Thirty Years' View (Vol. II of 2)

These reasons show the vice and folly of the acts which a pride of consistency still made him adhere to. That compromise act of 1833 assumed to fix the tariff to eternity, first, by making existing duties decline through nine years to a uniform ad valorem of twenty per centum on all dutied articles; next, by fixing it there for ever, giving Congress leave to work under it on articles then free; but never to go above it: and the mutual assurance entered into between this act and the land distribution act of the extra session, was intended to make sure of both objects – the perpetual twenty per centum, and the land distribution. One hardly knows which to admire most, the arrogance, or the folly, of such presumptuous legislation: and to add to its complication there was a clear division of opinion whether any duty at all, for want of a law appointing appraisers, could be collected after the 30th of June. Between the impracticability, and the unintelligibility of the acts, and his consistency, he having sanctioned all these complicated and dependent measures, it was clear that Mr. Tyler's administration was in a deplorable condition. The low credit of the government, in the impossibility of getting a small loan, was thus depicted:

"Who at the time foresaw or imagined the possibility of the present real state of things, when a nation that has paid off her whole debt since the last peace, while all the other great powers have been increasing theirs, and whose resources already so great, are yet but in the infancy of their development, should be compelled to haggle in the money market for a paltry sum, not equal to one year's revenue upon her economical system."

Not able to borrow, even in time of peace, a few millions for three years! This was in the the time of paper money. Since gold became the federal currency, any amount, and in time of war, has been at the call of the government; and its credit so high, and its stock so much above par, that twenty per centum premium is now paid for the privilege of paying, before they are due, the amounts borrowed during the Mexican war:

"This connection (the mutual assurance between the compromise act and the land distribution) thus meant to be inseparable, is severed by the bill presented to me. The bill violates the principle of the acts of 1833, and September, 1841, by suspending the first, and rendering, for a time, the last inoperative. Duties above twenty per cent. are proposed to be levied, and yet the proviso in the distribution act is disregarded. The proceeds of the sales are to be distributed on the 1st of August; so that, while the duties proposed to be enacted exceed twenty per cent. no suspension of the distribution to the States is permitted to take place. To abandon the principle for a month is to open the way for its total abandonment. If such is not meant, why postpone at all? Why not let the distribution take place on the 1st of July, if the law so directs? (which, however, is regarded as questionable.) But why not have limited the provision to that effect? Is it for the accommodation of the Treasury? I see no reason to believe that the Treasury will be in better condition to meet the payment on the 1st of August, than on the 1st of July."

Here Mr. Tyler was right in endeavoring to get back, even temporarily, the land revenue; but slight as was this relaxation of their policy, it brought upon him keen reproaches from his old friends. Mr. Fillmore said:

"On what principle was this veto based? The President could not consent that the distribution of the proceeds of the public lands should cease for a single day. Now, although that was the profession, yet it appeared to have been but a pretence. Mr. F. wished to speak with all respect to the chief magistrate, but of his message he must speak with plainness. What was the law which that message vetoed? It authorized the collection of duties for a single month as they were levied on the first of January last, to allow time for the consideration of a permanent revenue for the country; it postponed the distribution of the proceeds of the public lands till the month should expire, and Congress could provide the necessary supplies for the exhausted Treasury. But what would be the effect of the veto now on the table? Did it prevent the distribution? By no means; it reduced the duties, in effect, to twenty per cent., and authorized the distribution of the land fund among the States; and that distribution would, in fact, take place the day after to-morrow. That would be the practical operation of this paper. When Congress had postponed the distribution for a month, did it not appear like pretence in the chief magistrate to say that he was forced to veto the bill from Congress, to prevent the distribution, which his veto, and that alone, would cause to take place? Congress had been willing to prevent the distribution, but the President, by one and the same blow, cut down the revenue at a moment when his Secretary could scarce obtain a loan on any terms, and in addition to this distributed the income from the public domain! In two days the distribution must take place. Mr. F. said he was not at all surprised at the joy with which the veto had been hailed on the other side of the house, or at the joyful countenances which were arrayed there; probably this act was but the consummation of a treaty which had been long understood as in process of negotiation. If this was the ratification of such treaty, Mr. F. gave gentlemen much joy on the happy event. He should shed no tears that the administration had passed into its appropriate place. This, however, was a matter he should not discuss now; he should desire the message might be laid on the table till to-morrow and be printed. Mr. F. said he was free to confess that we were now in a crisis which would shake this Union to its centre. Time would determine who would yield and who was right; whether the President would or would not allow the representatives of the people to provide a revenue in the way they might think best for the country, provided they were guilty of no violation of the constitution. The President had now told them, in substance, that he had taken the power into his own hands; and although the highest financial officer of the government declared it as his opinion, that it was doubtful whether the duties could be collected which Congress had provided by law, the President told the House that any further law was unnecessary; that he had power enough in his own hands, and he should use it; that he had authorized the revenue officers to do all that was necessary. This then would be in fact the question before the country: whether Congress should legislate for the people of this country or the Executive?"

Mr. Alexander H. H. Stuart, of Virginia, took issue with the President on the character of the land distribution bill, and averred it to have been an intended part of the compromise from the beginning. He said:

"That the President has rested his veto upon the grounds of expediency alone, and not upon any conscientious or constitutional scruples. He withholds his assent because of its supposed conflict with the compromise act of 1833. I take issue with the President in regard to this matter of fact, and maintain that there is no such conflict. The President's particular point of objection to the temporary tariff bill is that it contemplates a prospective distribution of the land proceeds. Now, conceding that the President has put a correct construction on our bill, I aver that it is no violation of the compromise act to withdraw the land proceeds from the ordinary purposes of the government, and distribute them among the States. On the contrary, I maintain that that act distinctly contemplates the distribution of the land proceeds, that the distribution was one of the essential elements of the compromise, and that the failure to distribute the land fund now would of itself be a violation of the true understanding of those who adopted the compromise, and a palpable fraud upon the rights of one of the parties to it."

Mr. Caruthers, of Tennessee, was still more pointed to the same effect, referring to Mr. Tyler's conduct in the Virginia General Assembly to show that he was in favor of the land revenue distribution, and considered its cessation as a breach of the compromise. He referred to his,

"Oft-quoted resolutions in the legislature of Virginia, in 1839, urging the distribution, and conveying the whole proceeds of the lands, not only ceded but acquired by purchase and by treaty. Mr. C. also referred to the adroit manner in which Mr. Tyler had at that time met the charge of his opponents (that he desired to violate the compromise act) by the introduction of the well known proviso, that the General Assembly did not mean to infringe or disturb the provisions of the compromise act."

The vote was taken upon the returned bill, as required by the constitution; and falling far short of the required two-thirds, it was rejected. But the exigencies of the Treasury were so great that a further effort to pass a revenue bill was indispensable; and one was accordingly immediately introduced into the House. It differed but little from the first one, and nothing on the land revenue distribution clause, which it retained in full. That clause had been the main cause of the first veto: it was a challenge for a second! and under circumstances which carried embarrassment to the President either way. He had been from the beginning of the policy, a supporter of the distribution; and at the extra session had solemnly recommended it in his regular message. On the other hand, he had just disapproved it in his message returning the tariff bill. He adhered to this latter view; and said:

"On the subject of distributing the proceeds of the sales of the public lands, in the existing state of the finances, it has been my duty to make known my settled convictions on various occasions during the present session of Congress. At the opening of the extra session, upwards of twelve mouths ago, sharing fully in the general hope of returning prosperity and credit, I recommended such a distribution; but that recommendation was even then expressly coupled with the condition that the duties on imports should not exceed the rate of twenty per cent, provided by the compromise act of 1833. The bill which is now before me proposes, in its 27th section, the total repeal of one of the provisos in the act of September; and, while it increases the duties above twenty per cent., directs an unconditional distribution of the land proceeds. I am therefore subjected a second time, in the period of a few days, to the necessity of either giving my approval to a measure which, in my deliberate judgment, is in conflict with great public interests; or of returning it to the House in which it originated, with my objections. With all my anxiety for the passage of a law which would replenish an exhausted Treasury, and furnish a sound and healthy encouragement to mechanical industry, I cannot consent to do so at the sacrifice of the peace and harmony of the country, and the clearest convictions of public duty."

The reasons were good, and ought to have prevented Congress from retaining the clause; but party spirit was predominant, and in each House the motion to strike out the clause had been determined by a strict party vote. An unusual course was taken with this second veto message: it was referred to a select committee of thirteen members, on the motion of Mr. Adams; and from that committee emanated three reports upon it – one against it, and two for it; the committee dividing politically in making them. The report against it was signed by ten members; the other two by the remaining three members; but they divided, so as to present two signatures to one report, and a single one to the other. Mr. Adams, as the chairman, was the writer of the majority report, and made out a strong case against Mr. Tyler personally, but no case at all in favor of the distribution clause. The report said:

"Who could imagine that, after this most emphatic coupling of the revenue from duties of impost, with revenue from the proceeds of the sales of the public lands, the first and paramount objection of the President to this bill should be, that it unites two subjects which, so far from having any affinity to one another, are wholly incongruous in their character; which two subjects are identically the same with those which he had coupled together in his recommendation to Congress at the extra session? If there was no affinity between the parties, why did he join them together? If the union was illegitimate, who was the administering priest of the unhallowed rites? It is objected to this bill, that it is both a revenue and an appropriation bill? What then? Is not the act of September 4, 1841, approved and signed by the President himself, both a revenue and an appropriation bill? Does it not enact that, in the event of an insufficiency of impost duties, not exceeding twenty per centum ad valorem, to defray the current expenses of the government, the proceeds of the sales of the lands shall be levied as part of the same revenue, and appropriated to the same purposes?"

The report concluded with a strong denunciation of, what it considered, an abuse of the veto power, and a contradiction of the President's official recommendation and conduct:

"The power of the present Congress to enact laws essential to the welfare of the people has been struck with apoplexy by the Executive hand. Submission to his will, is the only condition upon which he will permit them to act. For the enactment of a measure earnestly recommended by himself, he forbids their action, unless coupled with a condition declared by himself to be on a subject so totally different, that he will not suffer them to be coupled in the same law. With that condition, Congress cannot comply. In this state of things, he has assumed, as the committee fully believe, the exercise of the whole legislative power to himself, and is levying millions of money upon the people, without any authority of law. But the final decision of this question depends neither upon legislative nor executive, but upon judicial authority; nor can the final decision of the Supreme Court upon it be pronounced before the close of the present Congress."

The returned bill being put to the vote, was found to lack as much as the first of the two-thirds majority, and was rejected. But revenue was indispensable. Daily demands upon the government were undergoing protest. The President in his last message had given in $1,400,000 of such dishonored demands. The existing revenue from imports, deficient as it was, was subjected to a new embarrassment, that of questioned legality for want of a law of appraisement under the compromise, and merchants paid their duties under protest, and with notices of action against the collector to recover them back. It was now near the end of August. Congress had been in session nine months – an unprecedentedly long session, and that following immediately on the heels of an extra session of three months and a half. Adjournment could not be deferred, and could not take place without providing for the Treasury. The compromise and the land distribution were the stumbling-blocks: it was determined to sacrifice them together, but without seeming to do so. A contrivance was fallen upon: duties were raised above twenty per centum: and that breach of the mutual assurance in relation to the compromise, immediately in terms of the assurance, suspended the land revenue distribution – to continue it suspended while duties above the compromise limit continued to be levied. And as that has been the case ever since, the distribution of the revenue has been suspended ever since. Such were the contrivances, ridiculous inventions, and absurd circumlocutions which Congress had recourse to to get rid of that land distribution which was to gain popularity for its authors; and to get rid of that compromise which was celebrated at the time as having saved the Union, and the breach of which was deprecated in numerous legislative resolves as the end of the Union, and which all the while was nothing but an arrogant piece of monstrosity, patched up between two aspiring politicians, to get rid of a stumbling-block in each other's paths for the period of two presidential elections. In other respects one of the worst features of that personal and pestiferous legislation has remained – the universal ad valorems – involving its army of appraisers, their diversity of appraisement from all the imperfections to which the human mind is subject – to say nothing of the chances for ignorance, indifference, negligence, favoritism, bribery and corruption. The act was approved the 30th day of August; and Congress forthwith adjourned.

CHAPTER C.

MR. TYLER AND THE WHIG PARTY: CONFIRMED SEPARATION

At the close of the extra session, a vigorous effort was made to detach the whig party from Mr. Clay. Mr. Webster in his published letter, in justification of his course in remaining in the cabinet when his colleagues left it, gave as a reason the expected unity of the party under a new administration. "A whig president, a whig Congress, and a whig people," was the vision that dazzled and seduced him. Mr. Cushing published his address, convoking the whigs to the support of Mr. Tyler. Mr. Clay was stigmatized as a dictator, setting himself up against the real President. Inducements as well as arguments were addressed to the whig ranks to obtain recruits: all that came received high reward. The arrival of the regular session was to show the fruit of these efforts, and whether the whig party was to become a unity under Mr. Tyler, Mr. Webster, and Mr. Cushing, or to remain embodied under Mr. Clay. It remained so embodied. Only a few, and they chiefly who had served an apprenticeship to party mutation in previous changes, were seen to join him: the body of the party remained firm, and militant – angry and armed; and giving to President Tyler incessant proofs of their resentment. His legislative recommendations were thwarted, as most of them deserved to be: his name was habitually vituperated or ridiculed. Even reports of committees, and legislative votes, went the length of grave censure and sharp rebuke. The select committee of thirteen, to whom the consideration of the second tariff, in a report signed by nine of its members, Mr. Adams at their head, suggested impeachment as due to him:

"The majority of the committee believe that the case has occurred, in the annals of our Union, contemplated by the founders of the constitution by the grant to the House of Representatives of the power to impeach the President of the United States; but they are aware that the resort to that expedient might, in the present condition of public affairs, prove abortive. They see that the irreconcilable difference of opinion and of action between the legislative and executive departments of the government is but sympathetic with the same discordant views and feelings among the people."

A rebuking resolve, and of a retributive nature, was adopted by the House. It has been related (Vol. I.) that when President Jackson sent to the Senate a protest against the senatorial condemnation pronounced upon him in 1835, the Senate refused to receive it, and adopted resolutions declaring the protest to be a breach of the privileges of the body in interfering with the discharge of their duties. The resolves so adopted were untrue, and the reverse of the truth – the whole point of the protest being that the condemnation was extra-judicial and void, coming under no division of power which belonged to the Senate: not legislative, for it proposed no act of legislation: not executive, for it applied to no treaty or nomination: not judicial, for it was founded in no articles of impeachment from the House, and without forming the Senate into a court of impeachment. The protest considered the condemnatory sentence, and justly, as the act of a town meeting, done in the Senate-chamber, and by senators; but of no higher character than if done by the same number of citizens in a voluntary town meeting. This was the point, and whole complaint of the protest; but the Senate, avoiding to meet it in that form, put a different face upon it, as an interference with the constitutional action of the Senate, attacking its independence; and, therefore, a breach of its privileges. Irritated by the conduct of the House in its reports upon his tariff-veto messages, Mr. Tyler sent in a protest also, as President Jackson had done, but without attending to the difference of the cases, and that, in its action upon the veto messages, the House was clearly acting within its sphere – within its constitutional legislative capacity; and, consequently, however disagreeable to him this action might be, it was still legislative and constitutional, and such as the House had a legal right to adopt, whether just or unjust. Overlooking this difference, Mr. Tyler sent in his protest also: but the House took the distinction; and applied legitimately to the conduct of Mr. Tyler what had been illegally applied to General Jackson, with the aggravation of turning against himself his own votes on that occasion – Mr. Tyler being one of the senators who voted in favor of the three resolves against President Jackson's protest. When this protest of Mr. Tyler was read in the House, Mr. Adams stood up, and said:

"There seemed to be an expectation on the part of some gentlemen that he should propose to the House some measure suitable to be adopted on the present occasion. Mr. A. knew of no reason for such an expectation, but the fact that he had been the mover of the resolution for the appointment of the committee which had made the report referred to in the message; had been appointed by the Speaker, chairman of the committee; and that the report against which the President of the United States had sent to the House such a multitude of protests, was written by him. So far as it had been so written, Mr. A. held himself responsible to the House, to the country, to the world, and to posterity; and, so far as he was the author of the report, he held himself responsible to the President also. The President should hear from him elsewhere than here on that subject. Mr. A. went on to say that it was because the report had been adopted by the House, and not because it had been written by him, that the President had sent such a bundle of protests; and therefore Mr. A. felt no necessity or obligation upon himself to propose what measures the House ought to adopt for the vindication of its own dignity and honor; and perhaps, from considerations of delicacy, he was indeed the very last man in the House who should propose any measure, under the circumstances."

Mr. Botts, of Virginia, a member of the committee which had made the report, after some introductory remarks, went on to say:

"In 1834 the Senate had adopted certain resolutions, condemning the course of President Jackson in the removal of the deposits from the Bank of the United States to the State banks. In consequence of this movement on the part of the Senate, President Jackson sent to that body a protest against the right of the Senate to express any opinion censuring his public course; and, what made the case then stronger than the present case, was, that the Senate constituted the jury by whom he was to be tried, should any impeachment be brought against him. The Senate, after a long, elaborate discussion of the whole matter, and the most eloquent and overpowering torrent of debate that ever was listened to in this country, adopted the three following resolutions:

'1. Resolved, That, while the Senate is, and ever will be, ready to receive from the President all such messages and communications as the constitution and laws, and the usual course of business, authorize him to transmit to it; yet it cannot recognize any right in him to make a formal protest against votes and proceedings of the Senate, declaring such votes and proceedings to be illegal and unconstitutional, and requesting the Senate to enter such protests on its journal.'

"On this resolution the yeas and nays were taken; and it was adopted, by a vote of 27 to 16: and, among the recorded votes in its favor, stood the names of John Tyler, now acting President of the United States, and Daniel Webster, now his prime minister.

"The second resolution was as follows:

'2. Resolved, That the aforesaid protest is a breach of the privileges of the Senate, and that it be not entered on the journal.'