in their places.  I was of opinion then, and am of opinion now, that that decision of the Senate went far to unfix the proper balance of the government.  It conferred on the President the power of rewards for party purposes, or personal purposes, without limit or control.  It sanctioned, manifestly and plainly, that exercise of power which Mr. Madison had said would deserve impeachment; and it completely defeated one great object, which we are told the framers of the Constitution contemplated, in the manner of forming the Senate; that is, that the Senate might be a body not changing with the election of a President, and therefore likely to be able to hold over him some check or restraint in regard to bringing his own friends and partisans into power with him, and thus rewarding their services to him at the public expense.

The debates in the Senate, on these questions, were long continued and earnest.  They were of course in secret session, but the opinions of those members who opposed this course have all been proved true by the result.  The contest was severe and ardent, as much so as any that I have ever partaken in; and I have seen some service in that sort of warfare.

Gentlemen, when I look back to that eventful moment, when I remember who those were who upheld this claim for executive power, with so much zeal and devotion, as well as with such great and splendid abilities, and when I look round now, and inquire what has become of these gentlemen, where they have found themselves at last, under the power which they thus helped to establish, what has become now of all their respect, trust, confidence, and attachment,—­how many of them, indeed, have not escaped from being broken and crushed under the weight of the wheels of that engine which they themselves set in motion,—­I feel that an edifying lesson may be read by those who, in the freshness and fulness of party zeal, are ready to confer the most dangerous power, in the hope that they and their friends may bask in its sunshine, while enemies only shall be withered by its frown.

I will not go into the mention of names.  I will give no enumeration of persons; but I ask you to turn your minds back, and recollect who the distinguished men were who supported, in the Senate, General Jackson’s administration for the first two years; and I will ask you what you suppose they think now of that power and that discretion which they so freely confided to executive hands.  What do they think of the whole career of that administration, the commencement of which, and indeed the existence of which, owed so much to their own great exertions?