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ded his remarks; and I shall have to rely mainly on the impulse of the moment for what I may chance to say.

It would be premature at this stage of the bill to discuss its details. I will not undertake to say they are perfect, or wherein they might be amended, at this time. I do not stand committed for or against any sin. gle provision as it now stands, and shall be happy to see adopted as many amendments as are calculated more perfectly to secure the great objects of the bill. This

is a very important subject, and I grant you it is as delicate as it is important; and I hope, at the proper stage, the details of this bill will be investigated and scrutinized with all that care and attention which the solemn importance of the subject so imperiously demands. For the present I shall only attempt to demonstrate that the ruinous evils enumerated in the preamble of the bill do exist in a degree that threatens the overthrow of our free institutions, and briefly to urge upon the House the most obvious necessity of immediate and efficient action upon the subject.

Wherever the principles of civil liberty have been well understood, this has been thought a subject of the most vital importance; and the severest penalties have been provided against officers of Government bringing to bear any sort of influence upon elections. Whenever the right of electing law-makers has been well secured to the citizen, that right has been protected and guarded by legislative enactments, so as to render the choice of the people at the poils free from all official control. For nothing could be a greater absurdity than for a Government to guaranty to its citizens the right to vote in choosing their rulers, and countenance the interference of any power whatever which is calculated in any degree to interfere with or infringe upon the free exercise of that right. In Great Britain, the country from which we derive many of our notions of free government, where but one of the three departments of the lawmaking power is elective, the most effective safeguards are thrown around the citizen at the polls, so as to render him as perfectly free as it is possible to render him. As early as 1691 that Government was seen providing heavy penalties against officers of Government attempting to exercise influence in elections. And the same course of legislation has been followed up by Parliament to the year 1809, when the fine for such interference was increased to £500, and many other disqualifica tions.

In 1801 the attention of Mr. Jefferson was called to this subject, and, in a letter to Governor McKean, he uses the following language: "One thing I will say as to the future interference with elections, whether of State or General Government, by officers of the latter, should be deemed cause of removal, because the constitutional remedy by the elective franchise becomes nothing if it may be smothered by the enormous patronage of the Federal Government." If the patronage of the Federal Government was so enormous in 1801, when its annual expenses were comparatively small, as to set at naught the elective franchise, how great must be the danger now that the annual expenses are between 30,000,000 and 40,000,000 dollars, and the number of federal officers multiplied in about the same proportion?

Again, in 1829, the attention of this nation was called to this subject, in the most solemn manner, by General Jackson, in his first inaugural address, in which he emplays the following language: "The recent demonstra. tions of public sentiment inscribe on the list of executive duties, in characters too legible to be overlooked, the task of reform; which will require, particularly, the correction of abuses that have brought the patronage of the Federal Government into conflict with the freedom of elections." Anterior to this period we had had six

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administrations, embracing a period of just forty years; and, from what I understand to be an authentic account, I have learned during that period but seventy-four offi. cers were turned out of office; of which number nine instances, I think, occurred in the administration which immediately preceded that of General Jackson. And although this nation has no evidence that a single one of those seventy-four officers was turned out for opinion's sake, yet General Jackson, apprehending that such might have been the case, and looking upon such an exercise of power with all that horror which it is calculated so naturally to excite in the bosom of every patriot, deemed it his duty to bring the subject before the country in this solemn form. This was the precept of President Jackson when first elected; but, incredible to tell, in the first term of his administration, he hurled from office between nine hundred and one thousand officers; and from that time up to this his course upon this subject has been onward, crushing as it were every thing like the freedom of elec. tions with the one hundred thousand officers under his control. He, by the exercise of this power, not only makes the officers slaves to his power, but also constitutes them so many efficient instruments in his hands to bring to bear the fullest extent of their influence upon all over whom they can exercise any control, at the risk of being proscribed and hurled from office. Sir, to wit. ness the deleterious and demoralizing effects of this monstrous practice is humiliating in the extreme, and threatens the most disastrous consequences to the country. Whether we live in the East, the West, the North, or the South, we need only to look around in the vicin ity of our own residence, and we see daily this influence of federal officers brought to bear on the freedom of our elections. In every county caucus, or State or national convention, we see the office-holders not only the prime movers, but most generally themselves constituting two thirds of the conventions. I will instance the single case of the great democratic State convention in Ohio, which assembled at Columbus on the 8th of January, 1834, for the purpose, amongst other party services, to nominate delegates to the Baltimore convention; then, from a published account of the names of the different officers and the offices they respectively filled, it ap pears, of the one hundred and seventeen members attending, one hundred and six were officers; and out of the nineteen congressional committees appointed by that convention for the State of Ohio, consisting of fifty-two members, thirty were office-holders. I have no doubt, if the subject were looked into, quite as large a proportion of office-holders would be found in the numberless public meetings of this sort, which we constantly witness in the various other sections of this country.

Now, when it is recollected that more than one twentieth of all our voters are, in effect, office-holders of the Federal Government, either directly or indirectly, upon the supposition that there are one hundred thousand office-holders, which includes, I suppose, all persons receiving a direct emolument from the Government, we may readily have a view of the tremendous power which a President may wield by executive power; having, upon an average throughout the country, in every twenty voters one who is dependent upon him for the bread upon which his wife and children have to depend for subsistence, and who knows the only reliance for the continued favor of his Government is his unceasing party services. Sir, under the practical operation of the present party discipline, the President has not only all the office-holders complete slaves to his power, but he also controls rather an indirect, but still a very powerful, influence over all the relations and friends of the office-holder; and he exercises, if possible, a still more powerful influence by operating upon the hopes of the numberless

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hungry applicants for office, outnumbering, by two or three fold, in all probability, the whole number of officers. In Great Britain, a number equal to one seventh part of all the voters in the kingdom hold office; in consequence of which, it was seen there that a corrupt and profligate King, holding the appointments to and removals from office in his own hands, might exercise a power over the vote of the citizen inconsistent with liberty. To remedy this crying evil, every lover of liberty in the kingdom set about the work of reform, not by words, but acts, and provided a most effectual remedy, which, as was shown by the honorable member from Tennessee, at one sweep disfranchised office-holders to the number of forty thousand, exceeding one seventh, as I remark ed, of the entire voting population of the kingdom. And such were the indignant murmurs in Parliament from all sides, both whigs and tories, when Lord North intimated that he could not perceive the impropriety of a Government officer exercising his personal influence in elections, that the distinguished lord could scarcely proceed with his remarks.

Sir, I profess myself to be a Jeffersonian democrat; I am for depriving no free white citizen of a vote; I look upon it as a most sacred prerogative; but I am not for extending it to slaves, for the suffrage of a slave would only be the reflected will of his master. Extend to such a population this high privilege, and you thereby only increase the votes of the master to the full number of slaves under his power. At this my democracy revolts; I hold that the poorest and humblest peasant at the ballot-box should have the same number of votes and the same power as that of the most potent nabob in the land. The great beauty in our system is, that all men have equal privileges, and, if equally honest, should be equally esteemed. But unwilling as I am to restrict the right of suffrage, I unhesitatingly go either for making the whole corps of official slaves free, or divest them of free suffrage; because it can do them no good, and, under the control of a bad master, may do the country much harm.

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his day, when there was less light in the world, he bought men with money, and conquered with his men in the bloody field of battle. In our day, men are bought with money, and their masters conquer through the ballot-box. This new pass to conquest I am for barring against every slave, and throwing open to every freeman.

General Jackson, in his veto to the land bill, said, "money is power." This he declared to the world as his opinion, and I believe it is about the only political opinion which he has not changed. In this he seems to have an abiding confidence; and he has not only given a prac tical illustration of his belief in this opinion, but, in the late canvass for the presidency, he has constrained all to admit its truth.

General Jackson, in his letter to Mr. Monroe, upon his elevation to the presidency, said to him: "Now is the time to exterminate that monster called party spirit." Would to God, sir, that he would now say to his com manding majority in both Houses, exterminate this monster, liberate the hundred thousand whom executive patronage and power have bound down in chains.

Slavery begets meanness. Who has not beheld, for the last eight years, with grief and mortification, the standard of public morals lowering its once lofty top, until it is now prostrate in the dust? Who has not seen truth, and virtue, and patriotism, all that is beautiful and lovely in the land, sinking, decaying, dying, beneath the onward and blighting power of proscription?

It appears, from a slip which I cut from a newspaper, which purports to present an official return from all the States, that a change of five hundred and ninety votes would have changed the result of the late presidential election in the States of Louisiana, Mississippi, Rhode Island, and Connecticut. The federal officers in those States would much exceed this number; and if so, Mr. Van Buren, surely, did not receive the votes of a majority of the free voters of those States. And can any gentleman seriously contend that persons holding office, and, consequently, under so much terror of the Executive of these United States, were independent voters in the late presidential election?

Sir, whether useful legislation shall grow out of this subject at this session, or not, I, for one, am resolved to stir the subject; and hackneyed as it may seem, as long I do not deny but that some of the subordinate officers as I retain my station here, be the consequences what of the Government are of the opposition, but I hesitate they may, I will never cease my efforts, humble and un- not to give it as the result of my deliberate opinion that availing as they may prove, until some remedy shall be ninety-nine out of every hundred of the offices worth provided. For unless a change can be wrought from having are held by friends of the administration, unless the present state of things, by which one man, by the under peculiar circumstances, such as in some instances money and patronage of the Government, controls half I have known, and many I have heard of, where the ina million of voters, this Government has no charms for cumbent was required to vote for the Government canI may have in my nature the elements of a tyrant, didate, and allowed the poor privilege of retaining the but, thank God, not of a slave. Sir, I am opposed to name of a member of the opposition. There are many proscription for opinion's sake, under any aspect in little cross-road post offices, where the emoluments are which the subject can be presented, and against the sla-literally nothing, and where there resides but one famivish principle I swear eternal hatred, and wage an inter- ly; and in such cases, I suppose, an opposition man is oc minable war. casionally appointed to an office.

me.

No candid man, unless shamefully ignorant of the history of the times, can deny that in this, the only entirely free form of government on earth, hundreds of thousands of the freeborn citizens are enslaved in the most inexorable bondage by the patronage and money of the Government.

It is the duty of every patriot to stand by his country in this hour of trial, and call men and things by their proper names. I denounce that man as an enemy to his country and its constitution, let him be high or low, in or out of station, who will either himself practise or sanction in others the punishment, by means of Government power, of the citizen for voting at the polls according to his own free choice.

Cæsar said, give me money, and I will buy men; give me men, and I will conquer the world. He verified, to the entire satisfaction of the world, this declaration. In

Gentlemen have solemnly asserted on this floor that a majority-yea, I think the gentleman from Indiana [Mr LANE] said, the other,day, a large majority-of the office holders under this administration are opposed to it; and cited, as a proof of the assertion, that even bere, in thi District, a large majority of the clerks are in the oppo sition. Sir, I regret to hear such assertions made here because I feel myself constrained to assert, in my place that he who ventures such an assertion says that which in the very nature of the case, it is impossible he coul know to be true; for I will venture my existence tha not a member on this floor knows one twentieth part o the clerks in this city even by name, much less the politics. If I assert that to be true, of the truth which, in the nature of the case, I could not know, sur ly I state that which is substantially untrue. Sir, th clerkships in this District are much sought after, for th

FEB. 1, 1837.}

Freedom of Elections.

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up last year, in my opinion, specifically in reference to the then pending presidential election, to exceeding $38,000,000, three-fold as much as the average annual appropriations of any previous administration in time of peace, together with $40,000,000 of surplus revenue, with which to buy up the influence of all the venal banks in the country, Mr. Van Buren failed to get a majority of the votes cast, I ask every candid mind, does it not speak volumes for the purity of the people; and is it not conclusive proof to the opposition that the elements of a successful resistance to the principles of spoils and plunder are with us; that we should wait for the happening of no future event, out of which new parties are to be formed, but fight on? Let the watchword with every patriot be victory or death!

officers get well paid for all they do; and, without pretending to any knowledge on this subject other than what I infer from that which I have seen and known to exist elsewhere, I venture to say that not one out of twenty, if indeed there be one out of the whole number, openly acknowledges he is opposed to the adminis tration. I know, sir, in confidential conversations with members of the opposition, they sometimes freely unbosom themselves, and think as badly, and speak as unsparingly, of the men and measures of the party as I do, and yet say, notwithstanding, they call themselves supporters of the administration. Sir, what I speak I know, and so do other members on this floor. No, sir; tell me not that the clerks, here or elsewhere, in the employment of this Government, even if they disapprove and condemn both the men and measures of the administra- Friends of the opposition, if, in selecting a candidate tion, dare express it. I know it is not the case, but, under whose banner we are to rally in future, there upon the other hand, they are slaves, and fear to speak be an unworthy member among us, whose attachment the truth; and that is not half: their innocent daughters to any particular man, or whose personal views, will and wives are also afraid to speak out the truth. This I cause him to stand out against the choice of a majorhave witnessed, and never before did I behold a specta- ity of our friends, let him retire from our ranks, and ele that filled my soul with so much disgust and loathing take a station among those whose souls are more congefor their oppressors. The tendency of these things is nial with his own; he is not worthy of a station in the disgraceful to the enlightened age in which we live. ranks of those who are now fighting the battles of the And, sir, I appeal to your party, who have unlimited constitution against corruption and bribery. We fight power, in both branches of this Congress, to come for- not for office, nor place, nor merely for the sake of amward, and give us a remedy for these intolerable griev-bition and victory; but for the restoration of those conances. I invite you to look back to the history of the stitutional principles for which our fathers fought through revolution of parties in all Governments on earth, and the Revolution of '76. He amongst us who fights for a say whether you can always expect to keep in the ascen- less worthy motive is not entitled to a station amongst dency; whether you see nothing in the late presidential us. Whether in great political struggles, or on the canvass which should produce misgivings. Do you not bloody battle field, oppressors cannot compete with see, with all of General Jackson's unrivalled popularity, equal numbers of the oppressed. Sir, the slaves of a and the $40,000,000 of surplus revenue, you were una- tyrant's power were taught by the oppressed, on the ble to carry for Mr. Van Buren a majority of the votes field of San Jacinto, the folly of attempting to subjugate actually cast; and that your success is attributable more those whose hearts were imbued with the principles of to the weakness of their adversaries, growing out of di freemen; and I now warn the advocates of party and vision among themselves, than to your own strength spoils to profit by the example. Now, that you must soon part with these two mainstays of your party, Jackson and the money, had you not bet-ty of proscription, the most despicable of all political ter agree on terms before another contest?

Mr. Speaker, I think I fully understand the confident, ardent, and perhaps the too sanguine character of my own organization. But, after making all due allowance for it, I feel the most encouraging confidence that all is not yet gone, but that the elements of a successful resist ance are yet in full and vigorous existence in this country; that it requires the happening of no future event, out of which new parties are to be formed, before successful resistance can be made. What proof need I adduce in support of this opinion, other than the result of the late presidential election, and the circumstances attending it? True, there exist some differences on subordinate points in the great whig party who opposed Mr. Van Buren; but these differences are mainly upon gone. by and now settled questions. And but one principle in the late canvass animated that party; it was that whig spirit which stood up for our free constitution in opposition to the ruthless march of spoils and of party. We were divided in opinion, sir, in different portions of the Union, as to the most available opposition candidate upon whom to unite; the consequence was, a want of that inspiring confidence of success which is ever indis. pensable to bring the voters to the polis. The people, however, seeing no possible chance to elect at the polls either of the opposition candidates, attended the elections barely as a sort of homage to the constitution; many thousands, however, failed to come out through depondency. Notwithstanding all these disadvantages, Mr. Van Buren failed to receive, by several thousand, a majority of the votes actually given. If then, sir, with all the popularity of General Jackson, all the patronage of this Government, growing out of appropriations run VOL. XIII.-96

Under the fullest conviction of the utter indefensibili

heresies, gentlemen of the administration attempt to justify themselves, not upon principle, by alleging that the opposition, if in their situation, would act as they do. This, sir, I humbly trust, would never be the case; but if it were, surely it would not render right that which is in and of itself so utterly wrong.

Sir, I admit that in some of the State Governments, where the opponents of this administration have gained the ascendency, they have, to some partial extent, turned out of office their political opponents. This, sir, I admit to have been wrong in them, and I never will attempt to justify it, whether practised by friends or enemies. If, however, any measure which in itself is wrong could possibly be excused, surely there is the best sort of apology for this impropriety in those States where the enemies of the administration have been ground into the dust by federal power, and been swept en masse from every office of the Federal Government. It seems to be a natural impulse of our nation when stricken to strike back, when oppressed to resist oppression; and when it is conducted upon the principles of "spoils and plunder," the savage mode of warfare, where neither sex, age, nor condition, is spared, it would be more than human, when pressed to the last extreme of desperation, not to carry the war into the territory of the enemy, and even to use, in a spirit of revenge upon the oppressors, their own savage weapons; and as wrong as this may seem in our judgment upon principle, so long as frail human nature remains what it is, it will to some extent be observed.

But, sir, such policy is at war with every principle of the constitution, and no true-hearted whig, who understands the principles of his party, will ever approve this

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as a correct rule of action. Sir, when I say whig, I mean every man, to whatever minor division he may belong, who stands up for the country and the principles of our constitution against the lawless assaults which this administration is committing upon all the dearest and most vital principles of free Government; and he who fights for spoils and plunder in our ranks is unworthy of his station, and should take his stand in the ranks of those whose hearts are more congenial with his own.

In my

There is not an office-holder in this Government toward whom I have one unkind feeling, and I regret that public duty requires of me to allude to the case of any individual, particularly, in my own region of country. As this subject has been voluntarily obtruded upon the notice of the House by those who have, in debate here, assumed to take upon themselves the defence of this administration, I, as a representative of the people, do not feel at liberty to consult my inclinations when opposed to my convictions of duty. In Kentucky there are instances where appointments to office under this administration have been conferred on the most irresponsible characters, over the heads of the best citizens. own district, the office of postmaster was conferred upon an individual who, though he had lived in the county for twelve or fifteen years, where he has from eight hundred to a thousand political friends, could not procure a single individual who would go his security for paying over to the Government the proceeds of the office. Sir, he had been notoriously and utterly insolvent for the last ten years; and yet he held the office for about six months; and at last, when he could not procure security, and was apprized he could not longer keep it without security, he very civilly did what every man that I ever heard speak of the subject predicted he would do when dismissed: he kept whatever had not been drawn out of his hands; which the Postmaster General informed me in an official communication but the other day. sum was small; it amounted but to eighty-six dollars and ninety cents. This is truly a very inconsiderable amount, but it answers to illustrate the degrading tendency of the policy of this administration. In another instance, the office of postmaster in a very respectable village was conferred on a man that had not credit to hire a horse to ride to his wedding, and was compelled to make the trip on foot. Sir, under such policy as has characterized this administration, corruptions as naturally grow up as does vegetation spring forth in the spring. They imperiously demand some remedy.

The

The most extravagant and high-wrought eulogies have been poured forth by gentlemen upon this floor on General Jackson and his administration; and, in a tone approaching defiance, we are told, with all the solemnity for which the style of the venerable gentleman from Louisiana is so remarkable, that General Jackson is not surpassed by Washington in the field, and Jefferson in the cabinet. He said, wo be to that man whose name shall be found on the page of his country's history as the accuser of Andrew Jackson! Sir, it was not my pleasure that this subject should have been brought up upon this occasion; but, as it has been brought before the country, I am not the man to shrink from the responsibility of speaking what I think is the truth of any man; and, sir, with a full knowledge of the import of what I am about to utter, and with the greatest possible deliberation, I say that, if I were vain enough to suppose my name would ever be handed down to posterity as the friend and defender of the liberties of my country, there is no page of history which I should so much desire to occupy as that of pronouncing upon this floor, as an American Congressman, in the noontide of General Jackson's administration, that he has done more, in the short space of eight years, to lower the standard of public morals, to corrupt the source of all legitimate power, and sub

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vert the principles of civil liberty, without the spilling of blood, than any one man who has ever lived.

Sir, this Government is, to every practical purpose, thoroughly revolutionized. All power is in the execu tive department. We have nothing but the forms of a free government left. But I feel encouraged, from the late presidential election, to believe there is virtue and intelligence enough in the people to reinvigorate with new life that skeleton of the only free form of govern ment on earth.

I will not, for a moment, allow myself to doubt that all is yet safe, if we but emulate the example of our fa thers who bequeathed to us, at the price of much blood, this our beloved form of government.

There is no one cause which will more certainly pro duce its specific effect, than that the proscriptive policy of this administration, the turning out of office the incumbent for daring to vote according to his own free will, the punishment of the citizen for opinion's sake, unless arrested, must soon render this the corruptest Government on earth. Human nature is the same all over the earth, and is subject to be acted upon by the same causes, whether in a free or despotic Government. You will find most of vice and corruption where there is most inducement to lead to crime, and least to deter from its commission. And let it not be supposed, because we have the only truly free and republican form of government on earth, that our citizens are incorruptible. Once establish it as the constitutional doctrine that your President has the power to remove for opinion's sake, and let public sentiment sanction it, and then give him what General Jackson had in the late presidential canvass, one hundred thousand offices at his disposal, with thirty odd millions of appropriations to expend, and forty millions of surplus revenue in his hands, and if he do not dictate and appoint his successor, it will be because he is a Washington, and not a Jackson. Thank God, these principles are not yet sanctioned by the people of these United States; but whenever they are, I now proclaim it, that, believing such a Government not worth preserving, I will be for revolution; yes, sir, a revolution purified by the blood of every traitor who dares to mention such ruinous, damning principles.

Sir, it has been said here, on this floor, that Genera Jackson should have swept from office every opponent This doctrine for a while was too chilling for this me ridian. It first made its appearance at a distance, in northern clime; an ominous region, I fear; it was thrown out as a feeler, first, I believe, in the State from which the President elect comes. Now, sir, we find it advoca ted in every section of the country, and acted upon a the governing rule of this administration. It is not th doctrine of the constitution; and no man, it seems to me can believe it is. Go, sir, to the framers, the authors o the constitution. Go to that great man, Jefferson, wh draughted your constitution, and what do you learn Without one exception, the language of all who hav spoken upon the subject pronounces this to be an unco stitutional power; that he who, as President, would dar to practise it, should be impeached and hurled from o fice. Shall I insult the understanding of this House b stopping to prove that every man should be as free an as unrestrained in the natural bent of his inclinations, the ballot-box, as the water that flows along the dow ward current? Once settle it that your President has th constitutional power, and that public sentiment sanctio its exercise, to hurl from office every incumbent w votes against the Government candidate, and you n only make slaves, in the mode already pointed out, one fourth of your voters, but you will have arraye under the control of one man's will, a mighty host war against the bulwarks of public liberty.

If the President does not derive from the constituti

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the power to turn out officers on political grounds, from whence does he derive this most alarming prerogative to take the money of the people, intrusted to him as a public servant, solely to promote the public good, to gratify his own personal malignity in the punishment of an enemy, or to gratify his private and individual attachments to a political favorite, who has won his favor by fawning, flattering, and lying? Sir, he derives it from the same source that the outlaws of every nation derive the prerogative of committing piracy on the high seas; the same source from whence the highway robber derives the prerogative to demand of the traveller his purse, under the penalty of death; the same source from which I, as the employed agent of a company that had intrusted me with $30,000,000, to be laid out and expended by me in a specific way, for their benefit, would derive the prerogative to use their means as an engine to oppress a personal enemy, or to divide it among my friends or children, which is simply the possession of the physical power, the brute force.

Just as well might General Jackson march the regular army, of which he is, by virtue of his station, commander-in-chief, to the doors of this Capitol, and demand the head of every member or Senator who bas dared to speak the truth of him, as to wreak his vengeance, or that of some unprincipled subaltern, upon the helpless officer, by hurling him from his station, for daring to discharge his constitutional right at the polls. Yes, a thousand times better would it be for the country; for, in the one case, the people would see and understand the object of the movement, and would fly to the rescue, and deal out summary vengeance on such a blood-thirsty despot; whilst, in the other case, the same object is attained by the concentration of all power in the hands of one man, but in a secret, sly, and insinuating mode, which it seems the acuteness of the public vision has not yet so clearly discerned.

If the King of England or of France were thus openly to require that every office holder, under the penalty of dismissal from office, should vote, in elections of members to Parliament or Chamber of Deputies, for the candidate of his choice, it would produce an instantaneous convulsion; and nothing short of the head of the King would pay the penalty. Sir, even in those kingly Governments, their laws and constitution guard most sedulously the freedom of the elective franchise. Here the officer is turned out who fails to operate to the fullest extent of his influence in favor of the Government candidate.

Before Mr. GRAVES had finished his remarks, as given entire above, the House, on motion of Mr. CAMBRELENG, proceeded to the orders of the day, the

INDIAN APPROPRIATION BILL.

The bill making appropriations for the current expenses of the Indian department, and for fulfilling treaty pulations with the various Indian tribes, for the year 1837, coming up; and the question being on concurring with the Committee of the Whole in the amendments made thereto

Mr. CUSHING said that the bill before the House, making appropriations for the current expenses of the Indian department, threw open to discussion the whole policy of the Government of the United States in relation to the Indians. On comparing the bill with the estimates presented by the Committee of Ways and Means, the House would see that it embraced annuities and other payments to the Indians, under the treaty with the Creeks of the 7th August, 1790, and the treaty concluded at Greenville on the 3d August, 1795, for the general pacification of the Wyandots, Delawares, Shawa nees, and others of the northwestern tribes, and so down, through intervening years, to the treaty of the

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28th March last, with the Ottawas and Chippewas. The provisions of the bill covered the entire period of the constitutional being of the nation. There was not an act of our political intercourse with the Indians, which it did not directly or indirectly reach. The present was, therefore, a fit opportunity for examining the treatment of the Indians by the United States, and their respective rights and obligations; and upon this subject he proposed to address the House.

His object, he said, in debating this matter, was not political agitation. Nor was it personal effect. On the contrary, he felt admonished that, in the performance of this undertaking, he should have to tread on difficult and dangerous ground. Nevertheless, he was impelled to it, in the first place, by perceiving that the true state of the case between the United States and the Indians, as it now exists, was not fully comprehended out of doors, at least in that part of the country from whence he came. Men speak and think of the subject just as they did seven years ago, when it was a still depending question, whether the Indians should remain within the chartered limits of the several States in which they are, or should remove beyond the Mississippi. Meanwhile, the United States had entered upon a new line of policy and of general conduct towards the Indians. Another set of facts had, in the course of events, come up, to which it was time the public attention should be turned, if any thing of a practical nature was to be done. He wished, so far as his humble means of influence might go, to contribute something to the accomplishment of that end. This was one consideration. And he was impelled, in the second place, by a desire to begin to discharge the duty which he owed, as a public man and a member of Congress, to the broken remnant of the aboriginal masters of this continent.

We, (said Mr. C.,) who are members of Congress in opposition to the administrators of the Government, have but a secondary part assigned to us in public affairs. We seldom have the power to carry through any impor tant act. We can agitate political topics, for effect on the popular mind abroad, or on those about us here. We can make suggestions, communicate facts, propose measures. We can support those plans of the administration which we think to be just and wise, and resist those which seem unjust or unwise. In all these conditions, we influence the action of the Government chiefly by force of argument addressed to the judgment or the fears of that controlling majority in either House, which represents or executes the will of the administration. We may thus be useful to prevent evil and to promote good, to persuade, to deter, to correct, where we have no power to command. An opposition frequently exercises valuable functions in the originating and furthering of great measures, which, at length, when thus commended to general favor, are adopted and sanctioned by the administration; signal examples of which might be cited from the history of the English Parliament, as well as of Congress. In a word, I conceive that we should be wanting to ourselves and to our country, if we did not bring the acts of the Government, in which the interest of the nation, its honor, and its well-being, are involved, to the test of temperate and candid debate; and I shall make no further apology for presenting my views to the consideration of the Пlouse.

What, then, is the system of policy which regulates the relations of the United States and the Indians, at the present time, and what our duty, as practical statesmen, and as men of business, in reference to the Indians?

We call ourselves Americans. But we, who now occupy the country, are, in ourselves, or in our immediate progenitors, emigrants from the distant shores of Europe. We are not of the indigenous races of the continent. We constitute a vast republic, divided into populous and

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