Title: Thomas Hart Benton's Remarks to the Senate on the Expunging Resolution
Author: Benton, Thomas Hart, 1782-1858
Language: English
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  Thomas Hart Benton,
  "On the Expunging Resolution."
  U.S. Senate,
  January 12, 1837



Mr. President:

It is now three years since the resolve was adopted by the Senate,
which it is my present motion to expunge from the journal.  At the
moment that this resolve was adopted, I gave notice of my intention to
move to expunge it; and then expressed my confident belief that the
motion would eventually prevail.  That expression of confidence was not
an ebullition of vanity, or a presumptuous calculation, intended to
accelerate the event it affected to foretell.  It was not a vain boast,
or an idle assumption, but was the result of a deep conviction of the
injustice done President Jackson, and a thorough reliance upon the
justice of the American people.  I felt that the President had been
wronged; and my heart told me that this wrong would be redressed!  The
event proves that I was not mistaken.  The question of expunging this
resolution has been carried to the people, and their decision has been
had upon it.  They decide in favor of the expurgation; and their
decision has been both made and manifested, and communicated to us in a
great variety of ways.  A great number of States have expressly
instructed their Senators to vote for this expurgation.  A very great
majority of the States have elected Senators and Representatives to
Congress, upon the express ground of favoring this expurgation.  The
Bank of the United States, which took the initiative in the accusation
against the President, and furnished the material, and worked the
machinery which was used against him, and which was then so powerful on
this floor, has become more and more odious to the public mind, and
musters now but a slender phalanx of friends in the two Houses of
Congress.  The late Presidential election furnishes additional evidence
of public sentiment.  The candidate who was the friend of President
Jackson, the supporter of his administration, and the avowed advocate
for the expurgation, has received a large majority of the suffrages of
the whole Union, and that after an express declaration of his
sentiments on this precise point.  The evidence of the public will,
exhibited in all these forms, is too manifest to be mistaken, too
explicit to require illustration, and too imperative to be disregarded.
Omitting details and specific enumeration of proofs, I refer to our own
files for the instructions to expunge--to the complexion of the two
Houses for the temper of the people--to the denationalized condition of
the Bank of the United States for the fate of the imperious
accuser--and to the issue of the Presidential election for the answer
of the Union.

All these are pregnant proofs of the public will, and the last
pre-eminently so: because, both the question of the expurgation, and
the form of the process, were directly put in issue upon it....

Assuming, then, that we have ascertained the will of the people on this
great question, the inquiry presents itself, how far the expression of
that will ought to be conclusive of our action here.  I hold that it
ought to be binding and obligatory upon us; and that, not only upon the
principles of representative government, which require obedience to the
known will of the people, but also in conformity to the principles upon
which the proceeding against President Jackson was conducted when the
sentence against him was adopted.  Then everything was done with
especial reference to the will of the people.  Their impulsion was
assumed to be the sole motive to action; and to them the ultimate
verdict was expressly referred.  The whole machinery of alarm and
pressure--every engine of political and moneyed power--was put in
motion, and worked for many months, to excite the people against the
President; and to stir up meetings, memorials, petitions, travelling
committees, and distress deputations against him; and each symptom of
popular discontent was hailed as an evidence of public will, and quoted
here as proof that the people demanded the condemnation of the
President.  Not only legislative assemblies, and memorials from large
assemblies, were then produced here as evidence of public opinion, but
the petitions of boys under age, the remonstrances of a few signers,
and the results of the most inconsiderable elections were
ostentatiously paraded and magnified, as the evidence of the sovereign
will of our constituents.  Thus, sir, the public voice was everything,
while that voice, partially obtained through political and pecuniary
machinations, was adverse to the President.  Then the popular will was
the shrine at which all worshipped.  Now, when that will is regularly,
soberly, repeatedly, and almost universally expressed through the
ballot-boxes, at the various elections, and turns out to be in favor of
the President, certainly no one can disregard it, nor otherwise look at
it than as the solemn verdict of the competent and ultimate tribunal
upon an issue fairly made up, fully argued, and duly submitted for
decision.  As such verdict, I receive it.  As the deliberate verdict of
the sovereign people, I bow to it.  I am content.  I do not mean to
reopen the case nor to recommence the argument.  I leave that work to
others, if any others choose to perform it.  For myself, I am content;
and, dispensing with further argument, I shall call for judgment, and
ask to have execution done, upon that unhappy journal, which the
verdict of millions of freemen finds guilty of bearing on its face an
untrue, illegal, and unconstitutional sentence of condemnation against
the approved President of the Republic.

But, while declining to reopen the argument of this question, and
refusing to tread over again the ground already traversed, there is
another and a different task to perform; one which the approaching
termination of President Jackson's administration makes peculiarly
proper at this time, and which it is my privilege, and perhaps my duty,
to execute, as being the suitable conclusion to the arduous contest in
which we have been so long engaged.  I allude to the general tenor of
his administration, and to its effect, for good or for evil, upon the
condition of his country.  This is the proper time for such a view to
be taken.  The political existence of this great man now draws to a
close.  In little more than forty days he ceases to be an object of
political hope to any, and should cease to be an object of political
hate, or envy, to all.  Whatever of motive the servile and time-serving
might have found in his exalted station for raising the altar of
adulation, and burning the incense of praise before him, that motive
can no longer exist.  The dispenser of the patronage of an empire, the
chief of this great confederacy of States, is soon to be a private
individual, stripped of all power to reward, or to punish. His own
thoughts, as he has shown us in the concluding paragraph of that
message which is to be the last of its kind that we shall ever receive
from him, are directed to that beloved retirement from which he was
drawn by the voice of millions of freemen, and to which he now looks
for that interval of repose which age and infirmities require.  Under
these circumstances, he ceases to be a subject for the ebullition of
the passions, and passes into a character for the contemplation of
history.  Historically, then, shall I view him; and limiting this view
to his civil administration, I demand, where is there a Chief
Magistrate of whom so much evil has been predicted, and from whom so
much good has come?  Never has any man entered upon the Chief
Magistracy of a country under such appalling predictions of ruin and
woe! never has any one been so pursued with direful prognostications!
never has any one been so beset and impeded by a powerful combination
of political and moneyed confederates! never has any one in any country
where the administration of justice has risen above the knife or the
bowstring, been so lawlessly and shamelessly tried and condemned by
rivals and enemies, without hearing, without defence, without the forms
of law and justice!  History has been ransacked to find examples of
tyrants sufficiently odious to illustrate him by comparison.  Language
has been tortured to find epithets sufficiently strong to paint him in
description.  Imagination has been exhausted in her efforts to deck him
with revolting and inhuman attributes.  Tyrant, despot, usurper;
destroyer of the liberties of his country; rash, ignorant, imbecile;
endangering the public peace with all foreign nations; destroying
domestic prosperity at home; ruining all industry, all commerce, all
manufactures; annihilating confidence between man and man; delivering
up the streets of populous cities to grass and weeds, and the wharves
of commercial towns to the encumbrance of decaying vessels; depriving
labor of all reward; depriving industry of all employment; destroying
the currency; plunging an innocent and happy people from the summit of
felicity to the depths of misery, want, and despair.  Such is the faint
outline, followed up by actual condemnation, of the appalling
denunciations daily uttered against this one MAN, from the moment he
became an object of political competition, down to the concluding
moment of his political existence.

The sacred voice of inspiration has told us that there is a time for
all things.  There certainly has been a time for every evil that human
nature admits of to be vaticinated of President Jackson's
administration; equally certain the time has now come for all rational
and well-disposed people to compare the predictions with the facts, and
to ask themselves if these calamitous prognostications have been
verified by events?  Have we peace, or war, with foreign nations?
Certainly, we have peace with all the world! peace with all its benign,
and felicitous, and beneficent influences!  Are we respected, or
despised abroad?  Certainly the American name never was more honored
throughout the four quarters of the globe than in this very moment.  Do
we hear of indignity or outrage in any quarter?  of merchants robbed in
foreign ports? of vessels searched on the high seas? of American
citizens impressed into foreign service? of the national flag insulted
anywhere?  On the contrary, we see former wrongs repaired; no new ones
inflicted.  France pays twenty-five millions of francs for spoliations
committed thirty years ago; Naples pays two millions one hundred
thousand ducats for wrongs of the same date; Denmark pays six hundred
and fifty thousand rix-dollars for wrongs done a quarter of a century
ago; Spain engages to pay twelve millions of reals vellon for injuries
of fifteen years' date; and Portugal, the last in the list of former
aggressors, admits her liability and only waits the adjustment of
details to close her account by adequate indemnity.  So far from war,
insult, contempt, and spoliation from abroad, this denounced
administration has been the season of peace and goodwill and the
auspicious era of universal reparation.  So far from suffering injury
at the hands of foreign powers, our merchants have received indemnities
for all former injuries.  It has been the day of accounting, of
settlement, and of retribution.  The total list of arrearages,
extending through four successive previous administrations, has been
closed and settled up.  The wrongs done to commerce for thirty years
back, and under so many different Presidents, and indemnities withheld
from all, have been repaired and paid over under the beneficent and
glorious administration of President Jackson.  But one single instance
of outrage has occurred, and that at the extremities of the world, and
by a piratical horde, amenable to no law but the law of force.  The
Malays of Sumatra committed a robbery and massacre upon an American
vessel.  Wretches! they did not then know that JACKSON was President of
the United States! and that no distance, no time, no idle ceremonial of
treating with robbers and assassins, was to hold back the arm of
justice.  Commodore Downes went out.  His cannon and his bayonets
struck the outlaws in their den.  They paid in terror and blood for the
outrage which was committed; and the great lesson was taught to these
distant pirates--to our antipodes themselves--that not even the entire
diameter of this globe could protect them, and that the name of
American citizen, like that of Roman citizen in the great days of the
Republic and of the empire, was to be the inviolable passport of all
that wore it throughout the whole extent of the habitable world....

From President Jackson, the country has first learned the true theory
and practical intent of the Constitution, in giving to the Executive a
qualified negative on the legislative power of Congress.  Far from
being an odious, dangerous, or kingly prerogative, this power, as
vested in the President, is nothing but a qualified copy of the famous
veto power vested in the tribunes of the people among the Romans, and
intended to suspend the passage of a law until the people themselves
should have time to consider it.  The qualified veto of the President
destroys nothing; it only delays the passage of a law, and refers it to
the people for their consideration and decision.  It is the reference
of a law, not to a committee of the House, or of the whole House, but
to the committee of the whole Union.  It is a recommitment of the bill
to the people, for them to examine and consider; and if, upon this
examination, they are content to pass it, it will pass at the next
session.  The delay of a few months is the only effect of a veto, in a
case where the people shall ultimately approve a law; where they do not
approve it, the interposition of the veto is the barrier which saves
them the adoption of a law, the repeal of which might afterward be
almost impossible.  The qualified negative is, therefore, a beneficent
power, intended as General Hamilton expressly declares in the
"Federalist," to protect, first, the executive department from the
encroachments of the legislative department; and, secondly, to preserve
the people from hasty, dangerous or criminal legislation on the part of
their representatives.  This is the design and intention of the veto
power; and the fear expressed by General Hamilton was, that Presidents,
so far from exercising it too often, would not exercise it as often as
the safety of the people required; that they might lack the moral
courage to stake themselves in opposition to a favorite measure of the
majority of the two Houses of Congress; and thus deprive the people, in
many instances, of their right to pass upon a bill before it becomes a
final law.  The cases in which President Jackson has exercised the veto
power have shown the soundness of these observations.  No ordinary
President would have staked himself against the Bank of the United
States and the two Houses of Congress in 1832.  It required President
Jackson to confront that power--to stem that torrent--to stay the
progress of that charter, and to refer it to the people for their
decision.  His moral courage was equal to the crisis.  He arrested the
charter until it could be got to the people, and they have arrested it
forever.  Had he not done so, the charter would have become law, and
its repeal almost impossible.  The people of the whole Union would now
have been in the condition of the people of Pennsylvania, bestrode by
the monster, in daily conflict with him, and maintaining a doubtful
contest for supremacy between the government of a State and the
directory of a moneyed corporation....

Sir, I think it right, in approaching the termination of this great
question, to present this faint and rapid sketch of the brilliant,
beneficent, and glorious administration of President Jackson.  It is
not for me to attempt to do it justice; it is not for ordinary men to
attempt its history.  His military life, resplendent with dazzling
events, will demand the pen of a nervous writer; his civil
administration, replete with scenes which have called into action so
many and such various passions of the human heart, and which has given
to native sagacity so many victories over practiced politicians, will
require the profound, luminous, and philosophical conceptions of a
Livy, a Plutarch, or a Sallust.  This history is not to be written in
our day.  The contemporaries of such events are not the hands to
describe them.  Time must first do its office--must silence the
passions, remove the actors, develop consequences, and canonize all
that is sacred to honor, patriotism, and glory.  In after ages the
historic genius of our America shall produce the writers which the
subject demands--men far removed from the contests of this day, who
will know how to estimate this great epoch, and how to acquire an
immortality for their own names by painting, with a master's hand, the
immortal events of the patriot President's life.

And now, sir, I finish the task which, three years ago, I imposed on
myself.  Solitary and alone, and amid the jeers and taunts of my
opponents, I put this ball in motion.  The people have taken it up, and
rolled it forward, and I am no longer anything but a unit in the vast
mass which now propels it.  In the name of that mass I speak.  I demand
the execution of the edict of the people; I demand the expurgation of
that sentence which the voice of a few Senators, and the power of their
confederate, the Bank of the United States, has caused to be placed on
the journal of the Senate; and which the voice of millions of freemen
has ordered to be expunged from it.





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