Senate have been violated.  There is yet something, Sir, which surpasses all this; and that is, that, after this direct interference, after pointing out those Senators whom he would represent as having disobeyed the known will of their constituents, he disclaims all design of interfering at all!  Sir, who could be the writer of a message, which, in the first place, makes the President assert such monstrous pretensions, and, in the next line, affront the understanding of the Senate by disavowing all right to do that very thing which he is doing?  If there be any thing, Sir, in this message, more likely than the rest of it to move one from his equanimity, it is this disclaimer of all design to interfere with the responsibility of members of the Senate to their constituents, after such interference had already been made, in the same paper, in the most objectionable and offensive form.  If it were not for the purpose of telling these Senators that they disobeyed the will of the legislatures of the States they represent, for what purpose was it that the Protest has pointed out the four Senators, and paraded against them the sentiments of their legislatures?  There can be no other purpose.  The Protest says, indeed, that “these facts belong to the history of these proceedings”!  To the history of what proceedings?  To any proceeding to which the President was party?  To any proceeding to which the Senate was party?  Have they any thing to do with the resolution of the 28th of March?  But it adds, that these facts are important to the just development of the principles and interests involved in the proceedings.  All this might be said of any other facts.  It is mere words.  To what principles, to what interests, are these facts important?  They can be important but in one point of view; and that is as proof, or evidence, that the Senators have disobeyed instructions, or acted against the known will of their constituents in disapproving the President’s conduct.  They have not the slightest bearing in any other way.  They do not make the resolution of the Senate more or less true, nor its right to pass it more or less clear.  Sir, these proceedings of the legislatures were introduced into this Protest for the very purpose, and no other, of showing that members of the Senate have acted contrary to the will of their constituents.  Every man sees and knows this to have been the sole design; and any other pretence is a mockery to our understandings.  And this purpose is, in my opinion, an unlawful purpose; it is an unjustifiable intervention between us and our constituents; and is, therefore, a manifest and flagrant breach of privilege.

In the next place, the assertions of the Protest are inconsistent with the just authority of Congress, because they claim for the President a power, independent of Congress, to possess the custody and control of the public treasures.  Let this point be accurately examined; and, in order to avoid mistake, I will read the precise words of the Protest.