Weekly national intelligencer. [volume] (Washington [D.C.]) 1841-1869, 1850-01-05

able that the power of appointing overseeing,
and CONTROLLING those lUho EXECUTE THE LAWS
should remain in his hands. "-( Protest Message.
The whole Executive power being vested in
the President, who is RESPONSIBLE FOR ITS ExER-
: cIsE, il is necessary consequence that he
: should have right to employ agents of has own
choice to aid him in the performance Of has du-
ties" &c. Same Message)
"In the Government from ,ohich many Of the
Fundamental principles Of oar system are de-
rired, the head of the Executive Department
the KING originally had power to appoint and
remove at will all officers, Executive, Judicial,
&c., Same Message.)
"The custody of the public property (under
such regulations may be prescribed by legisla-
tive authority has always been considered AN
APPROPRIATE FUNCTION OF THE EXECUTIVE DE-
PARTMENT in this and all other Governments"
Congress cannot, therefore, take out ofthe hands
Of the Executive Department the custody of the
public property, WITHOUT AN ASSUMPTION OF Ex-
EcUTIvE POWER, &C."
1t can hardly be necessary to multiply extracts,
which abound in President Jackson's Messages,
and especially in the Protest. against the Senate
to show to what an extent (such as no Monarch
dare to have done) he claimed and arbitrarily ex-
ercised powers denied by the Constitution to the
Executive, or expressly belonging to the Legsla-
tive Department of the Government. For any CON-
ment of our own on these pretensions we substitute
the following extracts from speech delivered on
the !" Protest" by Mr.. Senator BIBB, who had been
of the early and jealous advocates of the Gene
RAILS election to the Presidency, but could not stand
these deliberate and reiterated assaults by the Pre-
sident upon the Legislative and Judicial Depart
ments of the Government
"Whence did the writer's Of this Protest derive
their notions of unqualified power, of responsibility
of officers to the President, Of his responsibility
for them, and his custody of public property and
money, as an appropriate function Of the Execu-
tive Department in this and in all other Govern
ments! 2 Not from elementary treatises upon free
Governments and civil liberty. Not from the pure
fountains of American constitutions. Not from
the writings and speeches of the patriots and sages
who have been distinguished in the United States
in settling the foundations Of the State and Federal
Governments"
"They must have studied the dark ages ofMgh-
Toned prerogatiue, ofnon-resista1ce, and passive
obedience, and become infected Nth The diUine
right of Kings, and enamored of the writings Of
Flmer and such like. The President who can
assert, before the Senate and the People, such
claims to the custody and management Of the pub
lie property and money, coupled with such CLAIMS
to obedience from the civil officers, must be ill-ad-
vissd, or so intoxicated with adulaton and love OF
power as to have overlooked the elementary prin-
ciples of civil liberty and the spirit of the people.
The idea of an officer of the President, the
mere instrument of the Chief Magistrate, is not to
be found in the Constitution, nor in the sugges-
tons of those who organized the Government
They are all officers of the United States, officers
of the Government, officers of the law responsible
to the Government and the laws. And, If the Pre-
sident makes out their responsibility to him, as he
3 has claimed it, he must make out that he is THE
GOVERNMENT, THE Law, AND THE PRoPHET.'
The powers and prerogatives claimed by the
Protest, united to those powers delegated by the
Constitution to the President, will leave us THE
SUBSTANCE OF AN ABSOLUTE MONARCHY, disguised
| by the forms Of a commonwealth
Satisfied with the judgment pronounced by thu
honorable and worthy Senator from Kentucky
upon the merits of !" the Jackson SCHOOL, of Con
stitutional Law, and the effectively Monarchica
character of the doctrines of that school, we Willingly
leave to our readers to determine what party in th
country is best entitled to the epithet of " Monarch
ists'-that which, when in power, upheld the CLAIM
of its President to supremacy over the Laws
the Legislature, and the Judiciary, or that which
like the Wings of the present day and the Presi
dent of their choice, disclams for the Presiden
any such pretensions fundamental principle II
their conception of Constitutional Law being the
actual separate and independent authority, within
its own sphere, of each Department of the Gov
eminent.
But, says the Union y in its last Sundays dis.
course upon the principles of the opposite parties
in this Government "one of these parties repre-
sents the Progressive or Democratic principle, and
the other meaning the Whigs) the Retrograde or
Monarchical principle" Having already satisfacto-
rily shown in what school" Monarchical princi.
Piles have been chiefly taught in this country, and
knowing of no retrogression in any direction on
the part of the Wings, we take the {" Union upoa
its own definition of its political cast whilst Seny-
ing, for the respectable mass of the Democracy the
character in which that paper, in the hahds OF us
present Editors, appears to take p,fue. In us COM
ments upon our claim of ConsAVatsm as one OF the
characteristics of the Wigs, the Union = puts
construction upon nt,.term which no lexicograph-
Or will sustain NJ. any Wing for moment allow.
More inst tim our opponents, we will give them
the benes. of the exposition, by their own party,
Of tislr own protested principles.
The first time that we recoect to have seen the
term Progressive" officially used party phrase
was in the Platform of the Baltimore Convention of
IS4s, and we had occasion, soon afterwards, to no.
tice the rather curious coincidence of the publica
ton in the Boston I" Post'-the same journal which