We may try this question by supposing it to arise in a judicial proceeding.  If the Secretary of the Treasury were impeached for removing the deposits, could he justify himself by saying that he did it by the President’s direction?  If he could, then no executive officer could ever be impeached who obeys the President; and the whole notion of making such officers impeachable at all would be farcical.  If he could not so justify himself, (and all will allow he could not,) the reason can only be that the act of removal is his own act; the power, a power confided to him, for the just exercise of which the law looks to his discretion, his honesty, and his direct responsibility.

Now, Sir, the President wishes the world to understand that he himself decided on the question of the removal of the deposits; that he took the whole responsibility of the measure upon himself; that he wished it to be considered his own act; that he not only himself decided that the thing should be done, but regulated its details also, and named the day for carrying it into effect.

I have always entertained a very erroneous view of the partition of powers, and of the true nature of official responsibility under our Constitution, if this be not a plain case of the assumption of power.

The legislature had fixed a place, by law, for the keeping of the public money.  They had, at the same time and by the same law, created and conferred a power of removal, to be exercised contingently.  This power they had vested in the Secretary, by express words.  The law did not say that the deposits should be made in the bank, unless the President should order otherwise; but it did say that they should be made there, unless the Secretary of the Treasury should order otherwise.  I put it to the plain sense and common candor of all men, whether the discretion thus to be exercised over the subject was not the Secretary’s own personal discretion; and whether, therefore, the interposition of the authority of another, acting directly and conclusively on the subject, deciding the whole question, even in its particulars and details, be not an assumption of power?

The Senate regarded this interposition as an encroachment by the executive on other branches of the government; as an interference with the legislative disposition of the public treasure.  It was strongly and forcibly urged, yesterday, by the honorable member from South Carolina, that the true and only mode of preserving any balance of power, in mixed governments, is to keep an exact balance.  This is very true, and to this end encroachment must be resisted at the first step.  The question is, therefore, whether, upon the true principles of the Constitution, this exercise of power by the President can be justified.  Whether the consequences be prejudicial or not, if there be an illegal exercise of power, it is to be resisted in the proper manner.  Even if no harm or inconvenience result from transgressing the boundary, the intrusion