The powers, therefore, belonging to any branch of our government, are to be construed and settled, not by remote analogies drawn from other governments, but from the words of the grant itself, in their plain sense and necessary import, and according to an interpretation consistent with our own history and the spirit of our own institutions.  I will never agree that a President of the United States holds the whole undivided power of office in his own hands, upon the theory that he is responsible for the entire action of the whole body of those engaged in carrying on the government and executing the laws.  Such a responsibility is purely ideal, delusive, and vain.  There is, there can be, no substantial responsibility, any further than every individual is answerable, not merely in his reputation, not merely in the opinion of mankind, but to the law, for the faithful discharge of his own appropriate duties.  Again and again we hear it said that the President is responsible to the American people! that he is responsible to the bar of public opinion!  For whatever he does, he assumes accountability to the American people!  For whatever he omits, he expects to be brought to the high bar of public opinion!  And this is thought enough for a limited, restrained, republican government! an undefined, undefinable, ideal responsibility to the public judgment!

Sir, if all this mean any thing, if it be not empty sound, it means no less than that the President may do any thing and every thing which he may expect to be tolerated in doing.  He may go just so far as he thinks it safe to go; and Cromwell and Bonaparte went no farther.  I ask again, Sir, is this legal responsibility?  Is this the true nature of a government with written laws and limited powers?  And allow me, Sir, to ask, too, if an executive magistrate, while professing to act under the Constitution, is restrained only by this responsibility to public opinion, what prevents him, on the same responsibility, from proposing a change in that Constitution?  Why may he not say, “I am about to introduce new forms, new principles, and a new spirit; I am about to try a political experiment on a great scale; and when I get through with it, I shall be responsible to the American people, I shall be answerable to the bar of public opinion”?

Connected, Sir, with the idea of this airy and unreal responsibility to the public is another sentiment, which of late we hear frequently expressed; and that is, that the President is the direct representative of the American people.  This is declared in the Protest in so many words.  “The President,” it says, “is the direct representative of the American people.”  Now, Sir, this is not the language of the Constitution.  The Constitution nowhere calls him the representative of the American people; still less, their direct representative.  It could not do so with the least propriety.  He is not chosen directly by the people, but by a