be useless, and perhaps invidious, to enumerate the evils of which, in the opinion of many of our fellow-citizens, this error of the sages who framed the Constitution may have been the source and the bitter fruits which we are still to gather from it if it continues to disfigure our system.  It may be observed, however, as a general remark, that republics can commit no greater error than to adopt or continue any feature in their systems of government which may be calculated to create or increase the love of power in the bosoms of those to whom necessity obliges them to commit the management of their affairs; and surely nothing is more likely to produce such a state of mind than the long continuance of an office of high trust.  Nothing can be more corrupting, nothing more destructive of all those noble feelings which belong to the character of a devoted republican patriot.  When this corrupting passion once takes possession of the human mind, like the love of gold it becomes insatiable.  It is the never-dying worm in his bosom, grows with his growth and strengthens with the declining years of its victim.  If this is true, it is the part of wisdom for a republic to limit the service of that officer at least to whom she has intrusted the management of her foreign relations, the execution of her laws, and the command of her armies and navies to a period so short as to prevent his forgetting that he is the accountable agent, not the principal; the servant, not the master.  Until an amendment of the Constitution can be effected public opinion may secure the desired object.  I give my aid to it by renewing the pledge heretofore given that under no circumstances will I consent to serve a second term.

But if there is danger to public liberty from the acknowledged defects of the Constitution in the want of limit to the continuance of the Executive power in the same hands, there is, I apprehend, not much less from a misconstruction of that instrument as it regards the powers actually given.  I can not conceive that by a fair construction any or either of its provisions would be found to constitute the President a part of the legislative power.  It can not be claimed from the power to recommend, since, although enjoined as a duty upon him, it is a privilege which he holds in common with every other citizen; and although there may be something more of confidence in the propriety of the measures recommended in the one case than in the other, in the obligations of ultimate decision there can be no difference.  In the language of the Constitution, “all the legislative powers” which it grants “are vested in the Congress of the United States.”  It would be a solecism in language to say that any portion of these is not included in the whole.