small sum to be divided; and when it is considered, that while the whole amount of imports has for some years been increasing, that portion of imports paying duties has been diminishing, and that the actual consumption in the United States of such foreign merchandise as pays duties is little more than one third of the whole value of our imports, no impartial and prudent statesman, on a calculation of the ordinary risk of depression in trade, or of the casualties incident to relations between different Governments, would have found it in his heart to recommend that ways and means should be found for the division of a surplus revenue. May it not be safe to calculate, as the Secretary of the Treasury has calculated, that the biennial reduction of one million, in the rates under the last tariff, will not be made up by the increas ed quantity, when it is officially ascertained that the annual increase of consumption of foreign merchandise has not equalled the annual increase of population?

The Senator has said, in substance, the estimates since the commencement of the present administration have been a series of blunders; those of the present Secretary have been so incorrect that he places no reliance upon them. A recurrence to all the estimates from the year 1802 up to the present time, will show that the recent calculations have been much more accurate than they were formerly. At the same time it must be admitted that the credit system, extending from ten months to two years after the duties were secured, furnished data for more accurate calculations than the present system of cash payments. Whatever may be the faults of the present heads of Departments, it will not be urged that they present themselves as rival and conflicting aspirants for a still higher place than they now occupy. Or if, perchance, any one of them looks for advancement, it is through an honest and faithful discharge of his public duty, and not in virtue of the "line of safe precedents." The eight years subsequent to the last war with Great Britain was marked, I believe, by John Randolph, as the administration which, at its second term, "came in unanimously, and went out unanimously." The President of that day might mean well; but the administration was not his own. The State Department was grubbing its way to the presidency on a sectional contest in favor of northern principles and northern predilections; the War attempted to force itself into the public favor by its "growing and excessive patronage"-by "great and extravagant expenditures"--by patting on the back every man who would do its work, and by butchering in cold blood every other man who discovered a scintilla of independence. The Treasury was also

[SENATE.

I have been thus particular in stating this controversy, because it involved a scene in the cabinet of those times which we may hope never to see acted again--a scene in which the patronage of office, and of emoluments, and of contracts, in one Department at least, were directed to promote the election of a man to the first office in the Government, who had no hold upon the people, and who could not, with all that patronage, command a single vote--a scene in which every public man was assailed and sacrificed who would not minister to the most greedy pretender-a scene in which the "public morals were corrupted and degraded to the lowest ebb."

During the last session of Congress, a Senator charged on the Post Office Department "rottenness" and "corruption," and "abominable violations of trust;" and then said we "must have reform, or we must have revolution." During the present session, the same Senator has charged on the friends of the administration that they are the "parasites of power" of the "spoils party;" and made use of other epithets equally odious. Now, sir, it is a common and a true saying, that "evil thinketh he who evil doeth." If corruption and rottenness exist in any Department of this Government, the diseased part cannot be too soon taken away, whether it be necessary to apply the cautery or the knife. I will refer to, or recapitulate, a few of the abuses, the "unwarranted exercises of executive power" under a former administration, and leave it with the people to judge whether, if reform has not thoroughly done its work, finding it impossible to do all things at once, the evils that are left will not, many of them, be referred back to a time when the Senator himself was a part of the existing administration.

At the commencement of the year 1817, the army of the United States in the aggregate amounted to 10,024 men. There were recruited in that year 3,939, in 1818 4,238, in 1819 4,304, in the three years 12,481. But at the close of the year 1819 the army amounted to 8,688, less than the aggregate at the commencement of the year 1817 1,336; this number added to 12,481, the number recruited, amounts to 13,817 men lost to the army, mostly by desertion, in the space of three years.

In this state of things, the Secretary of War (Calhoun) called on Congress for an appropriation of $183,925, for the recruiting service of 1820. The House of Representatives paid so little attention to the Secretary's estimates as to appropriate no more than $34,125 for the whole recruiting service of that year. The House of Representatives particularly specified the number to be raised by the words "for bounties and premiums for fifteen hundred recruits." Yet, in vio

near seven hundred commissioned officers," the Secretary recruited 3,211 instead of 1,500 men, and expended for the recruiting service $66,398 22 instead of $34,125. And when called on to account for the expenditure beyond the law, the adjutant general reported that the money had been made up from the balances of old appropriations, which balances were not in the treasury. One of these balances was for "amount due Robert Brent, late paymaster general, being part of the advance made him on account of bounties and premiums out of the appropriation of 1816, refunded in 1820, on settlement of his account, $35,364 56, respecting which it was expressly stated by the Second Auditor that it ought not to be understood that he refunded that sum in money; he refunded it in settlement of account only."

I would also refer to document No. 99, of the first session of the twenty-first Congress, for examples of executive legislation by the Secretary of War, by which the pay and emoluments of sundry officers of the army were enormously increased at several times by a simple

[MARCH 17, 1836.

tracts." These were the "glorious times" of which the Senator boasts. Glorious times, indeed, when the Government, in a time of profound peace, was obliged to borrow money to support extravagant expenses in the War Deparment!

By a law of the United States it is made the duty of the Comptrollers of the Treasury to "take all such measures as may be authorized by the law to enforce the payment of all debts due the United States." The general regulations of the army also required that the pay of all officers in arrears should be stopped. To make himself more popular with those officers, who loved their ease and emoluments better than they loved justice, we have the following further sample of executive legislation by the Secretary of War:

"DEPARTMENT OF WAR, December 3, 1821. "SIR: The practice of instructing paymasters to withhold from officers of the army all such sums as may be from them to the United States, is superseded. I have the honor, &c.

The special decisions of the Secretary of War, allowing officers of the army extra pay and emoluments, no where to be found authorized in any law of Congress, are numerous in the document I have referred to. A decision in one case has been held to be a rule in all similar cases; and by these special decisions the pay and emoluments of officers in the army at Washington, from a major general to a lieutenant of topographical engineers, have been raised to a point much beyond the salaries of our civil officers. And it is a fact worthy of remark, that in proportion as the pay of these officers has been raised, so have their numbers increased, while the army itself has really all the time been growing more and more inefficient. To the executive legislation of the Secretaay of War, from 1817 to 1829, are we indebted for that state of things which, creating in the officers of the army a desire for ease and increased emoluments, has made of that institution an increased burden of millions to the treasury, and rendered the service and the army itself more and more unpopular.

A contemporary historian, in 1823, says: "The contests between the Secretary of War and the two Houses of Congress have been frequent and arduous; he struggling to draw money, money, more money, from the treasury, for the use of his Department, and they to retain it for other purposes. If, in all this, the Secretary has been right and Congress wrong, then must it be considered as unfortunate that they did not, in the year 1820, borrow six millions instead of three, and in the year 1821, ten millions instead of five. Then our peace establishment might have been kept up at ten thousand men; our army removed a thousand miles further into the wilderness, from Council Bluffs to Yellow Stone river. Then we might have recruited five thousand men every year; and every year have expended two or three hundred thousand dollars upon Rip Rap con

The PAYMASTER GENERAL."

J. C. CALHOUN.

Congress, however, continued to be refractory and disobedient; they introduced into the appropriation bill, at the very next session, a clause requiring "that no money appropriated by that act shall be advanced or paid to any person on any contract, or to any officer who is in arrears to the United States, until he shall have accounted for and paid into the treasury all sums for which he may be liable.

We are now reproached with having taken up the system of the Senator, for which he suffered much persecution from our friends-a splendid system of fortifications. Where is the fortification on Rouse's Point, on which the Secretary then made a large expenditure? Abandoned, because it fell within the British territory, and scarcely a stone remains to tell where it once was. How many other forts projected by Mr. Monroe's Secretary of War were abandoned as untenable? Where is the value of the millions expended at the Pea Patch? Burnt-but good for nothing before it was burnt, as the foundation laid up in the most improvident manner, had given way; and the wood work erected over it seemed to be there placed for the particular purpose of burning down the whole, that its imperfections and its uselessness might not remain as a monument to the folly of its projectors. The fortifications at the Rip Raps I have never seen; I am told they are little better than those of the Pea Patch. I have, however, heard much of Rip Rap contracts; and thereby hangs a tale respecting some of the favorites of, if not the Secretary of War, that may not much redound to the " glory" of either. If there be a single fort or other work erected in these "glorious" days that stands as a perfect and useful work, evincing military science applied practically to it, that work remains yet to come to my knowledge. Those I have seen were not to be compared with the French works erected at Ticonderoga, at the head of St. George, at Oswego, and the mouth of the Niagara, more than one hundred years ago, some of which were blown up in the war of the Revolution; that is, it would seem to me that the blown up works might be repaired and rebuilt with even less expense than those erected in the "glorious" reign of that cabinet, three of whose members were fighting on their own hook, and all pulling different ways, for the presidency.

Mr. H. concluded by expressing his obligations to those Senators who had patiently kept their seats to a late hour to hear all he had to say: he did not now wish, he never had intended in any speech that he should make, to interfere with the time that could be more use

fully employed than in hearing him. He said, the first session he had a seat in this body, four years ago, of the twenty-four Senators representing twelve States north of the Chesapeake and Ohio, and east of the Wabash, he alone took his peculiar stand on the subject of the tariff; and the stand he then took in favor of a large reduction of taxes upon imports was in this body made a subject of derision. The Senator from Kentucky, [Mr. CLAY,] in the proud character of father of the "American system," said the whole North was in this body unanimous in favor of a high protecting tariff: he said he begged pardon-it was not quite unanimous-he believed he had heard a "still small voice" in this Senate against that system! It is true, (said Mr. H.,) the still small voice in this body was but a speck of the size of a man's hand in the North at that time: it is true, that I then took my stand against fearful odds; but the speck in the horizon has since become a cloud filling the whole atmosphere. The whole people have become convinced that a high tariff is not needed for the protection of any interest, or for the prosperity of the country. Inefficient and weak as I then was, (continued Mr. H.,) my ground on the subject of the tariff was taken on my own responsibility: I consulted and advised with no men high in office or friends of the administration at that time. I have consulted on this subject with none. An ardent friend of this administration, I would do nothing to injure it or its friends; for the opinions I have now offered, the administration is not responsible. If my suggestions are worthy of attention, they will doubtless have their due weight; if they are unworthy, they can injure no one but myself.

When Mr. HILL had concluded his remarks,
The Senate adjourned.

FRIDAY, MARCH 18.

EXPUNGING RESOLUTION.

The following resolution, offered by Mr. BENTON a day or two ago, being in order, viz:

Whereas on the 26th day of December, in the year 1833, the following resolve was moved in the Senate: "Resolved, That by dismissing the late Secretary of the Treasury because he would not, contrary to his own sense of duty, remove the money of the United States in deposite with the Bank of the United States and its branches, in conformity with the President's opinion, and by appointing his successor to effect such removal, which has been done, the President has assumed the exercise of a power over the treasury of the United States not granted him by the constitution and laws, and dangerous to the liberties of the people:"

Which proposed resolve was altered and changed by the mover thereof, on the 28th day of March, in the year 1834, so as to read as follows:

"Resolved, That in taking upon himself the responsibility of removing the deposite of the public money from the Bank of the United States, the President of the United States has assumed the exercise of a power over the Treasury of the United States not granted to him by the constitution and laws, and dangerous to the liberties of the people:"

Which resolve, so changed and modified by the mover thereof on the same day and year last mentioned, was further altered so as to read in these words:

"Resolved, That the President, in the late executive proceedings in relation to the revenue, has assumed upon himself authority and power not conferred by the constitution and laws but in derogation of both:"

In which last-mentioned form the said resolve, on the same day and year last mentioned, was adopted by the Senate, and became the act and judgment of that body; - and, as such, now remains upon the journal thereof:

[SENATE.

And whereas the said resolve was irregularly, illegally, and unconstitutionally adopted by the Senate, in violation of the rights of defence which belong to every citizen, and in subversion of the fundamental principles of law and justice; because President Jackson was thereby adjudged and pronounced to be guilty of an impeachable offence, and a stigma placed upon him as a violator of his oath of office, and of the laws and constitution which he was sworn to preserve, protect, and defend, without going through the forms of an impeachment, and without allowing to him the benefits of a trial, or the means of defence:

And whereas the said resolve, in all its various shapes and forms, was unfounded and erroneous in point of fact, and, therefore, unjust and unrighteous, as well as irregular and unconstitutional; because the said President Jackson, neither in the act of dismissing Mr. Duane, nor in the appointment of Mr. Taney, as specified in the first form of the resolve, nor in taking upon himself the responsibility of removing the deposites, as specified in the second form of the same resolve, nor in any act which was then, or can now be, specified under the vague and ambiguous terms of the general denunciation contained in the third and last form of the resolve, did do or commit any act in violation or in derogation of the laws and constitution, or dangerous to the liberties of the people:

And whereas the said resolve, as adopted, was uncertain and ambiguous, containing nothing but a loose and floating charge for derogating from the laws and constitution, and assuming ungranted power and authority in the late executive proceedings in relation to the public revenue, without specifying what part of the executive proceedings, or what part of the public revenue, was intended to be referred to, or what parts of the laws and constitution were supposed to have been infringed, or in what part of the Union, or at what period of his administration, these late proceedings were supposed to have taken place; thereby putting each Senator at liberty to vote in favor of the resolve upon a separate and secret reason of his own, and leaving the ground of the Senate's judgment to be guessed at by the public, and to be differently and diversely interpreted by individual Senators, according to the private and particular understanding of each; contrary to all the ends of justice, and to all the forms of legal and judicial proceeding-to the great prejudice of the accused, who would not know against what to defend himself; and to the loss of Senatorial responsibility, by shielding Senators from public accountability, for making up a judgment upon grounds which the public cannot know, and which, if known, might prove to be insufficient in law, or unfounded in fact:

And whereas the specifications contained in the first and second forms of the resolve, having been objected to in debate, and shown to be insufficient to sustain the charges they were adduced to support, and it being well believed that no majority could be obtained to vote for the said specifications; and the same having been actually withdrawn by the mover in the face of the whole Senate, in consequence of such objection and belief, and before any vote taken thereupon, the said specifications could not afterwards be admitted by any rule of parlia mentary practice, or by any principle of legal implication, secret intendment, or mental reservation, to remain and continue a part of the written and public resolve from which they were thus withdrawn; and, if they could be so admitted, they would not be sufficient to sustain the charges therein contained:

And whereas the Senate being the constitutional tribunal for the trial of the President, when charged by the House of Representatives with offences against the laws and the constitution, the adoption of the said re

solve before any impeachment was preferred by the House, was a breach of the privileges of the House, a violation of the constitution, a subversion of justice, a prejudication of a question which might legally come before the Senate, and a disqualification of that body to perform its constitutional duty with fairness and impartiality, if the President should thereafter be regularly impeached by the House of Representatives for the same offence:

And whereas the temperate, respectful, and argumentative defence and protest of the President against the aforesaid proceedings of the Senate was rejected and repulsed by that body, and was voted to be a breach of its privileges, and was not permitted to be entered on its journal, or printed among its documents, while all memorials, petitions, resolves, and remonstrances against the President, however violent or unfounded, and calculated to inflame the people against him, were duly and honorably received, encomiastically commented upon in speeches, read at the table, ordered to be printed with the long list of names attached, referred to the Finance Committee for consideration, filed away among the public archives, and now constitute a part of the public documents of the Senate, to be handed down to the latest posterity:

And whereas the said resolve was introduced, debated, and adopted, at a time and under circumstances which had the effect of co-operating with the Bank of the United States in the parricidal attempt which that institution was then making to produce a panic and pressure in the country, to destroy the confidence of the people in President Jackson, to paralyze his administration, to govern the elections, to bankrupt the State banks, ruin their currency, fill the whole Union with terror and distress, and thereby to extort from the suf ferings and alarms of the people the restoration of the deposites and the renewal of its charter:

And whereas the said resolve is of evil example and dangerous precedent, and should never have been received, debated, or adopted by the Senate, or admitted to entry upon its journal: wherefore,

Resolved, That the said resolve be expunged from the journal; and, for that purpose, that the Secretary of the Senate, at such time as the Senate may appoint, shall bring the manuscript journal of the session of 1833-34 into the Senate, and, in the presence of the Senate, draw black lines round the said resolve, and write across the face thereof, in strong letters, the following words: "EXPUNGED BY ORDER OF THE SENATE, THIS —— DAY OF, IN THE YEAR OF OUR LORD 1836."

The preamble and resolution having been read, Mr. BENTON rose and said:

Mr. President: I comply with my promise, and, I presume, with the general expectation of the Senate and of the people, in bringing forward, at the first day that the Senate is full, and every State completely represented, my long-intended motion to expunge from the journal of the Senate the sentence of condemnation which was pronounced against President Jackson at the session of 1833-34. I have given to my motion a more extended basis, and a more detailed and comprehensive form, than it wore at its first introduction; and I have done so for two reasons: first, that all the proceedings against President Jackson might be set out together, and exhibited to the public at one view; secondly, that our own reasons for impugning that act of the Senate should also be set out and fully submitted to the examination and scrutiny of the people. The first is due to the Senate, that all its proceedings in this novel and momentous case should be fully known; the second is due to the impugners of their conduct, that it may be seen now, and in all time to come, that law and justice, and not the factious impulsions of party spirit, have governed our conduct.

[MARCH 18, 1836.

It has been seen, by the reading of my resolution, that I have reinstated and adhere to the word expunge. At the last session of the Senate I gave way to the entreaties of friends, and surrendered that word; but I had no sooner made the surrender than I had reason to repent of my complaisance, and to revoke my concession. I repented and revoked in the face of the Senate. I have since examined and considered the objection with all the care which was due to the gravity of the subject, and with all the deference which was due to the dissent of friends; and, upon this full and renewed consideration, I remain firmly convinced of the propriety of the phrase, and of the justice of the remedy which it implies; and, being so convinced, it becomes my duty to present it over again to the Senate, and to submit the decision to their judgment.

It is also seen that the resolution prescribes a mode of expunging which avoids a total obliteration of the journal. I have agreed to this mode of executing the resolution, not from the least doubt of the Senate's right to blot out the whole obnoxious entry-for it is a part of my present purpose to maintain and to vindicate that right; nor from complaisance merely to my friends-for some of those who objected to the expunging process at the last session are ready now to sustain it in its whole extent; but I have agreed to it because, while it relieves the scruples of some, it pronounces, in the opinion of others, a more emphatic condemnation than mere obliteration would imply; and because it will enable gentlemen in the opposition to emerge from their preliminary defences behind the screen of the constitution, and to come into action in the open field, upon the merits of the whole question, and thus meet my motion upon the broad grounds of the injustice, the illegality, the irregu larity, the unconstitutionality, the error of fact, and the whole gross wrong of that proceeding against the President, which it is my purpose to expose and to correct.

The objection to this word expunge is founded upon that clause in the constitution which directs each House of Congress "to keep a journal of its proceedings. The word keep is the pregnant point of the objection. Gentlemen take a position in the rear of that word; and, out of the numerous and diverse meanings attributed to it by lexicographers, and exemplified by daily usage, they select one, and, shutting their eyes upon all other meanings, they rest the whole strength of the objection upon the propriety of that single selection. They take the word in the sense of preserve; and, adhering to that sense, they assume that the Senate is constitutionally commanded to preserve its journals, and that no part of them can be defaced or altered without disregarding the authority of that injunction. I am free to admit that, to preserve, is one of the meanings of the verb, to keep; but I must be permitted to affirm that it is one meaning only out of three or four dozen meanings which belong to that phrase, and which every Senator's recollection will readily recall to his mind. It is needless to thread the labyrinth of all these meanings, and to show, by multiplied dictionary quotations, in how many instances the verb, to keep, displays a signification entirely foreign, and even contradictory, to the idea of preserving. A few examples will suffice to illustrate the position, and to bring many other instances to the recollection of Senators. Thus: to keep up, is to maintain; to keep under, is to oppress; to keep house, is to eat and sleep at home; to keep the door, is to let people in and out; to keep company, is to frequent one; to keep a mill, is to grind grain; to keep store, is to sell goods; to keep a public house, is to sell entertainment; to keep bar, is to sell liquors; to keep a diary, is to write a daily history of what you do; and to keep a journal is the same thing. It is to make a journal; and the phrase has the same meaning in the constitution that it has in common par