Mr. President, we have arrived at a new epoch.  We are entering on experiments, with the government and the Constitution of the country, hitherto untried, and of fearful and appalling aspect.  This message calls us to the contemplation of a future which little resembles the past.  Its principles are at war with all that public opinion has sustained, and all which the experience of the government has sanctioned.  It denies first principles; it contradicts truths, heretofore received as indisputable.  It denies to the judiciary the interpretation of law, and claims to divide with Congress the power of originating statutes.  It extends the grasp of executive pretension over every power of the government.  But this is not all.  It presents the chief magistrate of the Union in the attitude of arguing away the powers of that government over which he has been chosen to preside; and adopting for this purpose modes of reasoning which, even under the influence of all proper feeling towards high official station, it is difficult to regard as respectable.  It appeals to every prejudice which may betray men into a mistaken view of their own interests, and to every passion which may lead them to disobey the impulses of their understanding.  It urges all the specious topics of State rights and national encroachment against that which a great majority of the States have affirmed to be rightful, and in which all of them have acquiesced.  It sows, in an unsparing manner, the seeds of jealousy and ill-will against that government of which its author is the official head.  It raises a cry, that liberty is in danger, at the very moment when it puts forth claims to powers heretofore unknown and unheard of.  It affects alarm for the public freedom, when nothing endangers that freedom so much as its own unparalleled pretences.  This, even, is not all.  It manifestly seeks to inflame the poor against the rich; it wantonly attacks whole classes of the people, for the purpose of turning against them the prejudices and the resentments of other classes.  It is a state paper which finds no topic too exciting for its use, no passion too inflammable for its address and its solicitation.

Such is this message.  It remains now for the people of the United States to choose between the principles here avowed and their government.  These cannot subsist together.  The one or the other must be rejected.  If the sentiments of the message shall receive general approbation, the Constitution will have perished even earlier than the moment which its enemies originally allowed for the termination of its existence.  It will not have survived to its fiftieth year.

THE CHARACTER OF WASHINGTON

A SPEECH DELIVERED AT A PUBLIC DINNER IN THE CITY OF WASHINGTON ON THE 22D OF FEBRUARY, 1832, THE CENTENNIAL ANNIVERSARY OF WASHINGTON’S BIRTHDAY.

[On the 22d of February, 1832, being the centennial birthday of GEORGE WASHINGTON, a number of gentlemen, members of Congress and others, from different parts of the Union, united in commemorating the occasion by a public dinner in the city of Washington.