shall endure; and when marble and bronze have perished, they shall "still live" in memory, so long as men shall reverence law, and honor patriotism, and love liberty!

XXXIII. THE VETO POWER.

HENRY CLAY.

1. Mr. President, I protest against the right of any chief to come into either House of Congress, and scrutinize the motives of its members; to examine whether a measure has been passed with promptitude or repugnance; and to pronounce upon the willingness or unwillingness with which it. has been adopted or rejected. It is an interference in concerns which partake of a domestic nature. The official and constitutional relations between the President and the two Houses of Congress subsist with them as organized bodies. His action is confined to their consummated proceedings, and does not extend to measures in their incipient stages, during their progress through the Houses, nor to the motives by which they are actuated.

2. There are some parts of this message that ought to excite deep alarm; and that especially in which the President announces that each public officer may interpret the constitution as he pleases. His language is, "Each public officer who takes an oath to support the constitution, swears that he will support it as he understands it, and not as it is understood by others." "The opinion of the judges has no more authority over Congress than the opinion of Congress has over the judges; and on that point the President is independent of both." Now, Mr. President, I conceive, with great deference, that the President has mistaken the purport of the oath to support the constitution of the United States.

No one swears to support it as he understands it, but to support it simply as it is in truth. All men are bound to obey the laws, of which the constitution is the supreme; but must they obey them as they are, or as they understand them?

3. If the obligation of obedience is limited and controlled by the measure of information; in other words, if the party is bound to obey the constitution only as he understands it, what will be the consequence? The judge of an inferior court will disobey the mandate of a superior tribunal, because it is not in conformity to the constitution as he understands it; a custom-house officer will disobey a circular from the treasury department, because contrary to the constitution as he understands it; an American minister will disregard an instruction from the President, communicated from the department of state, because not agreeable to the constitution as he understands it; and a subordinate officer in the army or navy will violate the orders of his superiors, because they are not in accordance with the constitution as he understands it.

4. We shall have nothing settled, nothing stable, nothing fixed. There will be general disorder and confusion throughout every branch of the administration, from the highest to the lowest officer-universal nullification. For, what is the doctrine of the President but that of South Carolina applied throughout the Union? The President indepen dent both of Congress and the Supreme Court! Only bound to execute the laws of the one and the decisions of the other as far as they conform to the constitution of the United States as he understands it! Then it should be the duty of every President, on his installation into office, carefully to examine all the acts in the statute book, approved by his predecessors, and mark out those which he is resolved not to execute, and to which he means to apply this

new species of veto, because they are repugnant to the constitution as he understands it. And, after the expiration of every term of the Supreme Court, he should send for the record of its decisions, and discriminate between those which he will, and those which he will not, execute, because they are or are not agreeable to the constitution as he understands it.

5. Mr. President, we are about to close one of the longest and most arduous sessions of Congress under the present constitution; and when we return among our constituents what account of the operations of their government shall we be bound to communicate? We shall be compelled to say that the Supreme Court is paralyzed, and the missionaries retained in prison in contempt of its authority and in defiance of numerous treaties and laws of the United States; that the executive, through the secretary of the Treasury, sent to Congress a tariff bill which would have destroyed numerous branches of our domestic industry; and, to the final destruction of all, that the veto has been applied to the bank of the United States, our only reliance for a sound and uniform currency; that the Senate has been violently attacked for the exercise of a clear constitutional power; that the House of Representatives have been unnecessarily assailed; and that the President has promulgated a rule of action for those who have taken the oath to support the constitution of the United States, that must, if there be practical conformity to it, introduce general nullification, and end in the absolute subversion of the government.

XXXIV.—THE POOR VOTER ON ELECTION DAY

JOHN G. WHITTIER.

1. The proudest now is but my peer,

The highest not more high;
To-day, of all the weary year,
A king of men am I.
To-day, alike are great and small,

The nameless and the known;

My palace is the people's hall,
The ballot-box my throne!

2. Who serves to-day, upon the list
Beside the served shall stand;
Alike the brown and wrinkled fist,
The gloved and dainty hand!
The rich is level with the poor,
The weak is strong to-day;

And sleekest broad-cloth counts no more
Than home-spun frock of gray.

3. To-day let pomp and vain pretense
My stubborn right abide;

I set a plain man's common sense
Against the pedant's pride.
To-day shall simple manhood try

The strength of gold and land;
The wide world has not wealth to buy
The power in my right hand!

4. While there's a grief to seck redress,
Or balance to adjust,

Where weighs our living manhood less
Than mammon's vilest dust,

While there's a right to need my vote,
A wrong to sweep away,

Up! clouted knee and ragged coat!
A man's a man to-day!

XXXV.-RESPONSIBILITY OF A REPRESENT

ATIVE.

EDMUND BURKE.

[From an address to his constituents on being elected a member of the English Parliament for the city of Bristol.]

1. I am sorry I cannot conclude without saying a word on a topic touched upon by my worthy colleague. I wish that topic had been passed by, at a time when I have so little leisure to discuss it. But since he has thought proper to throw it out, I owe you a clear explanation of my poor sentiments on that subject. He tells you that "the topic of instructions has occasioned much altercation and uneasiness in this city"; and he expresses himself (if I understand him rightly) in favor of the coercive authority of such instructions.

2. Certainly, gentlemen, it ought to be the happiness and glory of a representative to live in the strictest union, the closest correspondence, and the most unreserved communication with his constituents. Their wishes ought to have great weight with him; their opinion high respect; their business unremitted attention. It is his duty to sacrifice his repose, his pleasures, his satisfactions to theirs; and, above all, ever and in all cases, to prefer their interests to his own. But his unbiased opinion, his mature judgment, his enlightened conscience, he ought not to sacrifice to you, to any man, or to any set of living men. These he does not derive from