Weekly national intelligencer. [volume] (Washington [D.C.]) 1841-1869, 1847-08-07


for the Executive legal faculties that not merely
overshadow all his proper ones, but the entire Con-
stitution This single little lurking sentence abol-
ishes the whole instrument and vests all legislative,
executive, and judicial rights in the President alone
Now, in comparison with this fatal ambush of au-
thoriy, this surprisal of every thing supreme, what
is the Old lattudnous claim OF power for Congress
under the General Welfare clause, against which
these same straw-valuers, hair-spliers, wordcatch
ers, syllable-siers of the Constitution have been
for fifty years making vociferous protests That
Interpretation would only, at worst consolidate the
States under General Government just as free as
now except as to the adverse legislative sovereign
ties Of the States: it would still have the Federal
Constitution and the division Of power into those
three coordinate departments Legislative, execu-
tive, judicial-which, while they are truly main
tanned, render the public freedom secure. Butthis
,aeao Interpretation would consolidate every thing
into the omnipotent hands of the President alone.
Give him but this stolen prerogative Of whatever a
conquering General may do among the vanquish-
ed: let him have the Army and Navy in fee add
the Militia, of which the President has now equally
obtained possession, by the transforming title of
/" Volunteers :" crown all with granting him in APP
panage as personally his, all that he with these
means subjugate; and what Emperor, Gear, Ca
liph, Khan, Sultan, Dictator or any thing else need
| ask more2
| If ever there was implication with vengeance
it is certainly here. But it is not merely as loose
form of arriving such vast powers, which, if con-
terred, would never have been conveyed in SEN
tence granting them without the smallest care of
limiting or defining them: it is not merely for their
smallness of source, their obscurity of meaning
their boldness of building so much out of nothing,
that we can expose and explode them. We will
bring them to tangible form; for an argument di-
rected against their looseness alone must itself in
some degree, share that very looseness. We will
again apply tests.
And, first of all, we will consider whether it be not
evidently the fundamental idea, though they hem-
selves are not exactly aware of it, or do not know
how to express it, of these ndscriminate defenders
of all the acts Of the Executive, that somehow or
other the Presidents constitutional power as COM
mander of the forces c0aieSces with his consitu-
tional power President, and that these two toge
ther make him up general and more than corss-
tutiopal power. As President only, he would have
but the granted executive powers, and neither legis
latve, Judicial, nor military faculties; as Comman-
der, he would only be the ciUa and administrative
head of the army and navy, for he has no Commits
sion, and cannot take the field or the seas as acting
General or Admiral; but unite the two, and he is
forthwith whole, not made up of these parts, but
something infinitely transcending them.
Now, the President being Commander-in-chief
adds nothing 20 him as President. The title of
President gives him not an atom more of power
as Commander-in-chief The two do not even
make sum in Addition, But these State-arithme-
| tlcians would do much more they would make
| them an operation in Multiplication, and produce
them one into the other until any amount they like
OF just what they please is obtained Yet can they
not that putting together so many constit-
tional powers cannot make an unconstitutional one ?
And is it not plain to any body that has mastered
the first four rules in Dilworth or Pike, that it is
not possible, by multiplying any amount of Execu-
tive powers with any amount of Generals, to
find or TO create Legislative or Judicial power
The two things are separate in their nature and
cannot mix. The one is the correative and co-or-
dinate of other departments the other is entirely
their common subordinate and subject.
">Subordinate," we have just said the COM
mon subordinate" of other parts of the Government.
Is the armed force, including its administrative chief
not so !?
The general and necessary principle of every
free Government is that the military shall be sub
ordinate to the civil power. That was the maxim
of even the Roman State, always martial as it was.
Cedat arnaa tog8: the Sword must yield to the
Gown" Our own Constitution gives, in its dis
ribuon of powers, no place to the military: by it
the governing powers are paritioned out into their
three great natural and systematic elements, the Le-
gisatve, Executive, and Judicial; and these take,
in SO many different sartices of the Constitution,
each its proper and several share mo more of the
powers granted by that instrument. The military
is, by turns, subject to either, according as that
which is to create govern, or supply or employ,
enthusiastically direct it, belongs to the province
Of this or that. II is dependant on them all but,
as with other subject powers, unequally dependant.
AS in all other cases, the chief and more perma-
nent power over it is in the Legislative branch of
the Government: the more temporary occasional,
and personal authority only is in the Executive. In
Congress only is the power of war and peace of