The Manitowoc tribune. [volume] (Manitowoc, Wis.) 1866-1878, 1868-01-30
THURSDAY JANUARY 80, 1868.
TIE PRESIDENT AND CONGRESS.

the chair of Chief Executive became i'm
pressed with the insane idea that M
! powers in the land were little less thar
supreme. He evidently supposed thai
Providence had raised him up, a second
'sMoses," to conduct this people to the
highest pinnacle of fame and fenown, and
to accomplish which he must assume re
gal authority and with an iron will ride on
ss'conquering and to conquer. Ihs we
say was has idea; we do not believe
Providence had any other design than to
teach this people self-dependence. We
had great and good man for President,
but we made an idol of him, and although
he never assumed power without first
consulting the people, he was SO implicitly
believed in, that he might have done 50,
and johnson was raised up to teach US to
place our confidence in no man living to
the extent of giving him unlimited
authority over us. The law making
power should rest with the two houses OF
Congress, not with one man. Upoa the
kcIeId1 SlDtCCb VI tiC SohlOSAs, eiiese 80 ~
continually arising in constitutional gov
ernments between the executive and legls-
lative branches, Daniel Webster in one Of
his great speeches, has some remarks, so
pertinent at the present time, and so full
of truth for all times, that they ought to
be indelibly impressed upon the memory
of every citizen We subjoin the passage
and hope it may be attentiyely considered
By every reader Of this journal:
ssThe contest" said Mr. Webster, for
ages, has been to rescue Liberty from the
grasp of executive power. Whoever has
engaged in her sacred cause, from the
days of the downfall of those great arts
tocracies which had stood between the
king and the people to the time of our
independence, has struggled for the ac-
eomplishment of that single object On
the long last of the champions of human
freedom, there Is not one name din,naed bu
advocating the extension of Erecuiiire a,t-
hority; on the contrary, the uniform and
steady purpose of all such champions has
been to limit and restrain it. To this
end the spirit of liberty, growing more
and more enlightened and more and more
vigorous from age to age, has been bat
terlng Tor centuries against the solid but
ments of the feudal system. To this end
all that could be gained from the impru-
dence, snatched from the weakness, OF
Wrung from the necessities of crowned
heads, has been carefully gathered up
secured and boarded, as the rich treas
ures, the very jewels of liberty. To this
end, popular and representative right has
kept up its warfare against prerogative
with various success sometimes writing
the history of whole age in blood, some
times witnessing the martyrdom of Sid
neys and Russels, often baffied and re-
pulsed but still gaining, on the whole.
and holding what it gained with a grasp
which nothing but the complete extinc-
ton of its own being could compel it to
relinquish. AT length, the great con
quest over executive power, in the leading
western States of Europe, has been &C
complished The feudal system, like
other stupenGous fabrics of past ages, is
known only by the rubbish which it has
left behind it. Crowned heads have
been compelled to submit to the restraints
of law and the PEOPLE, with that intel
ligence and that spirit which make then
voices resistless, have been able to sa,- t.
prerogative, Thus far shalt thou come
and no farther reed hardly say, sir
that into the full enjoyment of all which
Europe has reached only through sucl
slow and painful steps we sprang a
once, by the Declaration of Independence
and by the establishment of free represent
alive governments; governments Dor
rowing more or less from the models O
other free states, but strengthened, Sc
cured, improved in their symmetry, anC
deepened in their foundation, by thos,
great men OF our own country, who's
names will be as familiar to future time.
as if they were written on the arch of the
sky.
Through all this history of the con
test for liberty, executive power has beer
regarded as lion which must be Gagged
So far as being the object of enlightened
popular trust, so far from being consid
cred the natural protector of popular
right, it has been dreaded, uniformly, al
ways dreaded, as the great source of it.
danger.
Ind noac, SIR, ,cho IS he, so ignoroa
Of the history of liberty, at home or abroad
acho as he, get d,oel7iag an has conten,ola
tons among the principles and dogneas o
the Middle Ages; aoho as he, from, achos
bosom oil original Infusion Of 4naerica,
spirit has become so entirely corporate,
and erhaled, that he shall PIT into til
mouth Of the President fthe United State
the doctrine that the defense Of liberty nc
trdUy results to ececafire poorer, and
ITS peculiar duty? Who is he, that, gel
erous and confiding toward power wher
it is most dangerous, and jealous only {
those who can restrain 1t; who is he
that, reversing the order of the state, an
upheaving the base, would poise tn
pyramid of the political system upon ii
apex? Who IS he, that, ovERLooKIN
WITH CONTEMPT THE GUARDIANSHIP @
THE REPRESENTATIVE OF THE PEOPLE
AND WITH EQUAL CONTEMPT THE HIGHE
GIIARnIA NSuIp