These are the terms in which the President speaks of an act of the two houses; not in an official paper, not in a communication which it was necessary for him to make to them; but in a message, adopted only as a mode through which to make public these opinions.  After this, it would seem too late to enjoin on the houses of Congress a total forbearance from all comment on the measures of the executive.

Not only is it the right of both houses, or of either, to resist, by vote, declaration, or resolution, whatever it may deem an encroachment of executive power, but it is also undoubtedly the right of either house to oppose, in like manner, any encroachment by the other.  The two houses have each its own appropriate powers and authorities, which it is bound to preserve.  They have, too, different constituents.  The members of the Senate are representatives of States; and it is in the Senate alone that the four-and-twenty States, as political bodies, have a direct influence in the legislative and executive powers of this government.  He is a strange advocate of State rights, who maintains that this body, thus representing the States, and thus being the strictly federal branch of the legislature, may not assert and maintain all and singular its own powers and privileges, against either or both of the other branches.

If any thing be done or threatened derogatory to the rights of the States, as secured by the organization of the Senate, may we not lift up our voices against it?  Suppose the House of Representatives should vote that the Senate ought not to propose amendments to revenue bills; would it be the duty of the Senate to take no notice of such proceeding?  Or, if we were to see the President issuing commissions to office to persons who had never been nominated to the Senate, are we not to remonstrate?

Sir, there is no end of cases, no end of illustrations.  The doctrines of the Protest, in this respect, cannot stand the slightest scrutiny; they are blown away by the first breath of discussion.

And yet, Sir, it is easy to perceive why this right of declaring its sentiments respecting the conduct of the executive is denied to either house, in its legislative capacity.  It is merely that the Senate might be presented in the odious light of trying the President, judicially, without regular accusation or hearing.  The Protest declares that the President is charged with a crime, and, without hearing or trial, found guilty and condemned.  This is evidently an attempt to appeal to popular feeling, and to represent the President as unjustly treated and unfairly tried.  Sir, it is a false appeal.  The President has not been tried at all; he has not been accused; he has not been charged with crime; he has not been condemned.  Accusation, trial, and sentence are terms belonging to judicial proceedings.  But the Senate has been engaged in no such proceeding.  The resolution of the 28th of March was not an exercise