally forced upon Congress and the country by the President--a man, out of office, wholly insignificant, utterly unimportant, enjoying no consideration, and exercising no influence with the American people-a man whose opinions, out of office, on any important question of public policy, would never be asked or cared for per by the country, or any five well-informed men in it. This President has done another thing besides forcing Congress and the country into a war, equally remarkable. He has forced the Senate of the United States into compliance with his grand scheme and policy, the object of his war from the beginning-that of dismembering Mexico and taking large provinces from her on a compulsory sale. He, President Polk, has done this. Nothing is clearer than that a good deal more than one-third of the Senate were utterly opposed and hostile to such a policy and measure, and without the votes of a number of them the Treaty lately before that body could not have been ratified. How was their assent obtained? Why, those who yielded, embraced one evil to avoid another, and a greater evil. They believed the alternative would be a further prosecution of this Executive war, and a still more complete dismemberment, if not the utter absorption, of Mexico. They trembled before the wantonness and madness of Executive power and obstinacy-in the son of Mr. Polk! They looked upon themselves, upon Congress and the country, as involved inextricably in his toils, from which there was no escape, but by his consent, and on his terms. He said, pay me this ransom, and I will release you; and they were willing to get off so, before he should double his demands, which he threatened to do. Annexation was an Executive measure; the War was and is an Executive measure; conquest and Mexican spoliation is an Executive measure. The country at large has had nothing to do with them, except as it has been dragged in to their support, or rather to an unwilling and painful acquiescence in them. And through these Executive measures, the government is to be changed, and the country is to be changed. With Mexican States added to our Union, and more Texan States brought in; with State representation in the Senate multiplied out of all proportion to the popular representation in the House; with a foreign population of strange faces and strange language -peons, serfs and bondsmen-annexed to us and made free, native citizens along with us, we shall not know ourselves or know our country. And all this a President of the United States may do, and bring about all this change, this essential revolution, and carry Congress along with him, and even chain the country to his triumphal car; and he may do all this as President, wielding the potentialities of his eminent and imperial office, when as a man, out of official station, his weight in the community would be about equal to that of a respectable country parson, or village schoolmaster. Such, and so commanding, so powerful for evil, so nearly uncontrollable and irresponsible, is a President of these United States; and we the people go on, electing every four years one of these high Potentates, with very inadequate consideration, it is feared, of the mighty import of what we do, little knowing, oftentimes, whether we are giving ourselves a Republican President, or a supercilious and imperial master-a Constitutional Executive, or a paltry yet powerful tyrant, the Chief Demagogue of an unprincipled party, or else the instrument of the Chief Demagogues of such a party, who will count the blood of the Constitution an unholy thing, and sacrilegiously put up the country as an idle stake in all sorts of dishonest and desperate games of hazard. As the period is at hand when the country must be engaged in another Presidential Election-another of these solemn and sublime acts of popular sovereigntyit is proper, if such a thing be possible, where everything is under "movement," that we should pause long enough to look about us, to take a view of the ground we stand on and the state of things around us, and to consider whether the point and condition to which we have been brought, especially under the lead of the President last elected, is altogether agreeable and satisfactory, or very far otherwise; and whether it becomes the country to maintain its present position, and prosecute the line of policy and movement on which it has been forced, or to stop short and to retreat, if retreat he not wholly cut off, and it be not too late to stop, in order to find its way back, if it can, at least to some of those intrenched positions behind the Constitution, from which it has sadly wandered, and where, as often and as long as it has occupied them, it has always been safe, prosperous and happy. At least it is proper, when a Presidential term is about to be concluded, and the incumbent himself, or some one representing the same party, | form the principal subjects and topics of investigation and of political labor amongst the people and before the country, in the exciting season that is now just upon us. The whole duty of the Executive in this country, charged with the conduct of an administration, and the affairs of government, so far as the observance of great cardinal principles is concerned, may be comprehended and summed up in the following propositions : I. He must take the Constitution for his constant guide and counsellor, and he must take care to keep himself strictly within its authority and limitations, in whatever he does, or directs, or author of the same political kidney and complexion, and pledged to the same measures and general policy, or worse if worse can be contrived, is to be offered for the suffrages of the people, that there should be a strict consideration and canvass of the merits of the President and the current Administra⚫tion; that this work should be entered on with rigid scrutiny, without fear except the fear of God, in the spirit of a true devotion to the interests and the fame of the country, and to the cause of the Constitution, of liberty, and of law, exposing faults and follies though with charity, and above all things exposing, with inexorable decision and firmness, all crimes committed against the Constitution and the country; for, un-izes, or recommends to be done; nor must happily, it is crime, and hardly faults or he refuse or neglect to do whatever the follies at all-deliberate, wanton crime, in Constitution and laws enjoin upon him as too many cases, little as the perpetrators a duty. may think of it or be conscious of it-which is committed, in these times, against the country. In a work of this sort, it belongs to a public and political Journal like this to take its full share. It will certainly do so-though it will be no new duty or service on which we shall enter. We have done what we could, from the beginning, to make President Polk and his administration known to the American people, and to cause him to be held to a just accountability. We shall follow up this course of proceeding, and with added energy and zeal as the time draws nigh when the country, through the peaceable forms of an election, is to make up, and enter on undying records, its solemn testimony and judgment, in regard to his conduct and acts, his policy and measures, and the manner in which he has acquitted himself in all the high trusts committed to him. Pursuing this general object at the present time, it will be our special design in the space that remains to us for this article, to bring into one connected view, as well as we can, but of course only in brief and imperfect outline, the prominent features and workings of the policy of President Polk in conducting the affairs of the Government, in order that we may have before us, and that our countrymen may II. In the matter of our relations with foreign powers and nations, he must take care that the policy of the Government shall be marked at once with strict justice and high dignity-demanding nothing but what is right, and submitting to nothing that is wrong; abstaining from all interference with the internal affairs and proceedings of any; observing the strictest neutrality towards all contending or belligerent powers; and forming entangling alliances with none. III. It is his duty to see that the government is made as cheap and economical, in its whole administration, as it can be consistently with due efficiency and a becoming dignity; and especially to avoid the creation of a Public Debt, small or great, except upon some overwhelming necessity involving the vital interests, the defence, or the honor of the nation. IV. In exercising the powers with which the General Government is invested in order" to provide for the common defence and promote the general welfare -in exercising its powers in relation to national protection and security, to foreign commerce and internal trade and navigation, and to revenue, and its jurisdiction over the navigable waters of rivers, lakes, bays and harbors-it is the duty of the Executive to take care, as far as his authority and influence may go, that the Government shall, within the limits of a reasonable expenditure, and by judicious system of physical improvements in proper localities, do what it can to promote, ad vance and facilitate intercommunication | treatment which the Constitution has reand interchange between the several States of the Union. V. In the regulation of foreign commerce and in the conduct of its own proper operations and business; in providing for itself a revenue by duties on imports, and in the management of its revenue and its fiscal affairs; the President must take care, as far as he can, that the Government shall shape its policy with a special reference to the protection and encouragement of home production and home industry; and also so as to affect beneficially, and not injuriously, the general moneyed and business concerns and interests of the community. VI. The President must so conduct his administration as to make the Government a great Exemplar to the community, of Truth, Justice, Moderation and Virtue; for a profligate or unprincipled government in a republic saps the foundations, and betrays the cause of human liberty. Taking these few brief but pregnant principles for our guide, and bringing them to bear on the policy and measures of the Administration since Mr. Polk has been at the head of affairs, it will not be difficult to compute the value of his official services to the country; nor will there be any danger of going beyond the mark and doing him injustice, in the severe rebuke and utter condemnation which he cannot fail to receive, for his course and policy in the conduct of affairs, from the country, or at least from all that intelligent and honest portion of it who have themselves any real principles in politics, anything fit to be so called, to stand upon. We believe the principles we have laid down are those of the Whig party everywhereand there are few enlightened men of any party who would not subscribe to them as abstract propositions; and so glaring and flagrant have been the departures from every one of them in nearly the whole conduct of the Administration, that at least the Whig party, and all who think as we do, and who look upon these principles as of the highest practical bearing and import, cannot fail to raise their voices, and put forth their efforts, in strong, unyielding, and indignant opposition to the President, and to the party that gives him countenance and support. I. Turning to look for a moment at the ceived from the President, we find him putting that sacred instrument aside with a wave of his imperial hand, and, in matters of the highest national concern, marching straight forward to his own objects, with as little regard for the limitations and restrictions it imposes on the Executive power, as if he were the Czar of Russia, or the Grand Sultan, instead of the President of the United States. By a premeditated and deliberate act of deep design, he brings on a collision between the forces of the United States and those of a neighboring power, and plunges the nation into hostilities and flagrant war, from which there could be no escape but at the close of a protracted and most sanguinary conflict. This done, he contrives so to put the matter before Congress, with so little actual information in regard to the real state of affairs, but with our little army far away from home and our own soil, in the midst of the possessions of the Mexican people, and surrounded by overwhelming numbers of an incensed enemy, resolved to give them battle, and altogether the exigency of the case made so urgent, that no proper deliberation could be had, or none was allowed to be had, and in this way the full recognition of the war was secured, and the means obtained for prosecuting it-making it, in effect, a national war, as completely as if it had been originally undertaken and declared by the proper constitutional authority. Once in the war, it became the common cry that we must fight it out. The House of Representatives, by a decisive vote taken the other day, after the country had been carrying on a war of invasion and conquest in the heart of the Mexican dominions for twenty months, at the cost of a hundred millions of dollars and of many thousands of human lives, solemnly pronounced that this very war had been "begun unconstitutionally and unnecessarily by the Executive of the United States!" And we do not hesitate to affirm that this is to-day the undoubting conviction of eight-tenths of all wellinformed persons, of whatever party or political creed, throughout the length and breadth of the land. Nobody, not blinded to the simple truth by political partialities and partisanship, can entertain a doubt of it. |