of the people, and with equal contempt the higher guardianship of the people themselves,—­who is he that declares to us, through the President’s lips, that the security for freedom rests in executive authority?  Who is he that belies the blood and libels the fame of his own ancestors, by declaring that they, with solemnity of form, and force of manner, have invoked the executive power to come to the protection of liberty?  Who is he that thus charges them with the insanity, or the recklessness, of putting the lamb beneath the lion’s paw?  No, Sir.  No, Sir.  Our security is in our watchfulness of executive power.  It was the constitution of this department which was infinitely the most difficult part in the great work of creating our present government.  To give to the executive department such power as should make it useful, and yet not such as should render it dangerous; to make it efficient, independent, and strong, and yet to prevent it from sweeping away every thing by its union of military and civil authority, by the influence of patronage, and office, and favor,—­this, indeed, was difficult.  They who had the work to do saw the difficulty, and we see it; and if we would maintain our system, we shall act wisely to that end, by preserving every restraint and every guard which the Constitution has provided.  And when we, and those who come after us, have done all that we can do, and all that they can do, it will be well for us and for them, if some popular executive, by the power of patronage and party, and the power, too, of that very popularity, shall not hereafter prove an overmatch for all other branches of the government.

I do not wish, Sir, to impair the power of the President, as it stands written down in the Constitution, and as great and good men have hitherto exercised it.  In this, as in other respects, I am for the Constitution as it is.  But I will not acquiesce in the reversal of all just ideas of government; I will not degrade the character of popular representation; I will not blindly confide, where all experience admonishes me to be jealous; I will not trust executive power, vested in the hands of a single magistrate, to be the guardian of liberty.

Having claimed for the executive the especial guardianship of the Constitution, the Protest proceeds to present a summary view of the powers which are supposed to be conferred on the executive by that instrument.  And it is to this part of the message, Sir, that I would, more than to all others, call the particular attention of the Senate.  I confess that it was only upon careful reperusal of the paper that I perceived the extent to which its assertions of power reach.  I do not speak now of the President’s claims of power as opposed to legislative authority, but of his opinions as to his own authority, duty, and responsibility, as connected with all other officers under the government.  He is of opinion that the whole executive power is vested in him, and that he