consideration, possibly by passion, or by unreflective sympathy, the law may contemplate some action manifestly wrong and injurious to persons or to parties affected by it, or in violent conflict with the plain provisions of the Constitution. In tender regard of his conscience, and of his sense of personal dignity and propriety, and of right and wrong, it was not thought necessary or wise to compel him to put his name to such a law as if approving of it. He was, therefore, allowed to return it to Congress with his objections-to be passed, if Congress would and could do it, by a two-thirds vote, in spite of his objections. In the hands of an honest and conscientious man, one disposed to obey and abide by the Constitution, this is an innocent power; it is dangerous only when it is clutched by unprincipled men, or by the ambitious instruments of an unprincipled party. To use it as it has been used, as if the President were a third branch of the legislative department of the Government, is a sheer usurpation of power.

We say, again, that the control and direction of our whole national policy, so far as it may be affected by legislation, are, or ought to be, in the hands of Congress, and not in the hands of the Executive; and this is the doctrine of the Whig party. It is in virtue of this principle, this leading article of their political faith, that they assumed the name by which they are designated, as separating them, by a broad mark of distinction, from those who practise on the Tory doctrine and policy of governing as much as possible by the one-man or monarchical power. It is the Democratic party, so calling itself, which exalts the Executive above all other departments and powers in the Government, and supports and defends the President of their choice in every pretension and assumption of power, however monstrous. The history of the present administration is one unbroken proof of the truth of this assertion.

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And Democracy" proposes to perpetuate this sort of rule and government; and perpetuated it will be with a vengeance, if Gen. Cass shall be made the successor of Mr. Polk. No two things could be more diametrically opposed to each other, than the cardinal principle of the Whigs in opposing "Executive usurpation, and in insisting legislative supremacy of Congress,

and the practice, the doctrines, and the policy to be pursued under the sway of Democracy," if successful in the coming election. Light that cannot be endured for its intenseness, and darkness that may be felt, are not more opposite.

We have dwelt at some length on this article of Whig faith, because it is both cardinal and fundamental in our creed. It lies at the bottom both of our faith and of our hopes. We are republicans, and this doctrine is the essence of republicanism. We do not want a monarchy disguised under republican forms. We do not want the name of a republic, while at the same time it is Cæsar that rules. We believe both in conservatism and in progress; and we can indulge no hope, either of stability on the one hand or of advancement on the other, without this doctrine. Our system is elective and representative, and Congress was so constituted, in its two branches, as to preserve the popular and representative principle in full vigor, and at the same time give the promise of something like stability to the Government and its policy. We think it indispensable, on all accounts, that Congress should be maintained in the fall and free exercise of all its constitutional powers; and without this, we see no ground of hope for that moderate and wise policy of administration, and for those just measures on which we rely to make us a prosperous and happy people. Everts have clearly enough demonstrated that i the President is to override Congress and be himself the State-L'Etat, c'est ma

the will of the nation is of very le account in the measures that shall be pur sued. Personal or sectional views and a terests will govern everything. Anne tion was an Executive measure, and we carried by Executive dictation and intri against the better judgment of Congress and against the will of the nation. T war with Mexico was an Executive meas exclusively, about which Congress was af even consulted. There were not tw men in both houses of Congress who ca have been brought to vote for a war at time when hostilities were actually menced by the President's order; and a for the people themselves, a vote for s a measure could not have been obtained 2 any one State, county, town, district precinct in the whole Union-at least

of Texas.

We may see, by this example, | what it is, and what it must be, to have this Republic of ours converted into an elective monarchy. War, conquest, the lust of dominion-these things become the order of the day. The Whig party are against these things. We are for peace with all the world, as long as it can be maintained without sacrifices to which no nation can submit; and we do not doubt that, in this age, perpetual peace may be preserved with all nations, with no other effort on our part, than to be strictly honest and strictly just in all our dealings with them, to mind our own business, and let them alone. As a security for peace, we want that Congress, and not the President or anybody else, should tell the nation when it is necessary we should go to war. We are against the extension of our territorial limits, and the adding of far-off countries and peoples to our Union and dominion. We do not desire to extend the area of slavery; and we think the area of freedom may as well be extended by allowing our neighbors on all sides to establish and maintain free and independent governments for themselves, after our example, as by annexing them all to this Republic. We should have quite too much to do if we should undertake to embrace in this Union all the nations of the world now struggling to be free. The Whig party do not sympathize at all with that ambitious sentiment which prompted Gen. Cass, in his place as a Senator in Congress, to anticipate the time when "the whole of the vast country around us will form one of the most magnificent empires that the world has yet seen.' We want our own Republic and Union, with a homogeneous people, men of the same general race, blood, education, and habits, forming a consolidated nation, bound together in national interests and national unity, and growing in wisdom and in moral greatness as we increase in our physical proportions. We do not want Canada, or Cuba, or the West Indies, or Yucatan, or the projected republic of Sierra Madre to be annexed to the United States, whether without, or at the end of bloody wars. "Democracy," with Gen. Cass for its monocrat, is on the look-out or these acquisitions. Gen. Cass would lave gone to war with England for the ine of Fifty-four Forty, in the Oregon

country. Gen. Cass was in favor of our Executive war of conquest and spoliation against our imbecile neighbor and sister republic, and thought our digestive powers would carry us safely through, even if "we should swallow the whole of Mexico." He seems to look upon the United States as if the country were some monster reptile, that must subsist and swell its huge, unsightly bulk, by gorging itself with every living thing, small and great, that comes in its way. This is his idea of progress and national glory. Nothing less than "the whole of the vast country around us," continent and islands together, from the frozen regions of the North to the burning line, and God knows how much further, absorbed in this Union, or hitched to it and hanging upon it, and showing a monstrous, disjointed carcass of a country, "extended long and large, in bulk as huge as whom the fables name"-nothing less than this will satisfy Gen. Cass. And the "Democracy" would make him President, and, maugre the Constitution, allow him the rule and sway of the government, as if it had no department but his own, to prosecute his schemes of ambition and aggrandizement. The Whig party are opposed to all such profane madness. Our country was broad enough for all useful and wise purposes, and for the duties of our central government, even before our late acquisitions. We are utterly opposed to carrying this game any further. We think the fairest fabric of government ever framed is put in imminent jeopardy by this spirit of war, conquest, and forced aggrandizement, so industriously and zealously taught our people in the school of modern "Democracy"-the school of Allen, Cass, and Polk. It is the doctrine of these political schoolmasters that "the hearts of the people must be prepared for war;" and for what sort of war, and with what unholy objects prosecuted, and with what defiance of all right, moral and constitutional, undertaken, let the war with Mexico tell. War, conquest, territorial aggrandizement

this is the sum of the policy of these men for this country. "Democracy" is now engaged in earnest efforts to make Gen. Cass President, with undefined objects of war, conquest, and territorial extension floating before his eager vision. As President, if he can be made such, it is

carry out this policy, and he has shown abundantly already, that no constitutional impediments will be allowed to stand in his way. He would not hesitate to make war on his own responsibility, as Mr. Polk has done, with his full sanction and support. All the blandishments of Executive patronage and power would be freely used by him, as they have been by Mr. Polk, with his full assent and approval, both with Congress and with the people, in furtherance of whatever schemes or enterprises he might see fit to undertake. We who are Whigs look with equal disgust and horror on such doctrines and practices. Opposed to war, conquest, and territorial extension, and seeing how every kind of dishonest, wanton, and dangerous policy and practice is made to hang on the Executive will, is promoted by Executive usurpations, or by the corrupt and wicked appliances of Executive power, we are more and more confirmed and earnest in our advocacy and maintenance of the great fundamental principle of our political faith, which insists that the President must be reduced from the monstrous growth to which he has attained under "Democratic" dominancy, back again to the legitimate proportions assigned him by the Constitution. We want a Constitutional Executive, not a monocrat, at the head of this government. We want an honest and a modest man to fill the Executive office, one who shall feel that the weight of his proper constitutional duties is quite enough for him to bear, without seeking to take upon

his shoulders the added burthen of all other powers of government, legitimate or illegitimate.

But it is not only in such important matters as annexation, war, and conquest, that the President has been known to take an improper lead, and carry measures with a high hand. In the course and prosecution of the recent war, nothing in the way of exercising unaccorded powers was too bold or flagrant for Mr. Polk to attempt. He assumed, and exercised, the right of establishing civil government over provinces and peoples conquered by the American arms. And he established, by his personal authority, a regular system of taxation and revenue in all places held under military subjection, for the independent use of his

a privy counsellor, and a principal adviser and supporter of the President, and now stands, as far as he and his friends have the ability, as the lawful successor and inheritor of the powers of the Presidential office as wielded by Mr. Polk. Of the prerogatives belonging to this office, when once war has been begun, we have Gen. Cass's opinion very explicitly propounded in the Senate chamber. "Congress," he declared, could neither give him [the President] the power to carry on the war, NOR CONTROL THAT WAR." His "Democratic" creed teaches that Congress is nothing, or next to nothing, in the government, and the President is everything.

Nor is this a new or accidental doctrine with him. It is the faith in which he has lived from Gen. Jackson's day to this. It was the doctrine of that stern, self-willed, and wrong-headed old man, that the President is to support the Constitution "AS HE UNDERSTANDS IT, and not as it is understood by others." His doctrine was, that "the opinion of the Supreme Court," though formally pronounced in a judicial case, "ought not to control the co-ordinate authorities of this government.” "The opinion of the Judges has no more authority over Congress than the opinion of Congress has over the Judges, and, on that point, THE PRESIDENT IS INDEPENDENT OF BOTH,"

And this was not a mere theoretical opinion of the "old Roman." He acted upon it officially. In 1832, he based upo it a veto of an important law passed by Congress, and which had previously had the judicial sanction of the Supreme Court as to its constitutionality. And he did more than this. He refused to carry th law into execution, as it had been pre nounced by the Supreme Court, in the cast of the missionaries, Butler and Worcester who, for the exercise of their holy offices Georgia, had been sentenced to imprise ment in the penitentiary of that State hard labor for a term of years, under £ unconstitutional law; and he left these nocent victims to their fate. It very p erly fell to the part of Gen. Cass, the Secretary of War, to convey to those ☆ terested in the matter the tinal deter tion of the President. This he did ≈4 letter dated Nov. 14, 1831, and in wid the President's refusal to execute the ar

was placed expressly on his own opinion of the validity of the statute of Georgia, in opposition to the judicial opinion and judgment of the Supreme Court.

The "Democratic" doctrine of the supremacy of the Executive over the law, and over all other departments of the government, has been illustrated in other cases, and has been too uniformly held and acted on in the last twenty years to allow us to regard it as in any way casual or accidental. The country has not forgotten when Gen. Jackson "took the responsibility" of removing the public moneys in the treasury of the United States from the custody of the law to his own personal keeping, or a keeping under his personal orders. He challenged to himself the right to seize and control the money in the treasury, where the law had placed it, on the ground that "the custody of the public property" was AN APPROPRIATE FUNCTION OF THE EXECUTIVE DEPARTMENT in this and all other governments." Congress," he said, "cannot, therefore, take out of the hands of the Executive department the custody of the public property or money, without an assumption of Executive power, and a subversion of the first principles of the Constitution." And it is precisely on this wild and lawless doctrine of Executive powers held, not under the Constitution, but as "AN APPROPRIATE FUNCTION of the Executive department in this and all other governments," that Mr. Polk has acted, and justified his action, in setting up governments and exercising the sovereign right of taxation in countries conquered by our arms. And this is "Democratic" doctrine. The "Democratic" Convention at Baltimore leclared, the other day, "that the confilence of the Democracy of the Union in he principles," &c., of Mr. Polk, had "been ignally justified by the strictness of his aderence to sound Democratic doctrines." And Gen. Cass, the nominee of the party or the succession to this high office, to hich such appropriate functions" belong, eyond and above the Constitution, anounces that he had carefully read the esolutions of the Convention, and gave em his cordial approval.

It is the first article in the Whig creed at the President is not to exercise power "an appropriate function" of his office, hich the Constitution does not give him.

No power is "an appropriate function" of his office but such as the Constitution makes appropriate. We think and believe, if the President shall be confined strictly to his constitutional powers and duties, that we shall have no executive wars, no wars of conquest, no gratified lust after foreign possessions and territories, no annexation, no burthensome debts and grinding taxation, no intermeddling or corrupt tampering with Congress, and no vetoes of acts of ordinary legislation. Congress will be left to its own independent action, and the Supreme Court to its integrity. With all this, however, "Democracy" is at odds and enmity.

It belongs to the political faith of the Whig party, as a principle in their creed, that the powers given to the Government of the Union should be faithfully used for the advancement of the common good and the common prosperity of the nation. We hold that the power to lay duties and raise revenue, and the power over commerce, should be skilfully and beneficially employed. The employment of these powers belongs exclusively to Congress. So does the power over the territories and other property, and over the money of the United States. We think that the financial plans and fiscal system of the Government should be arranged and established by Congress, with proper reference to the interests and business affairs of the people, as well as to the convenience of the Government. We think the revenue system should be adjusted with some proper reference and regard to the industry and labor of the country of every kind, as affected by foreign importations and the state of trade. We think that navigation should be protected along with commerce, and commercial facilities increased on the sea-board, around the great lakes, and along the courses of the great rivers, by judicious expenditures of the public money for works of necessary improvement. These are measures of national benefit and advantage which the Whig party are glad to contemplate, and which they will feel it their duty to urge on the attention of the proper department of the Government, whenever the "Democracy," with its pestilent doctrines, shall lose its hold on the power of that department.

But, of course, it is to Congress, and not