then, separate and distinct powers, traced to the same source, and acting upon the same subject matter; and one or the other must be supreme, or the whole will be vain and inoperative. Suppose the senate by its rules allow to be in order what the Vice President, in virtue of his inherent right holds to be out of order, which is to prevail?

The result, then, of the doctrine contended for, when stripped of all unnecessary verbiage and extraneous considerations, is no more nor less than this; that it is within the constitutional competency of the Vice President, if, in the exercise of his best discretion, he thinks a senator urges exceptionable matter in debate, or insists on matter that is irrelevant, to prohibit the prosecution of the debate, except upon such terms and in such form as the Vice President shall prescribe, and to exercise the means necessary to carry that power into effect, without authority from or responsibility to this body, or to the individual senators, save through impeachment.

I ask the indulgence of the senate, whilst I submit a few observations upon the character of the power proposed to be conceded to the Vice President, as appertaining to his office, and the nature and importance of the rights of the senate now proposed to be surrendered. When I speak of their importance, I do not ́mean in reference to us, but to our constituents.

For what must be the character of the collisions which, in the course of events, can alone be expected to produce any thing like a marked exercise of this great power to control debate? Is it at all likely that they will arise from personal altercations among ourselves? Surely not. For their suppression, the present means are ample. The constitution and the rules of the senate made under it, afford of themselves an ample shield for individual protection, if any shield be necessary; and I hope no one will suppose that so craven a spirit exists within these walls as to make it necessary or even desirable to place this power in the hands of

the Vice President, because we might be unwilling to protect ourselves. I am quite confident that no danger is to be apprehended from this quarter. If strong ground is ever taken upon this subject, it will arise out of the intercourse of this body with the co-ordinate, and, in some sense, rival, departments of this government. It is from our acts as they bear upon the Executive and its inferior functionaries, and upon the Judiciary and its subordinates, that such a proceeding can alone be expected. From the present condition of things, abuse in that respect might not be likely to take place. But the present is not the natural state of things. In general, the President and Vice President will belong to the same political party. It is only when "times are out of joint" that they will be taken from different sides. The present case is an exception growing out of that cause. In considering the future, you must contemplate a different condition of things, or you will not act wisely. It is only to guard against the abuses of political trust that constitutional restrictions are provided. Were it not for the inherent and inextinguishable disposition of man to abuse delegated power, they would not be necessary. Who can be blind to the consequences, that in the political agitations of the times, may be fairly apprehended from the possession of this power by the Vice President? Who cannot see what a tremendous engine it may become in the hands of an ambitious and still aspiring Executive? That it may give him, through the agency of his political friend and coadjutor in this body, a complete and irresistible control over the debates of its members, and consequently over the extent and character of the information on public affairs to be given through us to the people?

The connection of the Executive with the senate is much closer than with the House of Representatives. Upon the subject of treaties, appointments, and the whole range of Executive business, the senate is almost the only check. It is, therefore, of vital importance,

that it should be wholly exempt from Executive control. This body was looked to by the framers of the constitution, as a sanctuary for the federal and equal rights of the states, and so framed as to cherish that sentiment on the part of its members. It is here alone that the federal principle has been preserved; a principle valuable to all, but particularly to the small states; for it is in this department alone that their perfect equality is recognized. But where, sir, will be its efficiency, if the doctrine contended for be established? When, hereafter, a senator shall feel it to be his duty to attempt in language which he may think the occasion requires, to arrest encroachment of the Executive, or to seek redress by exposing abuses of trust on its part, or that of any of its subordinates, he may find his lips closed, not indeed as of old, by a gag law, but by a power far more effectual. He may perhaps be told, that although it is his right to canvass freely the public acts of the President and his cabinet, it must be done in a manner more decorous; that their motives are not to be rudely scanned and discredited; that debates of that character, having a tendency unjustly to alienate the confidence of the people, are out of order; that if he will shape his periods according to the prescribed form, and measure the extent and bitterness of his denunciation by the administration standard, he may go on-but if not he must desist.

If it should hereafter become manifest to a portion, or even a majority of this House, that the third power of the Federal Government, created and supported by the other two, is gradually, though to the great mass of the people imperceptibly, subverting the reserved rights of the states, and undermining the constitution of the United States, in some of its most essential points; and if, on a subject of such vital importance, the representative of a sovereign state should express himself on this floor in a manner calculated to suppress the mischief, but yet without just offence to propriety, he may expect to be told from that chair, that although

the acts of a co-ordinate branch of the government. when coming properly before the senate, are liable to free examination; yet the ermine of justice is not to be thus rudely assailed within these walls. Could there be any principle which would more effectually prostrate the independence of this body? And is it to be endured, that the members of the senate shall hold the invaluable right of free debate by so frail and humiliating a tenure? In my opinion the senate would be wanting in what it owes to its constituents, to itself, to its true interests and dignity, if it could for a moment lend its sanction to a principle so untenable and so dangerous. The senate, heretofore, has not been insensible to what belonged to its rights. It was but the session before the last that the Executive, in a communication to us, advanced a pretension incompatible with the constitutional rights of the senate. And how was it received? It was not the exercise, but merely the assertion of a power, on his part-an assertion, it is true, wholly unsupportable: and I believe no one will deny, most unwisely put forth. And how has it been treated? Resolutions were introduced denouncing the unfounded assumption as an Executive encroachment that ought to be resisted. A disposition to do so, and to preserve and maintain the just rights of the body, not on our own account, but in behalf of those who sent us here, was then manifested, that in my judgment reflected the highest honor on the body. The question then agitated cannot be compared, in point of importance, with that now under consideration. most, it was a threatened trespass upon the constitutional rights of this house. What have we here? A principle which lays the axe at the root of the independence of the senate; and the personal and dearest privileges of its members.

At

In every point of view in which this subject has presented itself to my mind. it has produced but one sentiment, and that is unqualified opposition to the prerogative claimed for the chair. Although this claim of

power is now for the first time made, the principle in which it originates is as old as the government itself. I look upon it, sir, as the legitimate offspring of a school of politics, which has, in times past, agitated and greatly disturbed this country-of a school, the leading principle of which may be traced to that great source of the political contentions which have pervaded every country where the rights of man were in any degree respected. I allude, sir, to that collision which seems to be inseparable from the nature of man, between the rights of the few and the many-to those never-ceasing conflicts between the advocates of the enlargement and concentration of power on the one hand, and its limitation and distribution on the other. Conflicts which, in England, created the distinction between whigs and tories: the latter striving by all the means within their reach to increase the dominion and influence of the throne, at the expense of the commons and people; and the former to counteract the exertions of their adversaries, by abridging that dominion and influence for the advancement of the rights and the consequent amelioration of the condition of the people.

Collisions of opinion and of action, of a character similar in principle, have existed, although under different denominations, with different limits, and for different ends, in most countries, and in an eminent degree in this. Indeed the history of the struggles, the contests, the alternating victories and defeats of these two restless and rival principles, is the history of all republican governments-in fact, of all institutions formed for the protection of the liberty of conscience and opinion, and the freedom of the citizen, No where can its operation be more distinctly traced than in our own early history. They were the primitive elements, and animating causes of those whig and tory parties, which, from the first Congress of 1765, down to the glorious peace of 1783, on the one hand labored unceasingly to consolidate all legislative authority over these pro