Lancaster gazette. [volume] (Lancaster, Mass.) 1828-1830, 1828-04-08

that no President shall hold the office
longer than eight years. But the same
custom has sanctioned that the President
who has conducted the affairs Of the ma
ton virtuously and wisely, shall receive
one reelection.
Why then, we would ask of our calm
and reasoning fellow citizens, shall we ioin
in this opposition to Mr.. Adams (? live
take for granted the declarations of his
opponents-if we believe all that the On
position presses have charged upon him
nay, if we confde in the rhetorical and
even honest denunciations of our fellow
citizens, over-zealous in the cause of Gen.
Jackson, there is indeed abundant cause
to visit him with the full measure of our
reprobation. But political opposition is
seldom either candid or lust; excessive
zeal blinds the understanding, and per-
verts the Judgment; and the press, which
should be the vehicle Of truth, is too often
but the medium of calumny and false
hood. We have heard, we have seen. the
President charged with having usurped a
power denied him by the constitution, in
claiming a right to send Ministers to for
elgn powers, against the will, and without
the consent, of the Senate. What is the
fact? The President announced to Con-
gress that an application had been made
to him, In the recess of the Senate, to send
Ministers to the Congress of Panama, and
that, although he believed his powers ade-
quate to this object, he deemed it expedi-
ent to wait for the meeting of his consti-
tutlonal council before he decided on SO
important measure. If he were in err
rour in supposing that his constitutional
power to fill vacancies in the office of
foreign Ministers, in the recess of the
Senate, did extend to case where pre-
vious appointment had not been made,
candour would have pronounced that er-
rour venial which had been sanctioned by
every predecessor in the office. We would
refer these censors to the resolutions pre-
sented by MIR. Gore, in the Senate of the
United States, on the 9TH of March, 1914,
in which that body was called upon to re-
solve, that the President Of the United
States, having power to fill vacancies
which may happen in the recess of the
Senate, no such vacancy could occur in
an office not before full, and that, there
fore, the granting of commissions, in the
recess, to Messrs. Adams, Bayard, and
Gallatin, to negotiate treaty of peace
ruiitl, arcdr F-itssisa, --ss an act unwarrant-
ed by the Constitution, and an infringe
ment of the rights of the Senate, and of
the States whom they represented. Few
questions were ever more deliberately con-
sidered, or more thoroughly discussed.
At length, that enlightened and venera-
bic body, the special guardians of the
rights supposed to have been thus violated,
on the 18th of April following, rejected
these resolutions by a vote of indefinite
postponement.* In this debate, prece-
dents were cited of the exercise of this
right by all the predecessors of Mr.. Madi-
son. In Washington, Adams, Jefferson,
and Madison, the actual exercise of the
power was deemed constitutional, and
pronounced to be orthodox; but in him
who now fills the Presidential chair, an
intimation that it exists, though accom-
panied with forbearance to use it, is stig-
matised as political heresy, and de-
nounced as tyranny and usurpation !
Surely the race is not extinct of those
who strain at gnats and swallow camels.
Because the President has expressed
the sentiment which impiety itself could
scarcely arraign, that his oath of Office inn
poses an obligation paramount to all hui
man considerations, he is misrepresented
as claiming power from divine authority
and because he has advanced the manly
and honest doctrine, that, where the course
of duty is plain, and the obligation to act
imperative, the public agent should never
be palsied by the fear of popular displeas-
Urea doctrine once so ably and so elo-
quently enforced on the floor of the House
of Representatives, by Mr.. Calhoun--he
is denounced as regardless of the Consti-
tuition, aristocratic in his notions, and a
contemner Of the will of the people. An
intelligent people should discriminate be-
tween iatterers and friends. Flatterers,
indeed, are never friends. The dema-
gogue, who in a Republic lives but to
please the people, under a monarchy
would be foremost in the train of cour-
tiers that besiege the throne with fulsome
adulation. Political sunAowers always di-
rect their faces to the orb of light and
heat, in whatever quarter ofthe heavens it
may shine. 1t is, indeed, desirable to
have the favour of those who can confer
office but it is nobler, far, to- promote
the public good by an honest discharge of
duty, even at the risk of public dis
pleasure.
The President is arraigned for having
lost the British West-India trade, by UNI
tertaking to arrange the subject by ami
cable negotiation, instead of concurring
IN nyonnsed enactments of CONGRESS. which