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THE CONDUCT 
 
 OF 
 
 THE ADMINISTRATION. 
 
 REPRINTED FROM 
 
 THE BOSTON DAILY ADVERTISER AND PATRIOT. 
 
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 S BOSTON: 
 
 STIMPSON & CLAPP, 72 WASHINGTON STREET. 
 
 J. E, Hinckley & Co., Printers, 14 Water Street. 
 
 1832. 
 

THE 
 
 CONDUCT OF THE ADMINISTRATION. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 In less than two months from this time, the country will pass 
 through an important political crisis. A community of more 
 than twelve million souls will be called on to elect, by a nearly 
 universal suffrage, a chief Executive Magistrate, who is to exer- 
 cise over them most of the powers that belong in other countries 
 to the office of an hereditary sovereign. A proceeding of this 
 kind is entirely without parallel in the previews history of the 
 world, and were it to happen in some remote foreign nation, 
 would be justly entitled to profound and anxious attention, as a 
 mere experiment in the science of civil polity. When we recol- 
 lect that this great and curious experiment is to be performed 
 upon the living body politic of which we are ourselves members; 
 that the fortunes of our country, and with them our own and 
 those of our friends and families are involved to a considerable 
 extent, in its results ; — we shall perhaps consider it not unnatural 
 to suspend for a i'ew moments the ordinary routine of private 
 business, and inquire with some seriousness into the nature of the 
 duties which the crisis in question will devolve upon us as elect- 
 ors and citizens. 
 
 We have said that there is nothing in the history of the world 
 at all parallel to this singular and imposing scene. There have 
 been, no doubt, and still are, other communities organized on the 
 principle of an elective chief magistracy. Such was the case with 
 the great Republics of Rome and Carthage, with most of the 
 democracies of ancient Greece and modern Italy, with Switzer- 
 land and Holland, and at one period with the unfortunate King- 
 dom of Poland. But in all these countries the state of the com- 
 
munity and the form under which the elective principle was ap- 
 plied, were so totally different that it is impossible for us to turn 
 them to any practical account as precedents : the case is entirely 
 new. 
 
 No precise parallel to it can be found, even in the preceding 
 elections of the same kind, that have taken place among ourselves. 
 The state of the country changes so rapidly that in the short 
 space of four years new forces are introduced into our political 
 machinery of which it is impossible to calculate beforehand the 
 operation or the effects. At the first election we had only thir- 
 teen States ; we have now four and twenty. — When Mr. Jeffer- 
 son was chosen President we had less that six million inhabitants; 
 we, have now by the census more than twelve, and in reality 
 more than thirteen. At all the earlier elections our largest cities 
 did not contain more than twenty or thirty thousand inhabitants ; 
 they now contain more than two hundred thousand, and have 
 begun to assume in consequence a different physiognomy, and 
 to exercise a different action on community. Before the year 
 1800, the West was a vast wilderness ; it now holds the balance 
 of political power among the States, and expects at no distant 
 day to sway the sceptre. Since the last election it has received 
 from the new census a considerable augmentation of strength. 
 These changes and various others hardly less important, to which 
 we cannot even allude, have materially varied the political as- 
 pect of the country from one election to another, and will con- 
 tinue to render them all, as they successfully occur, operations 
 of a new impression, involving elements that have never been in 
 action before, and of which the nature and effects can of course 
 be foreseen with very little certainty. 
 
 This indisputable fact gives an additional and alarming inter- 
 est to a crisis already in its very nature sufficiently important. — 
 We are like mariners compelled to pass through a dangerous 
 channel, where the sands are continually shifting, and where the 
 charts tl)at have been formed upon the experience of former voy- 
 ages are necessarily more or less incorrect. Under these circum- 
 stances, it would be madness to indulge in a false security. We 
 must be on the alert, and keep a bright look-out for breakers, or 
 we shall certainly get into shoal water. 
 
 We are met, however, at the outset by the objection, that it is 
 after all of little importance what individual fills the office of 
 President. One i)erson, it is said, will go through the routine of 
 this place about as well as another; or if there be a difference, 
 it will not be sufficiently important to affect in any way the great 
 interests of the country. We are now so flourishing and pros- 
 perous that we can get along perfectly well under any chief 
 
magistrate, and it is not worth while for the citizens to leave 
 their own concerns for the sake of interfering in an election, of 
 which the result is necessarily a matter of indifference. 
 
 Such language, though employed in most cases as a cover 
 for selfishness, indolence or disguised Jacksonism, is occasionally 
 heard from the mouths of Vv'ell-meaning men. No error can be 
 more ruinous in a government like ours, the very existence of 
 which depends upon the constant vigilance of the people. The 
 administration of the government is in fact tlie great concern of 
 the community and of all its members. Upon it depend the 
 maintenance of the public peace — the security of the life, prop- 
 erty and happiness of the individual citizen. No temporal in- 
 terest can be named in comparison with it for importance and 
 magnitude. Education, for example, which is often and justly 
 represented as a most important concern, is nevertheless entirely 
 secondary and subordinate to that of Government. Education 
 provides for the improvement of a future generation : Govern- 
 ment secures the existence and prosperous condition of the pre- 
 sent, v/hich involves of course those of all that are to follow. — 
 Of what use is it to provide accomplished actors, to figure some 
 thirty years hence on the great theatre of society, if in the mean 
 time, by the effect of misgovernment, the edifice itself is shaken 
 to its basis and tumbles in fragments about our ears? Govern- 
 ment therefore is the great and paramount concern. Religion 
 alone, v.-hich provides for the wants of man considered as an im- 
 mortal being, is of more importance than any merely temporal 
 interest : and it is the chief practical injunction of Religion that 
 we are not to wrap ourselves up in a cold, heartless, exclusive 
 attention to our personal affairs, but to discharge with zeal, in- 
 dustry, vigilance and effect, our social duties. 
 
 In periods of general political prosperity, we are apt to under- 
 value the importance of Government, and to neglect the cares 
 and duties that belong to it, just as in a healthy and vigorous 
 state of the body we are apt to underrate the importance of tem- 
 perance and exercise. " Why," says the vigorous and athletic 
 youth, "should I trouble myself with any of these idle restric- 
 tions? I have an excellent constitution: no matter what I do : 
 I can bear any thing." Let him try this system for two or three 
 years — give way without restraint or reflection to his vicious ap- 
 petites, and what will be the consequence? Bis animal func- 
 tions are all disordered. Disease visits him in twenty loathsome 
 shapes. He must now withdraw his attention from every other 
 occupation, and direct it entirely to the vain and hopeless labor 
 of attempting to recover the blessing, which he undervalued be- 
 fore, and which he has now lost forever. 
 
Just so it is with the body politic. Every thing flourishes: — 
 we have an excellent constitution : — we can bear any thing : — 
 no matter who is President. Thus says the optimist; and, with- 
 out even taking the trouble to vote, he goes on quietly increas- 
 ing the number of his dollars. In the mean time, the agents of 
 evil never slumber, and the helm which the well-meaning citizen 
 is too indolent to grasp, falls into the hands of the Hills, the Ken- 
 dalls and the Lewises, who make a President to their minds, and 
 then make themselves Vice Presidents over him, under the style 
 and title of the Kitchen Cabinet. Let this go on for a few years 
 and what follows? — Proscription — Confiscation — internal dissen- 
 sion, foreign and domestic war. The optimist, who could not 
 afford an hour or a dollar for the public affairs, must shell out 
 his dollars by thousands, and pour out his heart's blood to the 
 last drop — for what ? In the hopeless attempt to recover the po- 
 litical well-being which, once lost, can no more be restored than 
 the health of the natural body. 
 
 Look at France. When was there ever a country to all out- 
 ward appearance more flourishing and prosperous, than the king- 
 dom of France on the 1st of June, 1830? The King, Charles 
 X., who was then sovereign there as the people are now sove- 
 reign in this country, thought that he could do any thing, and 
 wisely turned out a very competent set of Ministers, in order to 
 introduce another under his natural son. Prince Polignac. Po- 
 lignac, conceiving in his turn that in so prosperous a condition 
 of affairs he could do any thing; without dano-er, amused himself 
 and his royal master by repealing the liberty of the press, and 
 the right of suflTrage. What followed ? Less than three years 
 have since elapsed. Charles X. and his family are scattered to 
 the four winds — Polignac and his associates are locked up in 
 dungeons. In all these cases, the worthless tools by whom the 
 mischief has been done are the first victims; and if the matter 
 stopped here there would be no great cause for regret. But this 
 is not all. France — Europe, are plunged into almost hopeless 
 confusion. The streets of Paris have been repeatedly the theatre 
 of carnage, and are now, with several of the Departments, under 
 martial law. The peacefid pursuits of industry are all suspended. 
 War has broken out in various quarters ; and every sign portends 
 the occurrence of another of those general convulsions which 
 destroy in a great measure the peace and happiness of the civ- 
 ilized world, for at least one generation. 
 
 Are the people of the United States exempt from the operation 
 of the causes which determine the fortunes of men and nations 
 in other parts of the world ? No. If we permit our most im- 
 portant alFairs to be managed for any length of time by corrupt 
 
and incompetent persons, we shall certainly suffer for it. This 
 is the law of nature ; and nothing but a miraculous intervention 
 of Providence, which is never vouchsafed to the indolent and 
 careless, can save us from its operation. If we madly entrust 
 the command of our grand and admirable political Steam-Boat, 
 with all its complicated machinery, to a set of ignorant, passion- 
 ate, reckless officers, whose chief recommendation is a talent for 
 railing and swearing, we may possibly make one or two trips 
 without accident, but at no distant time the EXPLOSION 
 MUST COME. The wretches whose presumption and folly 
 will have occasioned it, if it do happen, will be first blown 
 to atoms; but with them will also perish the splendid bark, the 
 troops of passengers, and the high hopes of political improve- 
 ment throughout the world, that have so long been connected 
 with the fortunes of the star-spangled banner of Western Liberty. 
 
 Far from being powerless, the President of the United States 
 is the most effective and important, as he is the highest in dig- 
 nity of our political functionaries. It is he who gives in the last 
 resort, the impulse to almost every movement of the political 
 machine. The mischiefs which have already resulted from the 
 mal-administration of the present incumbent in that office, are 
 but too apparent; and he must be a bold man, who, after a care- 
 ful and dispassionate survey of our present political condition, 
 will undertake to say with any assurance, that the constitution 
 of the country would hold out four years longer under the same 
 management. For ourselves, though not habitually of a despond- 
 ing disposition, though generally rather apt to indulge in favor- 
 able views of the future, we are compelled to express our decided 
 conviction, that the re-election of Jackson for another term, 
 would be fatal to the Union. 
 
 The crisis we are approaching, is, therefore, deeply interest- 
 ing. It brings with it high responsibilities, and solemn duties. — 
 It becomes us to reflect maturely beforehand upon the course 
 we shall take, and not lightly, or from any merely party or per- 
 sonal prejudice, cast a vote, which may have so material an in- 
 fluence on the public welfare. 
 
 The partisans of Gen. Jackson have proposed him as a can- 
 didate for re-election. That ho should have given his consent 
 to this — that he should even have almost publicly solicited a 
 nomination after all his previous protestations of a contrary char- 
 acter, is one among a great number of gross inconsistencies, 
 which prove but too plainly his want of any fixed principles of 
 conduct. Since, however, he has consented to come before the 
 public a second time, and is seriously held up by a large, if not 
 respectable, party, it become.s necessary to examine his preten- 
 
8 
 
 sions, and to survey the course of his administration, which, for 
 the honor of the country, it would be much more agreeable to 
 consign at once to oblivion. We propose, accordingly, in sev- 
 eral following papers, to consider successively, 
 
 1. The qualifications of Gen. Jackson for the Chief Magistracy 
 of the Union. 
 
 2. The means by which he rose to that high dignity at the 
 last election — and 
 
 3. The manner in which he has discharged his duties as Pre- 
 sident, during the current term. 
 
 It will appear, from the result of our inquiries, that he is utterly 
 disqualified for the place, and that it is the bounden duty of every 
 patriotic citizen to lay aside all minor considerations, and join 
 heart and hand in the great and generous effort which is now 
 making in all quarters to defeat his re-election. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 CHARACTER OF JACKSON— MEANS BY WHICH HE WAS 
 
 ELECTED. 
 
 We propose, in the present chapter, to consider the qualifica- 
 tions of General Jackson for the Presidency of the United States, 
 and the means by which he was elevated to that office at the last 
 election. 
 
 General Jackson — before his nomination as a candidate for 
 the Presidency — was known to the public as a daring, reckless 
 and successful military commander. In his campaigns against 
 the British and the Indians, he had repeatedly set at defiance 
 the letter and spirit of the Constitution, the received maxims of 
 public law, and the common feelings of humanity. The people 
 had been rather disposed, in consideration of the substantial 
 benefits which had accrued to the country from his military 
 operations, to attribute these excesses to impulse and igno- 
 rance, rather than to a deliberate design to do wrong; but, 
 taken in connexion with the known violence and rudeness of 
 his private life, they served distinctly to characterize the man. 
 In civil and political aff'airs, he had shown — though often placed 
 in conspicuous positions — an absolute nullity. We allude to 
 his private qualities no farther, than to say, that he was entirely 
 destitute of the ordinary accomplishments of a well-bred gentle- 
 man, and incapable of writing a common English letter with 
 tolerable correctness. 
 
That such a person was wholly unfit for the office of President 
 of the United States, is a proposition too plain to admit of ar- 
 gument. But this is not enough. We may safely go much 
 farther, and say with perfect truth, that of all the citizens in any 
 way known to the public, General Jackson was the only one, 
 whose election might fairly be regarded as dangerous, and whom 
 it was particularly expedient not to place in the President's 
 chair. There was undoubtedly a choice among the prominent 
 men of the country, some of whom would probably have transact- 
 ed the business more acceptably than others ; but no other 
 candidate could have been mentioned, of whom it would not have 
 been said at once that his election — whether expedient or not — 
 was at least not dangerous. Of General Jackson this could not 
 be said. The elevation to power of a bold, able, and unprinci- 
 pled "Military Chieftain" has been uniformly fatal to the con- 
 stitution of every free State in which it has occurred. If we have 
 not already found our Cromwell, we owe it to the winter on 
 General Jackson's head, and not to his moderation or our own 
 prudence. At the preceding election by the House of Repre- 
 sentatives, Mr. Clay, with his usual clear and strong sense, had 
 perfectly apprehended the nature of the case, and stated it dis- 
 tinctly in his letter to Judge Brooke. He did not choose to 
 commit the guardianship of our civil institutions to a daring and 
 reckless soldier. For this exercise — we will not say of patriot- 
 ism or sagacity — but of ordinary common sense, he was brand- 
 ed by the partisans of Jackson with corruption. It was appar- 
 ent at the time to every one, not absolutely blinded by party 
 prejudice, that any otlier course than the one he took would 
 indeed have argued corruption, and that of the grossest char- 
 acter. 
 
 General Jackson was therefore not only destitute of all the 
 qualifications and accomplishments necessary for the place, but 
 was, by particular circumstances, positively disqualified for it ; — 
 was in fact, as we have said, the only man in the country whose 
 elevation would be actually dangerous, and whom it was there- 
 fore particularly expedient not to place in the Presidency. By 
 what fatality then did it happen, that this most enlightened and 
 thinking people should have fixed precisely upon him as the 
 most proper person for the office ? The fact must undoubtedly 
 be attributed in part to the sort of caprice which sometimes pre- 
 vails in popular, as well as in arbitrary governments. King De- 
 mus, like other sovereigns, has his moments of wantonness, 
 in which he plays tricks as fantastic and as mischievous as any of 
 theirs. The result in question was however mainly owing to the 
 intrigues of artful men, who found it convenient to employ 
 2 
 
10 
 
 General Jackson's military reputation as a machine for advanc- 
 ing their own selfish projects. 
 
 The General was first presented to the public as a candidate, 
 by the local feeling of -his own State. With this we find no 
 fault, and are rather disposed to regret that there is not more of 
 a similar spirit in some other quarters, where it would probably 
 be applied with more judgment and better effect. The adhesion 
 of Pennsylvania was the first event, that gave any importance to 
 the nomination which, till then, had been looked upon as a sort 
 of bad joke. By what influence Pennsylvania, previously pledg- 
 ed to Mr. Calhoun, was induced to take this somerset, is, we 
 believe, even now not very distinctly known. It was certainly 
 not done at the instance of Mr. Calhoun, who was as much sur- 
 prised as all the rest of the world, when he first learned the fact 
 through the newspapers. Whatever may have led to it, it was 
 certainly the first thing which gave to Jackson the least impor- 
 tance as a candidate. — For this timely declaration in his favor, 
 and for her subsequent steady adhesion to his cause, the Gene- 
 ral is now showing his gratitude to Pennsylvania by striking a 
 death-blow at her most valuable institutions, and her favorite 
 schemes of policy. 
 
 The nomination having thus acquired a title to attention, was 
 encouraged in some of the Southern States, more with a view 
 of effecting a diversion of votes from other candidates than from 
 a real wish for the General's success. In this way, however, he 
 was brought into the House of Representatives as the candidate 
 having the highest number of votes. To pretend that the House 
 were for this reason bound to elect him President, is of course 
 absurd. If the Constitution intended that the candidate having 
 the highest number of votes should of course be President, why 
 did not the Constitution say, that a plurality, and not a majority 
 of votes, should decide the election? It is really wonderful, that 
 a statesman so distinguished as Mr. Calhoun should publicly 
 commit himself to an opinion so clearly and palpably untenable. 
 The House were obviously at full liberty to select from the three 
 candidates the one whom they preferred. — Mr. Crawford was 
 disqualified by the state of his health, and the choice really lay 
 between Mr. Adams and General Jackson : — that is, between 
 the only man in the country, whom it was on every account par- 
 ticularly expedient not to make President, and one of those citi- 
 zens, who were on every account best qualified, — were his pri- 
 vate manners a little more gracious, perhaps we might say with 
 justice, the one, who of all the citizens, was best qualified, — for 
 this great office. It did not require all the lofty genius, far- 
 sighted sagacity, and wide expanse of views, that belong to Mr. 
 
11 
 
 Clay, to decide such a question. Any man of common sense 
 and common integrity would have settled it in ten minutes, as 
 he did. The people were fully satisfied with the decision. 
 The administration of Mr. Adams more than justified the expec- 
 tations of his warmest friends ; and if the voice of inveterate 
 local prejudice and personal ambition could have been stifled, 
 and the real public opinion of the country been allowed to de- 
 clare itself, he would have been re-elected President, four years 
 after, without a dissenting vote. 
 
 This, however, was not to be expected. Poor human nature 
 is the same at all times and in all countries, and on this occasion 
 we saw an exhibition of some of her least attractive features. 
 Before the new administration had commenced operations, it 
 was openly declared, by the fanatical partisans of the Military 
 Chieftain, that they should be put down were they as pure as 
 the angels in heaven. Perceiving that a desperate struggle 
 would be made for Jackson by this blind and reckless faction, 
 the (Political leaders who aimed to succeed Mr. Adams in the 
 presidency thought it safer to attach their fortunes to Jackson, 
 whom they supposed to possess a great personal popularity, 
 than to Mr. Adams, who as an Eastern man, and his father's 
 son, was likely to encounter the strong and deeply-rooted preju- 
 dices of a large section of the country. — Under this persuasion, 
 Mr. Van Buren, who had previously acted as the chief manager 
 of the Crawford party, and Mr. Calhoun, then strong at the 
 South in his high station and the sreat talents of himself and his 
 partisans, if not in a wide reach of territorial influence, sunk for 
 a time their conflicting personal pretensions, and formed a com- 
 hination to defeat the re-election of Mr. Adams, and to bring in 
 General Jackson as his successor. 
 
 When we compare the respective pretensions of these two 
 persons, and recollect that their characters were perfectly well 
 known to the men most active in forming this combination, we 
 are compelled to say that we doubt whether the history of the 
 world furnishes an example of a more unprincipled and corrupt 
 intrigue. It is painful — it is mortifying — it degrades our view 
 of human nature, to think that such men as Mr. Van Bureri, and 
 especially Mr. Calhoun, whom we look upon as personally in 
 every respect a much superior man to the other, — should have 
 engaged in it. Both will find to their cost that a plain, manly, 
 upright policy would have served their purpose much better. 
 Had Mr. Calhoun pursued such a course from the first, we have 
 reason to believe that he would have been appointed secretary 
 of state by Mr. Adams. In that case he would have followed 
 Mr. Clay in the Presidency. — His prospects are now completely 
 
12 
 
 desperate, and he has nothing to depend upon for his future con- 
 sequence but the " sad cure," such as it is, of NulHfication. 
 The loss of such a man is a public misfortune. Van Bureu — 
 but of this man, his character and his prospects, we shall speak 
 hereafter. 
 
 The combination thus formed effected its object by means not 
 less corrupt and unprincipled, than the views in which it had 
 its origin. The wisest measures were met in the halls of Con- 
 gress by a bitterness and virulence of opposition which contrasts 
 singularly enough with the easy acquiescence in the same 
 quarter in the open violations of the Constitution and laws by 
 the present Executive. But the great organ was the Press ; 
 and the means employed through the Press to undermine the 
 administration were chiefly of two kinds — FALSE PRE- 
 TENCES and PERSONAL SLANDER. 
 
 1. FALSE PRETENCES.— The adherents of Jackson as- 
 sumed for themselves the exclusive title of the Republican Party, 
 and denounced the administration as Federalists and aristocrats. 
 By continually harping upon this string, they probably did more to 
 shake the confidence of the people than in any other way. They 
 knew perfectly well that the assertion was false. The Fed- 
 eralists had ceased, since the war, to act as a party. The five 
 gentlemen who had appeared as candidates at the preceding elec- 
 tion, Messrs. Adams, Jackson, Crawford, Clay and Calhoun, were 
 all connected with the Republican party, and had enjoyed its 
 confidence for years. There was no Federal party nor Federal 
 candidate in the country. The assertion was therefore grossly 
 false : in the mouths of those who made it was not merely false 
 but BASE and mean. When the Republican administration were 
 struggling with almost insuperable difficulties, Mr. Adams had 
 given them the weight of his name, talents, and influence. He 
 had done more than any individual in the country to help them 
 honorably out of the war. In taking this course, he had incurred 
 a good deal of ill-will with former political friends whom he had 
 been obliged to oppose. To those who retained the feelings 
 and prejudices of the old Federal party there was not a man in 
 the country so obnoxious as Mr. Adams. Such was the person 
 whom Republican editors, after receiving the benefit of his co- 
 operation and services in the most difficult times, did not scruple 
 to denounce as an opponent. It would be vain to expect any 
 great generosity of feeling from the common herd of partisan 
 politicians; but ingratitude for benefits received is after all one 
 of the basest and blackest traits that can disgrace the human 
 character. Ingraium si dixeris, omnia dicis. 
 
 False, base, and mean as it was, the pretence did more, as we 
 
1 
 
 o 
 
 have said, than any other single cause to shake the confidence 
 otthe people. When urged by the leading Republican papers, 
 as it was in some of the states, particularly in New Hampshire 
 and Maine, it had an appearance of plausibility, and produced 
 effect. The other great instrument employed by the party, hardly 
 less effectual and certainly not more honorable than the one that 
 we have mentioned, was 
 
 2. PERSONAL SLANDER.—Slander is undoubtedly one 
 of the crying sins of this nation. Next to intemperance in the 
 use of liquor, it may be looked upon as our chief national vice. 
 The toleration of it to the extent to which it is carried, is 
 the darkest shade in the present state of civilization among us, 
 although it is one that has escaped the attention of the 
 wiseacres, male and female, who annually come from Europe 
 to spy out the nakedness of our land. It will be absolutely ne- 
 cessary, before long, that well-meaning citizens should form a 
 general combination throughout the country for the suppression 
 of this odious vice — like that which has been formed with so 
 much success for the suppression of intemperance ; if we mean 
 to escape the severe judgments that Providence inflicts upon us, 
 as a punishment for it, in the elevation of corrupt and wicked 
 rulers. The extent to which it was carried by the Jackson party 
 during the administration of Mr. Adams, is almost incredible. 
 From the General himself, who did not scruple to join in the 
 charge of corruption against his competitor — the man whom he 
 had emphatically described as a friend in need — the man to 
 whom he had been indebted, at the most critical periods of his 
 career, for more than life — from General Jackson himself, down 
 to the meanest village editor that barked in his train, the uni- 
 versal staple of attack was personal slander. To draw out the 
 falsehoods that were then circulated from the oblivion to which 
 they have long been consigned, would on every account be worse 
 than useless. One, however, deserves to be remembered for its 
 uncommon atrocity, and stamped as a perpetual brand upon the 
 forehead of its guilty and infamous author. The President of 
 the United States, a man remarkable for the purity of his life 
 and conversation, and his lady, a matron of spotless character, 
 the father and mother of a virtuous family, were publicly charged 
 in print by a vile pamphleteer, with having made their home, 
 while abroad, a scene of prostitution. Did the party disavow 
 this disgusting calumny ? Did they expel the unmanly author 
 of it from their ranks, fix a note of infamy upon him, and set 
 him adrift, to wander about like Cain, a marked man upon the 
 face of the earth ? Far from it. After the outrage had been 
 fully exposed on the floor of the House of Representatives, Gen- 
 
14 
 
 eral Jackson nominated the foul calumniator to a lucrative and 
 honorable post in the executive department of the Government. 
 When the Senate of the United States, to their everlasting honor, 
 rejected, by an almost unanimous vote, the disgraceful nomina- 
 tion, the party at home took up the slanderer, and made him, 
 as if in mockery, a member of the body that had just set upon 
 him the seal of deserved reprobation. There he still remains — 
 a monument of the utter political degradation of the state of 
 New Hampshire. 
 
 Such were the means by which the election of Gen. Jackson 
 was brought about, and such were his qualifications for the 
 Chief Magistracy of the Union. The course of his administra- 
 tion corresponded entirely with the expectations which, under 
 such circumstances, would naturally have been formed of it, as 
 will amply appear in the following chapters. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 FORMATION OF THE CABINET. 
 
 We have seen, in the preceding chapter, that General Jackson 
 was, and is, utterly disqualified by his personal character and 
 previous military career for the office of President : — that his 
 election was the result of the intrigues of political leaders, who 
 employed his popularity as a machine for the advancement of 
 their own selfish projects ; and that the means by which it was 
 effected were chiefly False Pretences and Personal Slan- 
 der. We propose to treat in the present article, of the manner 
 in which he constituted his Cabinet. 
 
 The General's total incapacity to discharge the duties apper- 
 taining to the Presidency was hardly denied even by his own 
 partisans ; but in order to evade the objection, they asserted 
 that he would compose an able Cabinet : — that he would select 
 for the heads of the several departments, men in whom the na- 
 tion might place confidence, and that these would do perfectly 
 well the business which, it was admitted, the General could not 
 do himself. This plan was quite an innovation, and certainly no 
 improvement upon preceding modes of administering the Gov- 
 ernment ; but when it was found that Jackson was actually elect- 
 ed, the friends of the country thought there was some reason to 
 hope and expect, that the promise thus held out of an able Cabi- 
 net would he reaWsed. The ability of the Cabinet would have 
 
15 
 
 furnished no adequate compensation for the incapacity of the 
 Chief Magistrate, upon whom the responsibility for the Executive 
 Department rests; but it was at least desirable that there should 
 be capacity somewhere, and if it were wanting in the head, it was 
 imperiously necessary that it should be found in the members. 
 
 Never were hopes and expectations more completely disap- 
 pointed. It seemed as if the new President, in constituting his 
 Cabinet, and in making all his other appointments, had adopted 
 the principle which the People had acted on in electing him ; 
 that of taking the least competent man whom they could find. 
 The individuals among his own friends, in whose character and 
 talents the people felt any confidence, were studiously passed 
 over, and the offices were given, either to persons who were too 
 insignificant to have attracted any attention, or who were known 
 merely as violent political partisans. Such was the case at 
 Washington — in this city — and, as far as we are informed, 
 throughout the country. 
 
 The Jackson party consisted at that time of three principal 
 sections or elements : — the General's personal adherents, the 
 political friends of Mr. Calhoun, and those of Mr. Van Buren. 
 Each of these sections comprehended gentlemen of merited dis- 
 tinction, who had been drawn, by some strange fatality, into the 
 support of Jackson, but whose names would have given respec- 
 tability to the new Cabinet, and commanded, to a certain extent, 
 the public confidence. Such were among the General's personal 
 adherents, Messrs. Livingston, White and Grundy : among the 
 friends of Mr. Calhoun, Messrs. Hayne, McDuffie, and Hamil- 
 ton : among those of Mr. Van Euren, Mr. Tazewell, Gov. Dick- 
 inson, Mr. McLane, and Mr. Forsyth. All these were men of 
 known ability, and enjoyed, though in very different degrees, a 
 certain share of the public esteem. The Calhoun men were the 
 most eminent of the whole, and until they had destroyed their 
 reputation for judgment and patriotism by the miserable farce of 
 nullification, composed as brilliant a cluster of statesmen as 
 could be found in any one of the states. It was understood, that 
 Mr. Van Buren was to be Secretary of State. The purists, who 
 had felt so much horror at the corrupt bargain between Messrs. 
 Adams and Clay, hardly denied that such was the previous ar- 
 rangement. But it was confidently expected that the friends of 
 Mr. Calhoun and of the General himself would be represented in 
 the Cabinet by some of the distinguished gentlemen enumerated 
 above. What was the astonishment and dismay of all good men, 
 when it was announced before the inauguration, that the Cabinet 
 was to consist, beside Mr. Van Buren, of Messrs. Ingham, Branch, 
 and Eaton, and that Postmaster-General McLean, a Jackson 
 
16 
 
 man, was to give way to Mr. Barry ! The only drop of comfort 
 in the new arrangement was the appointment of Mr. Berrien, 
 who, though infected with all sorts of political heresies, is an 
 able, and personally, respectable man. — But Mr. Berrien was 
 only Attorney General, and was not a member of the Cabinet ; 
 which was composed of Messrs. Van Buren, Ingham, Branch, 
 Eaton, and Barry. Such was the construction of the able Cabinet, 
 which was to make up, by its acknowledged capacity, for the ac- 
 knowledged want of capacity in the head of the government, and 
 which the Richmond Enquirer, who is fond of a joke, does not 
 hesitate to describe as the ablest that had existed in the country 
 since the first of General Washington. 
 
 In representing Messrs. Ingham and Branch as not at that 
 time possessing the public confidence, we mean no particular 
 disparagement to their characters. They were almost wholly 
 unknown to the people. They afterwards exhibited — especially 
 Mr. Ingham — more ability than the public had expected from 
 them, and their conduct on the change of administration, some- 
 what raised them in the general estimation. Major Eaton is, we 
 believe, personally not an obnoxious man. He is represented as 
 essentially a weak, simple-hearted, good-humored creature, not 
 without some notions of honor and courtesy, and, like Mr. Van 
 Buren, ambitious of no other glory than that of having merited 
 the esteem and confidence of Gen. Jackson. But that any one 
 should have dreamed of him as a constituent member of an able 
 Cabinet ; — a Cabinet which was to make good the deficiencies of 
 the chief, and equal or surpass the fame of the first Washington 
 administration, — this is indeed rather singular. Thomas Jeffer- 
 son and Alexander Hamilton — whatever the Richmond Enquirer 
 may think of it — knew how to write and spell, and had a very 
 good notion of English grammar. 
 
 When it was first announced at Washington that the Cabinet 
 would be constituted in this manner, a friend of Mr. Adams, 
 meeting by accident a prominent Calhoun man, expressed his 
 wonder that the party should have acquiesced in such an arrange- 
 ment. Sir, replied the other, I wish to inform you thai we hnoic 
 as little of what is doing at the Wigwayn as you do. Gen. Jack- 
 son was then lodged at the Indian dueen tavern. The public 
 have since been informed by Gov. Hamilton, that the General 
 about this time told him, that he should have given him the place 
 of Secretary of War, had not his course in regard to the Tariff" 
 and Nullification rendered him unpopular throughout the country. 
 A superficial glance at the state of parties as they then existed is 
 sufficient, with the aid of the developments that have since taken 
 place, to make it apparent under what influence the able Cabinet 
 
17 
 
 was organised : why, and on what pretences, the prominent Cal- 
 houn men were studiously excluded from it ; and why it was 
 composed of Martin Van Buren and four other gentlemen, who, 
 if they knew little of reading, writing and English grammar, 
 were supposed to be accomplished in the urtof cyphe ring ; a sup- 
 position which experience has not so fully confirmed, as the 
 leading unit probably expected. 
 
 The only object of the arrangement, in all its parts, was to 
 promote the selfish views of Martin Van Buren : — whose mean 
 soul could see nothing in the election of General Jackson but 
 the victory of one party over another — nothing in the great af- 
 fairs of the Government but the SPOILS to be distributed 
 among the conquerors ; and whose first exploit was to jockey 
 his confederates out of their share of these same spoils, and ap- 
 propriate it to himself. Mr. Van Buren is, more than any other 
 individual, responsible to the world and to posterity for the deep 
 disgrace that has been attached to the national character by the 
 elevation of General Jackson to the office of President; and is 
 almost exclusively responsible for tiie, if possible, still deeper de- 
 gradation that has resulted from the acts of his administration. It 
 is a fine example of what is sometimes called poetical justice, 
 that is, the early occurrence of the disastrous consequences, 
 which, sooner or later, generally attend on tortuous conduct, 
 that this individual, after apparently realising all the objects he 
 was aiming at, should have found them perishing, is it were, in 
 his grasp : — have been compelled, bitterly against his will, though 
 ostensibly by his own voluntary act, to quit the head of the de- 
 partment of State ; have been rejected by the Senate as a for- 
 eign Minister — under the circumstances, the strongest politi- 
 cal censure that has ever been inflicted upon any citizen in this 
 country : — and finally, have been held up, as if in mockery, for 
 the Vice Presidency, only to be spurned at with one accord by 
 the People. We said, in a former chapter, that we should speak 
 particularly of this person, his character and his prospects. The 
 present seems to be the proper opportunity. 
 
 Possessed of considerable talents, but without the advantage 
 of education, Mr. Van Buren rose from the lowest walks of life 
 to a place in the Senate of the United States. Had he shewn 
 in this dignified station something of the generosity of feeling 
 that so naturally belongs to it, the public would have given him 
 credit for his success, v/ithout looking too narrowly into the 
 means by which he had obtained it. But no sooner had he 
 reached the Senate than we found him endeavoring to carry 
 into the general politics of the country the disingenuous arts 
 V. hich he had practised so long on the smaller theatre of New 
 3 
 
18 
 
 York. The election of 1824 was approaching. The Federal 
 party had disappeared, and several candidates were presented 
 to the people, all belonging to the Republican party, recom- 
 mended respectively by different sections of the country and by 
 various descriptions of public service. Unwilling to permit the 
 public voice to declare itself freely for the most worthy, Mr. Van 
 Buren attempted to revive the old party machinery in favor of 
 the one whom he thought proper to support, and having pro- 
 cured his nomination by fifty or sixty members of Congress, 
 declared, through the papers under his influence, that the per- 
 sons who nominated him were THE democratic members of Con- 
 gress! — Mr. Crawford, THE democratic candidate, and his 
 friends THE democratic party. Why Mr. Crawford — an 
 original Federalist, and of all the candidates the one who had the 
 least personal pretensions, was fixed upon as THE Rqmhlican 
 candidate — is not apparent. Probably he was the only one 
 whom Mr. Van Buren could at that time approach for the pur- 
 pose of personal arrangement. 
 
 In this way, and for this purpose, commenced the system of 
 False Pretences, which, as we have mentioned in a preceding 
 chapter, has since been employed in favor of Jackson. What a 
 miserable spirit a man must have, to denounce falsely as enemies 
 his own political friends — men with whom he had been acting 
 for years, and from whom he had received the most important 
 services — merely to promote his own selfish views ! Such was the 
 conduct of Martin Van Buren in regard to Mr. Adan^s, and even 
 Gen. Jackson, who though since and now declared by him to be 
 the democratic candidate, was at that time falsely denounced as a 
 Federalist. 
 
 This attempt to play off the New York machinery upon the 
 great Theatre of the Union, did not succeed. Mr. Van Buren 
 will ultimately find to his cost, that the people of the United 
 States are not to be moved like puppets, by the mere drawing of 
 a set of party wires. Even when they go wrong, it will gene- 
 rally be found that they act under some strong and generous im- 
 pulse, like that, for example, wliich was made upon their minds 
 by the military services of General Jackson. Defeated in the 
 effort to elevate Mr. Crawford, and incapable of pursuing the 
 manly and straight-forward course of supporting the administra- 
 tion of Mr. Adams until he should have done something to do- 
 serve opposition, Mr. Van Buren began to calculate in what way 
 he could best promote his own projects of further advancement; 
 and conceiving that it would be his safest course to connect 
 himself with the supposed popularity of Jackson, joined in the 
 comhinaiion we have already described. 
 
19 
 
 Does any one suppose that Mr. Van Buren really believed 
 the claims of Gen. Jackson superior to those of Mr. Adams.? 
 To bring the two men for a moment into comparison would be 
 worse than mockery. On this head there was no mistake. Mr. 
 Van Buren perfectly well knew that Gen. Jackson was not only 
 utterly incompetent to the place, but that his elevation would be 
 in a high degree dangerous — that it would certainly disgrace and 
 might very possibly ruin the country. But of what consequence 
 was it that the country was certainly disgraced and possibly ruined, 
 provided that Martin Van Buren could take a step forward in 
 political life 1 New York — the Empire State — which had just 
 elected him to the highest office in her gift, and was unhappily at 
 that time much under his influence, was thrown into the scale 
 of Jackson. This time the plot succeeded, and Van Buren, to 
 reward him for the share which he had in it, was placed in the 
 Department of State. 
 
 Throughout these proceedings we see distinctly the character 
 of the man : — a narrow, sordid, selfish spirit, pursuing little ends 
 by little means : no loftiness of purpose : no power, depth or 
 reach of mind: no generosity of feeling: no principle: of course, 
 no faith in the existence of any such qualities in others. He 
 enterson the high and sacred concerns of Government in the same 
 temper, in which as a village lawyer he sat down to play All 
 Fours at the ale-house, and is just as ready to employ any trick 
 that will increase his share of the SPOILS OF VICTORY. 
 This celebrated phrase — the most unblushing avowal of infamy 
 that was ever made by a public man — characterizes completely 
 Mr. Van Buren and his party. Such a man can never be popu- 
 lar in this or any other country. The people may at times be 
 deceived by false representations of facts and superficial traits 
 of character; but they detest meanness, and will never perma- 
 nently attach their confidence to any man, who has not about 
 him some great and generous qualities. 
 
 So much for Mr. Van Buren. Mr, Calhoun is a person of 
 another stamp. Much as we regret the aberration of judgment 
 and feeling, (to himself a fatal one,) which led him to support 
 Gen. Jackson ; — much as we deplore his connexion with the 
 mad project of nullification, — we are yet bound to acknowledge 
 — and we do it with pleasure — his vast superiority, intellectual, 
 moral and political, over his Kinderhook competitor. Mr. Cal- 
 houn is a man of commanding talents, upright purpose, and a 
 generous disposition. Few gentlemen have ever made a more 
 brilliant debut in the House of Representatives, or displayed 
 more efficiency and dignity in an executive department. His 
 fault is excessive ambition, or rather a feverish impatience to 
 
20 
 
 grasp the fruit whicli at tiie proper season would naturally drop 
 into his hands. This has led him into great errors, but it is the 
 defect of a noble and manly character. At the time when Gen. 
 Jackson came into office, Mr. Calhoun enjoyed a very general 
 popularity, excepting perhaps in New England, where he was 
 once much respected, but where his treatment of Mr. Adams had 
 given offence. Had Jackson administered the Government 
 with moderate discretion, he would probably have been re-elected, 
 and in that case Mr. Calhoun would have followed in the Presi- 
 dency. 
 
 Van Buren of course could not venture to encounter such a 
 man on the broad and open theatre of public favor. In order to 
 supplant him, he resorted to his usual system of intrigue. In 
 composing the Administration, he took care to exclude the great 
 Calhoun leaders, under the pretence that their opinions on 
 Nullification had rendered them unpopular. With the same 
 general purpose and that he might keep the game entirely in his 
 own hands, he excluded the prominent men among the Presi- 
 dent's personal friends, and gave them, as a representative in 
 the Cabinet, jyjajor Eaton ! ! ! 
 
 Such is the history of the constitution of the ahle Cabinet. 
 The blow which was thus aimed at the influence of Mr. Cal- 
 houn, was followed up by others which have since most signally 
 recoiled upon their author, and to which we shall advert here- 
 after. — We shall proceed, in our next chapter^ to examine the 
 course of the Administration, beginning with the 'policy of Pro- 
 scription. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 PROSCR[PTION. 
 
 The election of General Jackson was a most perilous experi- 
 ment, which the people, in a moment of wantonness, had tried 
 upon the strength of their political constitution. There was 
 however, a bare chance that the crisis might turn out somewhat 
 less serious than the friends of the country generally feared. A 
 considerable portion of the public, including Mr. Adams and his 
 immediate personal friends, had considered Gen. Jackson as a 
 rude, unlettered, and violent, but, on the whole, well-meaning 
 man. In a letter addressed several years before to President 
 Monroe, he had exhibited a very correct notion of the general 
 
21 
 
 principles upon which the Government ought to be administered; 
 and, in particular, had deprecated the indulgence of partisan 
 preferences in appointments. If, conscious of his own incapaci- 
 ty to carry on the Government, and aware, as he had shown 
 himself to be, of the true principles to be observed in the selec- 
 tion of public agents, he had acted on these with but a moderate 
 degree of consistency and good faith, his election would have 
 been attended with little or no public inconvenience. This was 
 hoped by good men, and it did not appear entirely Utopian to 
 suppose, that a President would show some little regard to rules 
 of conduct, publicly laid down by himself, in the most emphatic 
 and unequivocal terms. 
 
 The greater probability undoubtedly was, that his complete 
 and avowed incapacity for civil affairs would throw him under 
 the influence of the political intriguers who were employing his 
 name and popularity to advance their own projects; and that 
 these, with the aid of the President's official responsibility be- 
 tween them and the public, might be even less scrupulous in 
 their proceedings than they would have been had they been acting 
 in their own name. 
 
 Such has, in fact, been the case. We have seen, in the pre- 
 ceding chapter, that the Cabinet w-as constituted in such a man- 
 ner, as to place the entire direction of the public affairs in the 
 hands of Mr. Van Buren. The new Grand Vizier signalized 
 the opening of his administration by introducing — for the first 
 time, we believe, in the history of civilized nations — the princi- 
 ple of the Universal Proscription of the public agents, high 
 and low, who were not attached to the party which had obtained 
 the majority. Had Jackson himself exercised any influence in the 
 Government, we incline to think that he w'ould have shrunk 
 from so barefaced an abandonment of his own avowed princi- 
 ples. Had Van Buren been acting in his own name, we doubt 
 whether he would have ventured upon the responsibility of a mea- 
 sure so desperate. But conceiving, probably, that by acting under 
 the General's mask, he should escape in part from this respon- 
 sibility, and enjoy the advantage of a distribution of the SPOILS 
 among his followers with less risk, he took the plunge — which 
 is likely, in its consequences, to occasion the political ruin of him- 
 self and his master. The lists were made up, and the victims 
 brought to the sacrifice, with an indiscriminate ferocity that 
 made no inquiries respecting age, character, connexions, or 
 condition, and would have done honor to the satellites of Domi- 
 tian or Nero. 
 
 The extent to which this system of cold-blooded massacre — 
 for it deserves no other name — was carried, has been often 
 
22 
 
 stated, but cannot be made too familiar, and should be 
 constantly held up to the public view and the public de- 
 testation, until the ingredients of the poisoned chalice have 
 been returned — as they will be within a few months — to 
 the lips of those who administered them. The number of 
 the victims is distinctly indicated by the appalling fact, that 
 within one month after the inauguration of Jackson there were 
 more removals from office than had taken place since the organi- 
 zation of the Government. No superiority of qualifications — no 
 length of service — no excellence of character or interest of per- 
 sonal position constituted a ground for exception. A^t the mo- 
 ment when the gratitude of the Nation for the services of the 
 Army of the Revolution had led Congress to the adoption of 
 the extraordinary measure of a pension law, several of the vete- 
 ran survivors of the struggle were rudely thrust by the Execu- 
 tive out of the offices in which the justice of his predecessors 
 had placed them, and left on the confines of the grave, to strug- 
 gle with actual poverty. Posterity, when they read the account 
 of the passage of the Pension Law, and the encomiums upon the 
 characters and services of the Revolutionary Patriots that fill 
 the columns of our pamphlets and newspapers, will hardly be- 
 lieve that at the same period the President denounced as a pub- 
 lic enemy the venerable survivor of the Tea Party, and distribu- 
 ted his SPOILS among his own retainers. 
 
 Nothing could arrest the progress of this mischief Mr. Mc- 
 Lean, then Postmaster-General, attempted to make a stand for 
 his department ;■ but was compelled, though a Jackson-man, to 
 quit it himself : hundreds of Postmasters were sacrificed at a 
 blow,- and this vast system which was constructed for the dif- 
 fusion of knowledge and just principles among the People, be- 
 came at once, as it has been ever since, and is now, an engine 
 of corruption. The manner in which the operation was conduct- 
 ed was, if possible, still more offensive than the thing itself 
 The seat of Government became the scene of a disgusting per- 
 sonal scramble among thousands and tens of thousands of appli 
 cants, who had come up from all quarters of the Union to get 
 their share of the SPOILS, as the carrion crows assemble round 
 a carcass. The President himself forgot all regard for his own 
 dignity and the ordinary rules of civility in his intercourse with 
 the public servants, who had committed the heinous crime of 
 receiving an appo ntment from one of his predecessors. In 
 some cases, he treated them with the grossest rudeness in his 
 own house, and in others violated, without scruple, his own posi- 
 tive engagements that they should not be removed. 
 
 All this was bad enough. It even constituted, as Mr. Madi- 
 son has correctly stated in the Federalist — a good ground for 
 
23 
 
 impeachment. The President has the constitutional right ta 
 remove the persons who hold their offices at his pleasure, but in 
 this, as in every other case, he is bound to exercise his consti- 
 tutional power in such a manner as, to the best of his know- 
 ledge and belief, will be most conducive to the public good. If 
 he act from corrupt motives, though within the pale of the Con- 
 stitution, he is impeachable, and to remove or appoint a public 
 agent merely on party grounds is just as criminal as to remove 
 or appoint him for a consideration in money. 
 
 But even this, bad as it was, was not the worst. The party 
 felt that it was necessary to put some color upon this hitherto 
 unprecedented proceeding, and in order to justify themselves to the 
 People, they resorted to the infamous expedient of SLANDER. 
 Not content with depriving hundreds of the ablest and most merito- 
 rious public agents of their means of subsistence, the President 
 attempted to blast their characters by throwing out against them, 
 in his Inaugural Address, the vague and sweeping charge of 
 corruption. What would have been thought, if the President 
 had publicly declared that commissions in the Army and Navy 
 had fallen into corrupt hands, and had followed up this declara- 
 tion by the removal of two or three hundred of our ablest and 
 most distinguished military and naval officers, without giving 
 them the opportunity of a hearing, or even knowing the offences 
 that were imputed to them ? Is the reputation of those who 
 serve the public in a civil capacity, less dear to them, less sacred 
 in itself, than that of the officers of the Army and Navy ? Are 
 they to be publicly denounced by the President as corrupt, and 
 punished accordingly, without a hearing, or even a specification 
 of the charge? If such proceedings are to be ultimately sanc- 
 tioned by the public approbation, it is plain that tlie public ser- 
 vice must be abandoned by every citizen who values or re- 
 spects his own character, and become what the party avowedly 
 wish to make it — a prize for which the reckless and the profli- 
 gate are to gamble, fight and bully. 
 
 Attempts were even made in some instances to fasten this 
 vague charge of corruption upon individuals. 3Ir. Nouvse, a 
 clerk in one of the departments at Washington, was not only 
 rudely thrust out of his place at the age of more than eighty, and 
 offer a long life devoted to the public service, but actually had 
 his furniture seized under a Treasury loarrant of distress upon 
 a false charge of })eculation, at a time when, as appears by a sub- 
 sequent decisio7i of the competent tribimal, the United States owed 
 him more than twelve thousand dollars! This single act, could 
 it be fairly made known to the mass of the people, ought to and 
 would raise such a general burst of indignation as would at once 
 
24 
 
 send back the unfeeling tyrant who dared to commit it to his 
 Hermitage. The case of Fillebrown was exactly similar. In 
 that of Bradley, the public accounts were altered in the Post 
 Office, for the sake of fastening upon a removed officer the re- 
 sponsibility for acts done by his successor. 
 
 The ordinary forms of decorous language contain no epithets 
 appropriate to such proceedings. To say that they were vio- 
 lent, unjust and cruel, and at the same time revoltingly mean 
 and base, conveys but a very inadequate impression of the unut- 
 terable disgust with which they must be contemplated by every 
 manly, patriotic and honorable mind. The party themselves 
 became, after a while, ashamed of the charge of corruption; and 
 in the manifesto which followed the Inaugural Address, under 
 the title of the President's First Message to Congress, they 
 quitted this ground and resorted to the stale sophistry of Rota- 
 tion in Office. It was now intimated that the possession of of- 
 fice had a bad effect upon the character of the possessor ; that 
 the public lost more by this result than they gained by his ex- 
 perience ; that it was therefore expedient that all the public 
 functionaries should be changed as often as once in three or 
 four years ; and especially and above all, that the President 
 should never hold his office more than one term. As to the 
 functionary himself, it was said that he had no claim to employ- 
 ment, or right to complain if he were removed. He sought the 
 public service with a view to his own interest only, and when 
 the public had received all the benefit which he was able to 
 bestow upon them, they had a perfect right to set him adrift — 
 when they had squeezed the orange, they were quite at liberty to 
 throw away the peel. 
 
 Such was the manner in which the President in his first mes- 
 sage to Congress, justified the system of proscription. What a 
 noble and generous creed to be openly promulgated, and made 
 the basis of public action, by the Chief Magistrate of the great 
 Republic of the Western world ! On this system, Washington 
 had no other motive for taking the command of the army of the 
 revolution, but to cover his personal expenses ; for, as is well 
 known, he refused all pay. Adams, Jay, and Franklin, were 
 amply remunerated by their country for the gift of freedom, in- 
 dependence, and national being, when they had drawn for their 
 salaries as Ministers Plenipotentiary. Such was not the feel- 
 ing of Charles Carroll, of Carrollton, when he put at risk half 
 a million of dollars with a dash of his pen ; and if such is in future 
 to be the standard of political morality among us, it is to be fear- 
 ed that the last of the signers, old as he is, may yet live to see 
 the sacred instrument which received that signature, torn up and 
 
25 
 
 trampled under foot like a worthless piece of waste paper. 
 We will not, however, so far insult the good sense and patriotic 
 feelings of our countrymen, as to attempt to refute this shallow 
 and odious sophistry. It carries distinctly on its face the cer- 
 tificate of its origin, and however false in a general application 
 to the honorable and high spirited people of the United States, 
 is probably a very true description of the case of Mr. Van Bu- 
 ren. It is well observed by Dr. Johnson, that a person who ac- 
 cuses all men of acting from corrupt motives, convicts at least 
 one. As Mr. Van Buren tells us that the citizens regularly seek 
 the public service with sordid and selfish views, he will not 
 be surprised if we venture to conclude that his own are of that 
 character ; and as he had previously informed us that the proper 
 method of rewarding such services, was by an unceremonious 
 dismissal, whenever it suited our convenience, we rather wonder 
 that he should have been so deeply wounded by his own re- 
 jection as Minister Plenipotentiary to Great Britain. Let us 
 hope that he will have made up his mind to endure the negative 
 of the people upon his pretensions to the Vice Presidency with 
 more composure 
 
 The degree of sincerity with which the President expressed 
 these opinions, were pretty distinctly shown soon after, when a 
 missive was despatched from his own cabinet under his own 
 frank, soliciting a renomination from the Legislature of Pennsyl- 
 vania. 
 
 There is the less reason to refute this poor pretence of 
 argument, inasmuch as even this has since been dropped. After 
 first justifying the proscriptive system on the ground that the 
 public offices had fallen into corrupt or incompetent hands, and 
 then pretending that a perpetual rotation in office was in theory, 
 the true method of transacting the public business to the best 
 advantage, the party finally threw off the mask, and openly 
 avowed, in the person of Mr. Senator Marcy, that the real 
 object of the removals was to distribute among their followers the 
 SPOILS OF VICTORY. In making this precious confession, 
 Mr. Marcy very properly spoke for the New York school. 
 Such is the principle upon which we act in Neio York. The 
 public were pretty well aware of this before, but it is not amiss 
 to have it certified under the hand and seal of the Regency. It 
 only remains for them to be as explicit in regard to the means . 
 they employ as they have been in regard to the ends they aim 
 at, and to emblazon upon their flaa that other favorite New York 
 maxim,— ALL'S FAIR IN POLITICS. We shall then know 
 what to depend upon, and if we are taken in by them, it will at 
 least be with our eyes open. 
 
 4 
 
26 
 
 The unblushing and brazen faced assurance with which these 
 political gamblers glory in their shame is almost comic. But it 
 is time to quit this odious subject. The appointments that were 
 made to fill the vacancies created by the proscriptive policy, 
 furnish another chapter still more humiliating, if possible, to 
 the friends of the country, than that of the removals. It really 
 seemed at one time as if the State Prison was to become one of 
 the steps in the career of official promotion. When before, 
 was it ever known in this or any other civilized country, that a 
 Diplomatic Agent had occasion, before he proceeded on his 
 mission, to explain the circumstances under which he was 
 indicted for forgery r — Even this — we say it with horror — was 
 not the worst case. For the honor of the country and of 
 humanity, we gladly draw a veil over the details of this 
 scene. 
 
 Happily, the excess of the evil wrought immediately its own 
 cure, and compelled the Senate to adopt an entire independence 
 in regard to approvals, which they might not otherwise have so 
 readily come into, and which, to a considerable extent at least, 
 stayed the plague. To this distinguished body, not inferior in 
 the eloquence, elevated standing, and manly patriotism of its 
 members, to the Roman Senate in its brightest days, the people 
 of this country are under great obligations. They stood forth 
 boldly, at one of the darkest periods we have yet known, to 
 redeem the national honor, and to arrest the base spirit of ser- 
 vility to Executive dictation that appeared to be curdling the 
 very heart's blood of the Republic. If the national flag has not 
 been trampled under foot by the British ministry — if the terri- 
 tory of Maine is yet entire — if we are not represented in several 
 foreign courts by men who have been or should be the tenants 
 of our penitentiaries — we owe it to the noble resistance of the 
 Senate. Much no doubt of evil they could not prevent : wounds 
 have been inflicted upon the Constitution which it will require 
 the efforts of them and their successors for many years to come 
 to heal ; but they did great good by their immediate action, and 
 their high example has done still more. Their manly indepen- 
 dence has awakened a corresponding spirit throughout the 
 country. The wretched delusion under which the people were 
 at one time laboring, seems to be rapidly passing off', and there 
 is reason to hope that all will yet be well. 
 
 In the next chapter, we shall proceed in the examination of 
 the policy of Gen. Jackson, and inquire briefly into the man- 
 ner in which he has managed our Foreign Relations. 
 
27 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 FOREIGN RELATIONS. 
 
 The leading characteristics of the conduct of the present Ad- 
 ministration have been violence and meanness : — a combination 
 of qualities as unattractive as any that can perhaps well be im- 
 agined. Wherever the direct infld^nce of Gen. Jackson is ap- 
 parent, their proceedings have been rude, arbitrary, and often 
 absolutely unconstitutional : where Mr. Van Buren may be 
 supposed to give the direction, the policy pursued is usually 
 cunning, trickish and mean. This is more particularly the case 
 with the Foreign Relations, which form so important a part of the 
 attributions of the Federal Government, and in which the opera- 
 tion of low and narrow motives, especially those of a party 
 character, is in every way so ungraceful. This department of 
 the administration of Gen. Jackson has been marked by two 
 principal features : first, a mean assumption of the credit of 
 negotiations undertaken, matured, and in several instances con- 
 cluded by his predecessor; and secondly, a mean prostration of 
 the honor of the country at the feet of the British Ministry, for 
 the purpose of obtaining, at all sacrifices, the appearance of a 
 successful arrangement of the question of the Colonial trade. 
 
 It was said of the celebrated Carnot, that he organized vic- 
 tory in the French armies. It may be said with equal truth of 
 Mr. Adams, that he organized success in the diplomacy of the 
 United States. As Chairman of the Commissioner.*; at Ghent he 
 was called on, of course, to take the lead in the negotiations for 
 peace; and the ability with which he conducted them, not only 
 contributed as much as any other cause to procure us an advan- 
 tageous peace, but called forth from British statesmen of various 
 parties, including such men as the Marquis Wellesley and Sir 
 James Mackintosh, the confession in open Parliament of the 
 ' astonishing superiority ' of the argument on our side. Even 
 Mr. Pickering, then a representative in Congress, forgot on this 
 occasion his hereditary antipathy to Mr. Adams's father's son, 
 and cheerfully joined in the general expression of approbation 
 and gratitude. 
 
 The conclusion of this treaty formed an era in our history. 
 The close of the long wars of the French Revolution with which 
 it coincided in point oftime, left the political world in a wholly un- 
 settled condition. The United States for the first time felt their 
 importance, and were called upon to stand forth as a really in- 
 
28 
 
 dependent power in the brotherhood of nations. The relations 
 belonging to this new position were to be created. The task 
 wasoneof the highest delicacy, and the honor of taking the princi- 
 pal direction in the execution of it devolved upon Mr. Adams. 
 Upon assuming the duties of Secretary of State under President 
 Monroe, he commenced negotiations with all the principal 
 powers of the old and new world. The immediate management 
 of them was committed in general to citizens of distinguished 
 talents and learning, and they were continued with unremitted 
 assiduity and diligence duri^ig the whole period of the admin- 
 istration of Messrs. Monroe and Adams. It would of course 
 carry us beyond the limits of the present essay to give even a 
 concise sketch of the plans of foreign policy embraced in these 
 negotiations. Suffice it to say that they will hereafter furnish a 
 subject for one of the most interesting and honorable chapters 
 in our national history. Our present object is rather to consid- 
 er the degree of success which attended these operations. 
 
 It is well known that no results can be obtained in the way 
 of diplomatic neg-otiation excepting by much perseverance and 
 long delay. But such was the correctness of the principles upon 
 which Mr. Adams had predicated his foreign policy, and such 
 the ability with which they had been enforced, that the negotia- 
 tions had taken, in almost all quarters, a satisfactory direction. 
 Our relations with the new South American States had been 
 established : — our claims on many of the European powers, for 
 spoliations committed during the war, had been urged by unan- 
 swerable arguments, the force of which these powers were begin- 
 ing to feel: — our true position in regard to Russia, — the cardin- 
 nal point in our foreign relations as a political power, was for 
 the first time perceived and acted on : — new commercial arrange- 
 ments were matured or concluded with more than one State of 
 the first order, particularly Austria and Turkey. With Great 
 Britain our negotiations had been brought to a crisis, which, 
 though it wore for the moment an unfavorable aspect, must have 
 terminated — had not the progress of the affair been interrupted 
 by the blundering interference of Mr. Van Buren — in a mutu- 
 ally beneficial convention. In short, our negotiations abroad 
 were in a good train in all quarters, and this without the use of 
 corrupt means, or any compromise of the national dignity. The 
 reputation and influence of the country in foreign courts were 
 constantly increasing, and our representatives were every where 
 the objects of particular esteem and favor. 
 
 Such was the state of things when Gen. Jackson came into 
 power- What was to be done ? A President who had had the 
 least pretensions to discretion and patriotism, would have consid- 
 
29 
 
 ered himself too happy to be able to proceed in the same course, 
 upon the same principles, and as far as possible with the same 
 agents : — would have shrunk instinctively from any movement 
 that should disturb in the slightest degree the existing harmony. 
 With the degraded beings who had now usurped the seats once oc- 
 cupied by Washingtons, Adamses, Hamiltons and Jeffersons, 
 the first thought was to appropriate the poor pittance with 
 which the country rewards or rather ruins its diplomatic agents, 
 as a part of the SPOILS OF VICTORY. For the first time 
 in the history of this or any other civilized country, a change 
 of Administration was made the signal for a general recall of the 
 foreign ministers. Our whole policy was put at risk : — our ne- 
 gotiations thrown into a state of suspense : — a great positive 
 outlay incurred : — public agents of acknowledged ability and expe- 
 rience rudely thrust out of place: — and all for the honorable pur- 
 pose of providing a few additional morsels for the ravenous maw of 
 the " Monster Party.'' Such was the blundering impatience with 
 which Mr. Van Buren conducted this operation, that he did 
 not even stop to ask the chief clerk in the Department of State 
 what was the regular form of recalling a foreign minister. This 
 at least is the most charitable construction which can be put upon 
 the fact, that in the mode of doing it he violated all the ordinary 
 rules of international courtesy. As to the persons recalled, 
 they — to reward them for years of expatriation, labor and [)ecu- 
 niary sacrifice — were publicly insulted as corrupt and incapable. 
 After extending this manly and decorous treatment to we know 
 not how many honorable citizens, Mr. Van Buren, when nega- 
 tived himself by the Senate, very coolly represents his case as 
 one oi peculiar hardship! This modest little gentleman proba- 
 bly supposes that he has a patent right to outrage the most 
 eminent citizens in the country with impunity, and that they, 
 instead of resenting or taking it amiss, ought to think themselves 
 too happy to be trampled upon by so great a man. 
 
 Such was the dehut of Gen. Jackson in the management of 
 our foreign relations : a violent and sudden interruption of all 
 the most important negotiations for the purpose of placing a 
 troop of his favorites. — And such favorites ! — But we will not 
 touch again upon this odious topic. The beginning, it must be 
 owned, was not auspicious. Still, however, the negotiations had 
 been so judiciously planned and were in so good a train when 
 Jackson took them in hand, that with all his blunders, and all 
 his ignorance, he could not prevent them from coming to a suc- 
 cessful issue. — Treaties were sent home soon after the opening 
 of his term from Brazil, Austria, Turkey and Denmark, and 
 more recently from France, and Mexico, providing in a satisfac- 
 
30 
 
 tory manner for the settlement of various questions of long stand- 
 ing and great interest, or opening new commercial relations. 
 Of these arrangements the whole credit is obviously due to the 
 preceding Administration. They had been negotiated on the 
 principles laid down by Mr. Adams, and under his instructions. 
 If the abrupt change in the persons of the ministers did not 
 injure their progress, it will at least not be pretended that it 
 could promote it ; nor will it be i)retended, even by the partisans 
 of Jackson, that the change was in any instance, so far as person- 
 al qualifications were concerned, for the better. The credit of 
 these treaties, belonged, therefore, we repeat, entirely to the 
 preceding Administration. A President of high and honorable 
 sentiments in announcing their conclusion, would have taken 
 great care to make this fact distinctly known. A man of real 
 merit scorns to deck himself out with borrowed plumes. The 
 circumstance that his predecessor was a political opponent, 
 would have been an additional motive for doing him the fullest 
 justice — especially if that political opponent had proved himself 
 individually, and on the most important occasions, a friend in 
 need. What was Gen. Jackson's conduct ? From first to last, 
 he has carefully omitted even to mention the name of his prede- 
 cessor in connection with any of these arrangements. His par- 
 tisans, improving upon his example, regularly make the conclu- 
 sion of a treaty negotiated entirely under the instructions of Mr. 
 Adams and Mr. Clay, the occasion for pouring out upon these 
 illustrious statesmen a new volley of slander and ribaldry. Thus, 
 when the documents relating to the negotiation with Turkey 
 were published during the late session of Congress, a scurrilous 
 newspaper printed in this city employed them as the text for a 
 eulogy on Mr. Van Buren, and an attack on Mr. Clay. Every 
 one who has given the subject the slightest attention, is aware 
 that the only change made in the arrangements of the preceding 
 Administration in regard to Turkey by the agents of the present 
 one, was the introduction by the latter into the treaty, of a 
 foolish and imprudent article, which would have prejudiced our 
 relations with Russia, and which was unanimously rejected by 
 the Senate. 
 
 It sickens the heart to see this utter want of all the manly 
 and generous sentiments — this complete ascendency of the 
 meanest and basest propensities of our nature in persons placed 
 by their official rank at the very head of society: — to make the 
 matter still worse, in a cabinet directed by a military President. 
 Generosity, courtesy, dignity of manner, an excess of chivalrous 
 feeling, constitute the peculiar graces of the military character, 
 and in practice compensate in some degree for the absence of 
 
31 
 
 many accomplishments that are not very compatible with that 
 line of life. Without them the soldier degenerates into the 
 ruffian and bully. We were in fact told beforehand, by the 
 present partisans of Jackson, that in the event of his election the 
 spirit belonging to these respectable professions would prevail 
 at Washington. The disgraceful scenes of the last winter, to 
 which we shall advert hereafter, have confirmed too fully the 
 ominous prophecy. 
 
 Such, however, is the first leading feature in this branch of the 
 proceedings of the present Administration: — a mean assumption 
 of the credit belonging to their predecessors for several treaties, 
 negotiated and matured or concluded under their instructions. 
 In one important particular, Gen. Jackson has, as we have 
 already remarked, given in some degree a new direction to the 
 foreign policy of the country. We allude, of course, to the late 
 arrangement of the question of the trade with the British West 
 Indian Colonies. 
 
 It is not our purpose, nor would the limits of the present es- 
 say allow us, to enter upon a detailed examination of the merits 
 of this arrangement, considered in itself and independently of the 
 circumstances under which it was concluded. It has been am- 
 ply shown in the debates upon the floor of the Senate, and par- 
 ticularly in the able and lucid speech of Mr. Sprague, that the 
 country, instead of gaining any thing by this treaty, actually 
 stands upon worse ground than before. — The effect of it, as far 
 as it operates, which has been as yet to a very limited extent, 
 will be to throw the carrying trade with the islands into British 
 hands. But were the case in this respect otherwise, — had the 
 treaty given us every thing that we had ever asked or wished, — 
 had it conveyed to us in fee simple the whole soil and jurisdic- 
 tion of the British West Indies, the advantage would have been 
 too dearly purchased at the price which we gave for what we 
 in fact got. A Secretary of State denouncing, in the name of 
 the President, the government of his own country under a pre- 
 ceding Administration as an opposite party: — inviting a foreign 
 Sovereign to take cognizance of our domestic differences, to 
 enter into them, to turn them to account for the benefit of the 
 pitiful petitioner, and of course for his own! Never before was 
 a spectacle so shameful as this exhibited on the theatre of Ameri- 
 can diplomacy. Never, we trust, after the signal rebuke which 
 the managers received in this instance, will it be repeated. The 
 British Government called in to assist a recreant Administration 
 in sustaining itself against the indignant outcry of the country ! 
 Shades of Washington, Hancock and Adams — of Hamilton, 
 Jefferson, Monroe and Pinckney ! Was this then to be the 
 
32 
 
 Jinale of the long series of remonstrances, declarations, non-inter- 
 courses, embargoes, and wars, that have made up our relations 
 with England for the last sixty years, and given full employment 
 to the heads, the hearts, the pens, the tongues, and the swords of 
 our best and bravest? This the denoj/e?/icn^ of the supersensi- 
 tive delicacy that shrunk from the slightest breath of British in- 
 terference in our politics, foreign or domestic, as if it had been 
 a blasting pestilence or a red-hot sirocco ? Where was the 
 good genius of our country when a miserable Dutch pettifogser 
 took the star-spangled banner, all radiant as it was, with fifty 
 years of honor and victory, and spread it out as a carpet for the 
 feet of Lord Aberdeen? No, never, never before was there 
 such an example of national degradation. Thanks to Provi- 
 dence, the public feeling of the country revolted against it by a 
 sort of convulsive reaction, and instead of prostrating the Union 
 at the feet of the British Minister, Mr. Van Buren has only suc- 
 ceeded in prostrating himself at the feet of the Senate and Peo- 
 ple of the United States. — This exploit finishes, we trust, his 
 political career, and determines the character that he will leave 
 behind him. Martin Van Buren, the Secretary of State 
 WHO denounced his predecessor as a political opponent to 
 THE British Ministry. 
 
 How contemptible too was the apology made for this con- 
 temptible proceeding by the partisans of the Administration in 
 the Senate I Not a lisp in justification ; but it seems that this 
 part of the instructions was dictated by the President himself, 
 and Mr. Van Buren is of course not responsible for it. The 
 Globe has in fact informed us in so many words that the gen- 
 eral is BORN TO COMMAND, and Mr. Van Buren, we know, 
 is ambitious of no higher distinction than the GLORY OF 
 OBEDIENCE to such a commander. Poor creatures ! Are 
 they really in earnest, or are they sporting with the supposed in- 
 fatuation of the people ? Was Mr. Van Buren then a passive 
 instrument in the hands of his master? Had he no mind, voice, 
 will, heart, or hand of his own ? When before was there a Sec- 
 retary of State in the United States, who shrunk from the respon- 
 sibility of a letter that bore his own signature ? When before 
 was there a Secretary of State in the United States, who would 
 not have hurled his commission back in the face of a President 
 who should have dared to ask him to sign the dishonor of his 
 country ? But it is of little importance to the people how these 
 worthies divide between them the responsibility of this business. 
 There is infamy enough about it to bankrupt the whole firm. 
 
 There are other points of a doubtful character in our recent 
 negotiations with England. There is reason to suppose that 
 
33 
 
 Mr. Van Buren undertook to tamper with the great and deli- 
 cate questions of Impressment and Neutral Rights, and as it 
 has never been said of him, as it was of Goldsmith, that he 
 adorns whatever he touches, we may be sure that his interfer- 
 ence with these matters bodes no good to the honor of the coun- 
 try. It has been vaguely rumored that some apparent conces- 
 sion on these points was to have been purchased by a base sur- 
 render of the territorial and personal rights of the State of 
 Maine. This work of iniquity, if it were in fact contemplated, 
 has been nipped in the bud by the noble interference of the 
 Senate, and we shall probably never know with certainty wheth- 
 er it was or was not entered upon. The bare suspicion of 
 having entertained the intention of making such a compromise, 
 would be sufficient, if there were nothing else exceptiona- 
 ble about him, to fix the measure of Mr. Van Buren's charac- 
 ter. 
 
 So much for our relations with Great Britain, the only part of 
 our foreign policy of which the present Administration can prop- 
 erly claim the credit. No patriotic and high-spirited American 
 can read the account of them without the strongest feelings of 
 contempt and indignation. They constitute the serious part of 
 the business : but in all human affairs, we are continually pass- 
 ing from grave to gay, and after going through with the Trag dy 
 it was perhaps not unnatural that we should be entertained witu 
 a Farce. — When Napoleon elevated the Grand Duke of Wir- 
 temburg, a bloated, blundering butcher-like potentate of the old 
 school, to the dignity of King, it was said that he had for ten or 
 twelve years been doing all he could to keep the Germans in 
 tears, and that he was resolved for once to make them laugh. 
 This, or something like it was probably the intention of Jackson 
 and Van Buren, when they appointed John Randolph our Min- 
 ister to Russia. 
 
 Our relations with this great power were previously in the 
 most satisfactory state, thanks to the ability and discretion with 
 which they had been managed by the preceding Administration. 
 The Russian Cabinet, which has been for many years intellect- 
 ually as well as physically the most powerful in Europe, has ex- 
 hibited its usual sagacity in its whole deportment towards the 
 United States. They have seen that the force of circumstances es- 
 tablishes a relation of political alliance between the two countries, 
 and have uniformly acted accordingly. In our negotiations for 
 peace with Great Britain — in our subsequent negotiations under 
 the treaty of Ghent — in those that have been carried on more 
 recently with Turkey — in short, throughout the whole progress 
 of our foreign afiairs for the last twenty years, we have enjoyed 
 
 5 
 
34 
 
 the benefit of the countenance and good offices of Russia. It 
 has so happened, that we have hitherto had but Httle opportunity 
 of making any substantial return for these demonstrations of 
 national good will. The least that could be expected from us 
 was that we should discharge with punctuality the ordinary 
 duties of official respect and decorum. What then must have 
 been the feelings of the Russian Government, when — after such 
 a course of conduct on their part towards us, a minister known 
 to be personally agreeable to the Emperor was abruptly recall- 
 ed, as if for the purpose of repaying his friendship with studied 
 insult? What, again, must have been the impression made up- 
 on the Russian Court, accustomed as they had been to the dig- 
 nity and propriety of Mr. Middleton's deportment — when they 
 saw the new Plenipotentiary taking the field in a hunting dress 
 — going down upon his knees before the Emperor, and — after 
 playing a few more fantastic tricks of the same description — 
 departing before he had fairly entered upon his duties, and fi.\- 
 ing his residence — of all the places in the world — at London ? 
 No construction could of course be put upon such conduct but 
 the true one, viz. that the minister was half crazy. But must 
 not the Russian Cabinet have thought the President entirely so, 
 to recall such a man as Mr. Middleton for the purpose of com- 
 mitting the aff'airs of the Legation to such a successor? 
 
 Such has been the mode, in which our foreign relations have 
 been managed by the present incumbents in the government. 
 For his proceedings towards both England and Russia, we have 
 no hesitation in saying, that the President richly deserves the 
 honors of impeachment. In the next chapter we shall take up 
 the subject of the Domestic Policy of the country, the history of 
 which is about as creditable to the discretion and ability of our 
 rulers, as that of the foreign. 
 
 CHAPTER VL 
 
 DOMESTIC POLICY. 
 
 Violence and Meanness, — such, as we remarked in the last 
 chapter, have been the leading characteristics of the conduct 
 of the Administration. We have seen them exemplified in their 
 mode of managing our foreign relations : we shall see them still 
 more fully displayed in our home politics, which will form the 
 subject of this and the two or three following chapters. 
 
35 
 
 An Administration, like an individual, must be supposed to 
 have, and in fact always has, certain objects to which its atten- 
 tion is chiefly devoted. Thus the leading point of the policy 
 of Rome for several centuries was the overthrow of the rival 
 republic of Carthage. The great object of the British govern- 
 ment while under the brilliant administration of the younger 
 Pitt, was to check the progress of the spirit of political reform 
 at home and abroad : — the present object of the same govern- 
 ment is to aid and accelerate this progress. The object of 
 Napoleon was to found a vast military despotism upon the ruins 
 of all the free states of Europe : — that of the Russian govern- 
 ment, from the time of Peter the Great to the present day, has 
 been substantially the same. To come nearer home, the chief 
 object of the government of the United States, from its organ- 
 ization till the treaty of Ghent, was the security of our com- 
 mercial and political rights as a. neutral poiver : that of all the 
 following Administrations, until the present, was the develope- 
 ment of our internal resources and the encouragement of do- 
 mestic industry. Such are the great concerns that engage the 
 attention of statesmen, and serve to show that, even in their 
 errors and excesses, they have at least something of the eleva- 
 tion of spirit that belongs to their position. 
 
 The objects of the present Administration have been of a dif- 
 ferent character. It is admitted by their partisans that, in seek- 
 ing to obtain possession of the government, they had nothing 
 in view but the SPOILS OF VICTORY. The distribution 
 of these spoils has of course been the great affair, and the lead- 
 ing principle of conduct has been to distribute them, as far as 
 possible, in such a way as would best ensure their possession 
 for another term, or, in other words, as would most effectually 
 " bring the patronage of the government into conflict with the 
 purity of elections." We have already adverted particularly 
 to this feature in the proceedings of the Administration, in our 
 chapter on the Policy of Proscription. — But even this object, base 
 as it is, was too elevated to be steadily pursued. — Thrown up 
 by accident, as they have been, out of the lowest circles of so- 
 ciety — wholly destitute of the intellectual qualities and accom- 
 plishments that are wanted in the vast sphere of action where 
 they are placed, their policy is of course the narrowest self 
 interest, and even this must constantly give way to the impulses 
 of their personal propensities and habits. It is a literal fact 
 that, in the midst of all the political agitations of the present 
 critical period, the object which has engaged, more than any 
 other, the attention of the government of the United States 
 under the administration of General Jackson, has been that of 
 
36 
 
 procuring a favorable reception for a female friend of the 
 President in the fashionable circles of Washington. 
 
 It is easy to see, upon the slightest survey of the proceed- 
 ings of the Administration, in regard to the great and paramount 
 concerns which really constitute the domestic policy of the coun- 
 try, that the latter have been entirely sacrificed to these misera- 
 ble party and personal interests. — The Tariff and Internal Im- 
 provements: — The Indians and the Missionaries, and the Bank, 
 are the most important subjects connected with the internal 
 situation of the country, that have come under consideration 
 during the last three years. We shall advert briefly, in suc- 
 cession, to each, and shall be able to show without difficulty, 
 that, in reference to all of them, the President has acted, from 
 the blind and arbitrary impulse of his own will, or with a single 
 view to secure and perpetuate the ascendancy of //is pai-ty. 
 
 1. The Tariff: — Since the close of the war with Great Brit- 
 ain, the developement of the internal resources of the country 
 by the encouragement of domestic industry, and the opening 
 of communications by land and water, between the different 
 sections of the Union, have become, as we have already re- 
 marked, the principal objects of interest with the people. The 
 course of legislative measures intended to effect these objects, 
 which was entered upon as early as the first formation of the 
 government, has been pursued with increased vigor and spirit. 
 A difference of opinion has no doubt existed in regard to the 
 expediency, and even the constitutionality of these measures, 
 but they have been steadily sustained by great and regularly 
 increasing majorities of the citizens, and after the favorable 
 results of the violent attack made upon them in Congress last 
 winter, may be viewed as the settled policy of the nation. In 
 the new impulse which was given to the progress of this system 
 soon afler the close of the war, Mr. Calhoun and his immediate 
 friends and political associates from Carolina took the lead: and 
 it is a singular and signal example of political inconsistency, 
 that these very statesmen should have become the leaders of a 
 party which denounces the same system as not only inexpedient 
 but unconstitutional, and a fit occasion for actual rebellion (such 
 is the plain English of nidUfiration) against the General Gov- 
 ernment. The Eastern States came rather slowly and reluc- 
 tantly into the adoption of the system. They were apprehen- 
 sive of its effect upon their navigation, and until recently op- 
 posed it in every stage of its progress. Experience has at 
 length satisfied them of its expediency: they have invested their 
 capital on the faith of its continuance, and are now among its 
 warmest supporters. The Great West has been from the be- 
 
37 
 
 ginning, the ardent, consistent, and undeviating advocate of 
 the same principles, which, important as they are every where 
 else, constitute in that quarter of the Union, the siiie qua non of 
 prosperity, and even political existence. 
 
 As a Western politician, General Jackson was of course vir- 
 tually pledged to the Tariff. He had given before his election, 
 the most positive and satisfactory assurances of his devotion to 
 the protecting policy, particularly in his letter to the Governor 
 of Indiana. Pennsylvania, whose support first gave conse- 
 quence to his nomination, was perhaps the one of all the states 
 most deeply interested in, and most unequivocally pledged to 
 the American System. There was, therefore, every reason to 
 suppose that whatever other deficiencies there might be in the 
 character of Jackson, the great interest of domestic industry 
 would, — as long as he should be President, — be sure of a firm 
 and steady support in the Executive department of the gov- 
 ernment. 
 
 What has been the fact.'' — No sooner had he effected his 
 election, than his advisers began to calculate the value of the 
 Tariff as a party measure. It was found that a considerable 
 portion of the citizens who are opposed to the protecting policy, 
 had favored his election, and would probably be disposed to 
 continue him in office; and that on the other hand, a majority 
 of the friends of the system were attached to his opponents, 
 Messrs. Adams and Clay. 
 
 What was to be done .'' A high-minded and patriotic Presi- 
 dent would have pursued a straight forward course, — main- 
 tained his principles, — redeemed his pledges, and left his popu- 
 larity and his re-election to take care of themselves. Gen, 
 Jackson and Mr. Van Buren looked at the matter under a dif- 
 ferent point of view. It would not answer to alienate the South, 
 where their strength lay, by a manly and consistent support of 
 the protecting policy: it would not answer on the other hand, 
 to alienate the portion of the friends of that system, including 
 Pennsylvania and the West, which were friends to them, by 
 openly attacking it. The only thing they could do was to at- 
 tempt to steer a middle course which should, if possible, please 
 both parties, or at least not decidedly offend either. The lan- 
 guage of the messages on this subject has been uniformly vague 
 and vacillating. When the battle came on last winter before 
 Congress, and the Secretary of the Treasury was called on to 
 propose a measure, he made many fair professions of regard 
 for domestic industry, and reported a bill, which would have 
 lefl the woollen manufacture — one of the most important of all 
 — the one of all, to which protection at the present moment is 
 
38 
 
 perhaps most necessary— entirely unprotected. The great in- 
 Huence of the Executive was exerted to get through a bill upon 
 this basis, and it was only by intense exertion and the most de- 
 cided superiority in argument, that the friends of the country 
 were enabled to make head against the combination of open 
 and disguised enemies, and secure to this great interest a bare 
 — perhaps, after all, an inadequate protection. The reckless 
 tools of party would have sacrificed a capital of a hundred and 
 fifty millions of dollars, and the happiness of the persons con- 
 nected with it, without hesitation or scruple, to their miserable 
 objects of personal ambition. 
 
 2. The case is substantially the same with Internal Improve- 
 ments — the other great feature in what has been appropriately 
 termed the American System. Here too the President was 
 pledged by his position in the country — by his professed opin- 
 ions and by the known interest of his warmest original sup- 
 porters, to the protecting policy; and here too we have seen, 
 perhaps even more distinctly than in regard to the Tariff" — the 
 predominance of the same wretched, time-serving, vacillating 
 spirit tliat sacrifices every higher consideration to party man- 
 agement and the hope of temporary popularity. In the message 
 announcing the veto of the Maysville Road Bill, the President 
 distinctly admitted the right of the General Government to 
 make internal improvements of a national character, and at the 
 same time negatived a road which would have formed a portion 
 of the great thoroughfare between the sea-board and the in- 
 terior — a national communication, one would think, — if any one 
 in the country can ever deserve that epithet. The object seems 
 to have been to propitiate the friends of Internal Improvement 
 by the doctrines of the message, and its enemies by the mea- 
 sures announced in it. The same system was pursued at the 
 last session of Congress, when bills, involving precisely the 
 same principles, were alternately rejected and approved by the 
 President. The action of the Government on this subject has 
 in fact, been so palpably, we may almost say ludicrously inco- 
 herent, that it can hardly be accounted for, even upon the prin- 
 ciple of party management, and must in many instances be at- 
 tributed to the mere personal caprice of the despot. On the 
 whole, however, the leaning of the Administration is adverse to 
 the progress of internal improvement, and is apparently becom- 
 ing more so from year to year. In fact, the President at the 
 close of the late message accompanying the veto on the Bank, 
 distinctly intimates, if his language is to be considered as con- 
 veying any definite meaning, that the whole doctrine of the 
 
39 
 
 protecting policy, in both its groat branches, is entirely false and 
 ought to be al)aiidoned. 
 
 It appears, thereture, that in regard to the great subjects of 
 the Tariff' and Internal Improvements, Gen. Jackson has for- 
 feited the pledges under which he came into office. He was 
 elected as a friend of the American System: he has thus far 
 given it a cold, vacillating, uncertain support, and there is rea- 
 son to believe, that if re-elected, he will come out its open 
 enemy. 
 
 Under these circumstances we say to those citizens who 
 are attached to the principles of the Protecting Policy, and 
 whose interests are identified with its maintenance, who have 
 hitherto supported General Jackson because they believed 
 him to be fiiendly to their interests, and who have found 
 themselves invariably disappointed by his proceedings, — Will 
 you give your confidence again to a person who has once so 
 grossly deceived you.-* Will you aid in re-electing a President 
 who has forfeited all the pledges under which he was before 
 elected? Should you do this, can you blame any one but your- 
 selves if your establishments are broken up, your fortunes 
 ruined, and yourselves turned adrift upon the world? 
 
 We would say, in particular, to the citizens of the great state 
 of PENNSYLVANIA— You made Gen. Jackson what he is ; 
 you took him up when his nomination was considered as little 
 better than a piece of solemn mockery, and placed him in the 
 chair of the chief magistracy. He publicly promised, that if 
 elected, he would serve but a single term. Scarcely was he 
 warm in his seat, than he came to you, and begged a re-nom- 
 ination. You generously gave it to him. How has he repaid 
 all your partiality ? You held in your hands his repeated pledges 
 that he was a firm and steady friend to your great interests. 
 How have they been redeemed ? Was Mr. Mc Lane's plan of 
 a Tariff Bill a very natural way of noticing the unanimous reso- 
 lution of your Legislature in favor of the protecting policy ? or 
 the Veto message that in favor of the Bank ? Can you, as 
 men of good sense — of prudence — of honorable pride — continue 
 to support a President who returns your civility by laying the 
 axe at the root of all your establishments, and who, if he be re- 
 elected, and persevere, as he doubtless will, in the same course, 
 will carry desolation and poverty through your state ? We 
 think not ; and the noble efforts which you are now making in 
 all quarters to shake off the yoke seem to show that you are of 
 the same opinion. 
 
 We would say, in like manner, to the citizens of our 
 neighboring state of NEW HAMPSHIRE— one of those 
 
40 
 
 which are most deeply interested in the maintenance and 
 success of the protecting system — How long will you permit 
 yourselves to be misrepresented on the floor of Congress, and 
 in your own Legislature — in the Presidential chair, as far as 
 your influence extends in determining the incumbent — by men 
 who are blind to your interest, or, rather, who sacrifice it with- 
 out scruple to their own sordid policy ? Without the flocks of 
 sheep that cover your pastures, and the manufactures that give 
 employment to your sons and daughters, what would become 
 of your population ? Would they not at once abandon you 
 granite hills for the green savannahs of the West ? These flocks 
 and these manufactures have been brought, by the measures 
 adopted last winter, to the very verge of destruction. A further 
 diminution of the protection hitherto granted them would com- 
 plete the work. Will you, by giving your suffrages to the men 
 who are pledged to pursue in every future Congress the same 
 pernicious course, consent to depopulate your country, and 
 reduce your farmers to beggary ? Make, once for all, the 
 manly effort which alone is necessary to the recovery of your 
 moral independence ; and let it not be said that the policy of 
 one of the most intelligent and best-informed states of the 
 Union shall be forever controlled by a single scurrilous news- 
 paper. 
 
 The same or similar remarks maybe addressed, with equal pro- 
 priety, to the great agricultural states of the Middle and VVestern 
 parts of the country, from New York to Louisiana. They all 
 supported Gen. Jackson as a firm friend of American industry : 
 they have found him treacherous, and they owe it to themselves 
 not to give him the opportunity of deceiving them a second time 
 To the Southern states, which are at present opposed to pro- 
 tection, there is little to be said on this part of the subject, 
 although even these, if they took a more correct view of their 
 own interest, would find it as deeply involved in the maintenance 
 of the system as that of any portion of the country. To the 
 domestic producer, what, after all, can be more important than a 
 domestic market .'' Massachusetts, with her immediate neigh- 
 bors at the south and west, is, happily, sound. Maine, we trust, 
 is at this moment giving proofs of her regeneration. 
 
 Our object in these papers is rather to point out the errors in 
 the conduct of the present Administration, than to exalt the merit 
 of the candidates for the succession. It would be difficult, how- 
 ever, to quit the subject of our domestic policy, without paying 
 a tribute of respect to the extraordinary deserts of Mr. Clay in 
 regard to this subject. This great statesman, by his exertions 
 in Congress last winter, refreshed his reputation, and proved 
 
41 
 
 that the progress of years has only matured his judgment with- 
 out at all impairing the vigor and brilliancy of his eloquence. 
 His speeches on the Tariff and the Public Lands are quite 
 equal — in the opinion of some, superior — to the happiest etibrts 
 of his earlier days. It was a dangerous experiment — with him, 
 as well as with Mr. Adams — to return after so long an absence, 
 and with so high a reputation to sustain, to the floor of Congress. 
 Both stood the trial nobly, and have come out of it with aug- 
 mented fame. When we see these distinguished men quitting 
 their places at the head of the Executive department, and 
 entering the legislative bodies of the Union only to take the 
 lead, as if by general acknowledgement in these : — when we 
 compare their arduous labors, their brilliant reports and speeches, 
 their skilful management on this new theatre, with the daily 
 exhibitions of vulgar violence and intellectual nothingness at 
 the White House, we are struck with astonishment that an in- 
 telligent people could have fallen into so strange an aberration 
 of judgment as to give to its worthless tenant even a momentary 
 preference over such competitors. This wretched delusion 
 seems now to be rapidly passing off. The reign oi' common 
 sense is apparently about to be restored, and whenever that 
 happens, the reign of Jackson will of course terminate. 
 
 CHAPTER Vn. 
 
 THE INDIANS AND THE MISSIONARIES. 
 
 This is the darkest chapter in our history. If it were possi- 
 ble to draw a veil over it, we would gladly do so, for the honor 
 of our country and of humanity. But it is not. The work of 
 iniquity is still in progress. The only hope of arresting it before 
 it reaches its consummation, must be founded in the awakening 
 sense of justice of the people. The strongest appeals have been 
 made repeatedly to the executive and legislative departments of 
 the Government, as they are now constituted, but without effect. 
 The judiciary has nobly taken its stand in defence of the right; 
 but, without the co-operation of the executive, its interposition 
 will probably be ineffectual. It is only by a change in the 
 character of the Administration, and of the majorities in congress, 
 that we can expect to redress this great wrong, and prevent the 
 6 
 
43 
 
 final extermination of a civilized and Christian community. If 
 there were no other objection to our present rulers, this alone 
 ought to be considered as decisive ; and it is therefore of the 
 highest importance that the facts in the case should be constantly 
 kept before the public mind. 
 
 What, then, are these facts? The Cherokee Indians occupy 
 a territory somewhat smaller than the state of Massachusetts, 
 and situated at the point where the boundaries of Georgia, 
 North Carolina, Tennessee and Alabama approach each other — 
 partly in each of these states, but principally in Georgia. The 
 possession of this territory has been solemnly guarantied to them 
 in a succession of treaties, first by Georgia herself, and subse- 
 quently by the Government of the United States, those of the 
 latter class beincr not less than sixteen in number. In all these 
 treaties, they are expressly recognized as a distinct community; 
 their rights of property and jurisdiction are formally admitted ; 
 and it is stipulated that no citizen of the United States shall 
 enter their territory without a passport. In all these treaties 
 there are mutual concessions: the Cherokees make grants and 
 promises in exchange for the guaranties and the promises which 
 they receive. All these grants and promises so made by them 
 have been faithfully executed — we have had the full benefit of 
 ihem ; — it is not even pretended that there has been any breach 
 of faith. The Supreme Court has declared that the treaties are 
 valid and binding. Finally, the intercourse act of 1802 author- 
 ises and requires the President to employ, if necessary, the mili- 
 tary force of the country for the purpose of securing to the Indi- 
 ans the rights and privileges to which, under these treaties, they 
 are entitled. 
 
 Such are the rights of the Indians. Let us look now at the 
 manner in which they have been treated by Georgia and the 
 General Government. In a time of perfect tranquillity — without 
 a pretext even for complaint against the Cherokees — the state 
 of Georgia, by a public act of her legislature, extends her juris- 
 diction over them and their territory : in other words, declares 
 that she is herself the rightful sovereign of a territory of which 
 another community has had from time immemorial quiet pos- 
 session, and which is guarantied to that community in a series 
 of treaties by Georgia herself and the Union of which Georgia 
 forms a part. Truly, a modest pretension ! But even this is 
 not the worst. The object is to obtain, not merely the jurisdic- 
 tion, but the property. Another act is passed authorizing the 
 survey of ajl the lands not in the immediate occupation of the 
 Indians, and their division into lots, for the purpose (Will pos- 
 terity believe it ?) of distributing them by lottery among t hein- 
 
43 
 
 habitants of the state. In order to render the quantity of land 
 not included in this distribution as small as possible, the Indi- 
 ans are subjected to personal disabilities, which must render 
 their residence in their ancient abodes intolerable, and, if the 
 system is continued, will compel them all to emigrate. 
 
 Assailed in this unexampled manner by a stronger neighbor, 
 whose aggressions they are wholly unable to resist by open 
 force, the Cherokees appeal to the General Government, and 
 invoke the execution of the laws and treaties by which their 
 rights are secured. They appeal at different times to the three 
 great departments, the Executive, the Legislative and the Ju- 
 diciary. The Supreme Court answers their appeal with its 
 usual prompt and yet prudent energy. In the first case in 
 which the question came up — that of Corn Tassel, a prisoner, 
 indicted for murder, a mandate was issued immediately, re- 
 quiring the State of Georgia to appear in Court and defend 
 the constitutionality of her proceedings. No sooner was the 
 fact known, than the Legislature of Georgia, which was then 
 in session, passed a set of resolutions, denying entirely the 
 right of the Supreme Court to interfere with the course of her 
 criminal jurisdiction, and requiring the Governor to resist any 
 such interference by force. In open contempt of the authority 
 of the Court, and with a disregard for the common feelings of 
 humanity that makes the blood run cold, the prisoner — his trial 
 still pending in the ordinary course of law — was ordered to 
 execution and actually executed, or, in plain English, murdered 
 under the forms of justice. When the case came on at Wash- 
 ington, the State of Georgia made default: the Court, with the 
 dignified moderation and correct sense of propriety which con- 
 stantly marks their proceedings, took no notice of the contu- 
 macious conduct of that state which was not regularly before 
 them, and decided the case on, a point of form in her favor. 
 The next year the affair came up a second time in the case of 
 the Missionaries, and the Court, with a manly firmness, not 
 less honorable to them than the steady impartiality which they 
 had exhibited before, gave an unequivocal opinion against the 
 constituticniality of the laws of Georgia. When that opinion 
 was sent down for execution, the authorities of Georgia, in their 
 usual spirit of insubordination, refused to carry it into effect, 
 and actually retained and now hold in close confinement, 171 
 the State Penitentiary TWO MINISTERS OF RELIGION 
 — one of them a citizen of Massachusetts — under a process 
 which the highest judicial authority of the United States has 
 declared to be unconstitutional. 
 
 Such has been the conduct of Georgia. In the mean time 
 
44 
 
 what has the President done? The President is bound by the 
 constitution and his oath of office, to see that the laws and 
 treaties are faithfully executed, and as Ave have said, is author- 
 ised and required by the Intercourse Act, to employ if necessary, 
 the military force of the country, for the purpose of securing to 
 the Indians the personal, political and territorial rights guaran- 
 tied to them by the treaties. What then has the President 
 done? — In what way has he interfered to check these violent 
 and unconstitutional usurpations of power by Georgia, and to 
 sustain t!)e Judiciary department in the rightful course of its 
 constitutional functions? What sort of countenance and aid 
 has he given to the feeble and distressed remnant of a once 
 powerful people, who have come to him, in their uimcit nred — 
 to invoke not merely the friendship for the beloved Cherokees, 
 of which thev had received so many honied assurances, but the 
 PLIGHTED PUBLIC FAITH of the Union? When thus 
 called upon by the Cherokees, the President informed them, 
 through his Secretary of War, that whether the proceedings of 
 Georgia were or were not in accordance with the treaties, the 
 United States could not and would not undertake to oppose 
 them. When the Supreme Court declared these proceedings 
 to be unconstitutional, the President's Secretary at ^Var at- 
 tempted to refute the decision in a long manifesto, published in 
 the semi-official paper called the Globe. — When the State of 
 Georgia, in carrying her unconstitutional laws into execution, 
 invaded the territory of the Cherokees, the President, instead 
 of employing the military force of the country in their defence, 
 actually withdrew a corps of troops which was previously sta- 
 tioned there, and left them entirely at the mercy of their ene- 
 mies, instead of lending them his countenance and aid in the 
 unequal struggle in which they are engaged, he is continually 
 laboring, through his agents, official and unofficial, to persuade 
 them that they are in the wrong, that they cannot maintain their 
 ground, and that they would do much better to quit their im-' 
 provements — abandon their cultivated territory, and emigrate 
 to a distant wilderness, two or three thousand miles off — in one 
 word, that they would do better to abjure civilization and Chris- 
 tianity, and return to barbarism. — When the State of Georgia, 
 after setting at nought the claims of common humanity, and the 
 majesty of the laws and constitution of the country, went still 
 farther, and laid violent hands upon the persons of MINIS- 
 TERS OF RELIGION, for no other cause than their zeal 
 and activity in their sacred calling — the President not only did 
 not, as he was bound to do by law — protect them, but actually 
 withdrew from one of them the character of a functionary of 
 
45, 
 
 the United States, which he had held hefore, for the express 
 purpose of exposintr him entirely naked and defenceless — to the 
 full sweep of the bfows that were aimed at him by the brutal 
 agents of the tyranny of Georgia. 
 
 Such has been the conduct of the President. Even Congress — 
 we blush for the honor of the country, and of humanity, when 
 we say it — even Congress has thus far been so completely en- 
 veloped in the toils ot' party management, that it has been found 
 impossible by the friends of the country, notwithstanding their 
 unremitted, laborious, energetic and most praiseworthy efforts, 
 to obtain even a resolution that it was expedient to maintain the 
 Public Faith of the Union. 
 
 Such are the facts in the case of the Indians and Missionaries : 
 Let us now very briefly consider the character of these proceed- 
 ings under the various aspects, in which thev naturally present 
 themselves:— their PERFIDY: — their VIOLENCE: — their 
 MEANNESS :— their BRUTALITY :— the alarming resistance 
 to the constitutional authority of the Supreme Court : — the re- 
 volting and outrageous defiance of the moral and religious feel- 
 ings of the community. 
 
 I. PERFIDY. — A whole series of solemn treaties negoci- 
 ated and concluded, successively, duiing a period of fifty years, 
 under all the Administrations that have held the power of the 
 government since its organization, are openly violated, without 
 the slightest pretext or apology. It is not pretended tliat we were 
 surprised or forced into the conclusion of any of them. They 
 were free, fair and equal compacts, or rather they were com- 
 pacts in which the real advantage was entirely on our side. It 
 is not pretended that they have not been observed in good faith 
 by the Indians. The lands which they granted, have been oc- 
 cupied and settled — the stipulations in our favor have all been 
 executed — we have had the benefit of them to the last fraction. 
 It is not even seriously pretended that the treaties were informal, 
 although if such were the fact, it would furnish no excuse for 
 the violation of a bona fide engagement, of which we have had 
 the benefit. But it is not, as we have said, seriously pretended 
 that the treaties are even informal. An objection of this des- 
 cription was indeed put forward by Georgia, who meanly attempt- 
 ed to pick a flaw in the form of an instrument of which she has 
 had the benefit, for the sake of escaping from the payment of 
 the consideration ; but the Supreme Court has put the extin- 
 guisher at once upon this feeble and unmanly effort. There is 
 not even the poor and stale plea of state necessity. It is not 
 pretended that the observance of the treaties would be produc- 
 tive of any material inconvenience either to Georgia or the 
 
46 
 
 United States. The immediate motive for violating them is, to 
 procure for Georgia the opportunity of distributing the Cherokee 
 land by lottery among her citizens. The proceeding is an act 
 of open, avowed, unblushing, deliberate, premeditated NA- 
 TION \L PERFIDY. 
 
 Is this a light thing ? Are the people of the United States 
 prepared, by continuing their present agents in power, to give 
 their sanction to and take upon themselves the responsibility 
 for this monstrous abuse of authority .'' We answer for them 
 boldly, emphatically and decidedly, NO ; a thousand times 
 over, NO. The PUBLIC FAITH MUST AND SHALL 
 BE PRESERVED. The unprincipled and reckless tools 
 of party, who are endeavoring to fasten upon our national 
 character the stamp of indelible dishonor, by the violation of 
 these treaties, must and shall give way to men who have at 
 least the common honesty to feel and acknowledge the obliga- 
 tion of a contract. 
 
 2. A^OLENCE and MEANNESS. Independently of the 
 positive engagements which we are under to the Indians ; 
 were there no relation between them and us, but that which 
 is created by the law of nature and the fact of neighborhood: — 
 the proceedings towards them are such, that they can hardly be 
 paralleled even in the history of barbarous nations. There 
 no doubt is now and always has been a great deal of injustice and 
 violence in the world. Wars have been carried on ; — states 
 have been invaded and conquered for the mere gratification of 
 personal ambition. In turning over the blood-stained rolls of 
 history, the friends of humanity must too frequently 
 
 Learn with horrent brow to rate 
 
 What millions died that C'iEsar might be great. 
 
 But in almost all the instances on record, even of gross and 
 substantially unprovoked aggression, there is at least some 
 pretext put forward by the aggressor, which, if true, would in 
 some degree excuse the outrage. Even in the celebrated case 
 of the partition of Poland, which in form approaches perhaps 
 more nearly to the present than any other ; a case in which as 
 in this, three prosperous and powerful states combined to par- 
 cel out among themselves, the territory of a weak and unoffend- 
 ing neighbor, there was at least a pretence of state necessity. 
 The transaction was justified by the partitioning powers, on 
 the ground of the inconvenience and danger which they suffer- 
 ed from the troubles which habitually disturbed the interior of 
 Poland. The proclamations that were issued, are filled with 
 loud complaints of injuries and insults received from that dan- 
 
47 
 
 gerous government. They breathe an edifying tone of justice 
 and humanity — Russia, Austria and Prussia, if you believe 
 them, are three peaceable and well-disposed powers, who have 
 combined to abate a common nuisance. All this we know, 
 was false and hollow ; but it showed at least some sense of 
 shame in the parties to the outrage ; some disposition to as- 
 sume a virtue although they had it not : — to discharge that 
 tribute of hypocrixy which vice habitually pays to virtue. But 
 that a state, claiming to be civilized and christian, should, in a 
 time of profound peace, without even a pretence of injury or 
 provocation, appropriate to itself the sovereignty over a weak- 
 er neighboring- community, destroy its political existence, sub- 
 ject its members to the most atrocious indignities, and distribute 
 their territory by lottery among its own people ! — This, we 
 confess, appears to us to be an entirely new case. We have 
 paid some attention to political and diplomatic history, but we 
 have met with no other exactly like it. 
 
 When we say that Georgia puts forward no pretences in 
 justification of her proceedings, we mean that she makes no 
 allegations of injury or fraud on the other side, which, if well 
 founded, would justify her course. The attempts at apology 
 which she has in fact made are of such a kind as rather ag- 
 gravate than extenuate the injustice of her conduct. She 
 says, for example, that when she took possession of her terri- 
 tory, she found the aboriginal inhabitants barbarians, and be- 
 came immediately their rightful sovereign, because a civilized 
 community possesses a natural right of sovereignty over its 
 barbarous neighbors. The right thus acquired she ceded 
 away in a series of solemn treaties. She now claims the right 
 of rescinding these treaties, and resuming the sovereignty which 
 had been granted away by them. Why ? Because the Indi- 
 ans are now civilized. Such — if our readers will believe us— 
 is the actual, bona fide intent and meaning of the language of 
 the judges of Georgia, assembled in convention to decide upon 
 the case of Tassel. ^ Are the ^authorities of Georgia in earnest, 
 or are they sharpening the sting of oppression by a bitter and 
 criminal mockery ? We will not trust ourselves to comment 
 seriouslv upon such reasoning. It would be impossible to 
 keep within the limits of moderation which are fixed by the 
 dignity of the parties to this great cause. 
 
 The attack of Georgia upon the Cherokees is therefore des- 
 titute even of a plausible pretence of justice. And let it be 
 observed that her pretensions extend much farther than they 
 could be carried by conquest in the ordinary forms of civilized 
 warfare. The law of nations is not understood to permit a 
 
48 
 
 conquering people to take advantage of its success for the pur- 
 pose of appropriating the territory and reducing to subjection 
 the persons of the conquered. These are the practices of bar- 
 barous communities : — they were the practices of the northern 
 hordes that overran the Roman empire. The principles of 
 public law, as established by the practice of civilized nations, 
 only permit tiie conqueror to proceed until he has reduced his 
 enemy to terms, and obtained satisfaction for the injury which 
 he has suffered. If he go beyond this, he puts himself in the 
 wrong. It appears, the.efore, that Georgia, in a time of pro- 
 found peace, and without even a pretence of provocation, has 
 proceeded, in her aggressions upon the Cherokees infinitely be- 
 yond the point which would have been authorized by actual 
 conquest, in a war waged for a sufficient cause. 
 
 And then the meanness — the paltry, dastardly, pitiful meanness 
 of the whole transaction. A man of real power, and who has 
 withal a single spork of the lofty and generous spirit which so 
 naturally accompanies a consciousness of strength, scorns to 
 use his advantages, either in his public or private concerns, for 
 the purpose of crushing the weak and unoffending. He would 
 feel himself dishonored forever by such conduct. So true is this 
 sentiment to nature that we find it exhibiting itself even in 
 children. An overgrown lubber, who should undertake to 
 treat with harshness an unoftending school-fellow of smaller 
 size, would be hooted out of every village in the country. But 
 what do we see in this affair.' Three or four prosperous and 
 powerful states, numbering on an average not less than half a 
 million souls each, backed by a Union of twenty-four sove- 
 reign states and thirteen million inhabitants, are pouncing with 
 all their combined strength upon a little peaceful society, com- 
 posed of some fifteen thousand persons, incapable, of couise, of 
 offering the least resistance, or of defending themselves in any 
 way but by an appeal to the sixteen treaties in which these very 
 aggressors have solemnly guarantied their political existence 
 and the integrity of their territory. Is there an honorable man 
 in the country whose cheek is not on fire with shame when he 
 feels that, as a citizen of the United States he is unconsciously a 
 party to such a transaction? But even this is not the worst. 
 
 3. BRUTALITY.— Mean and pitiful as it is in all cases 
 for an individual or a nation to abuse power for the purpose of 
 injuring the feeble, there is in this aflair a feature of a still more 
 revolting character. These Cherokees are not merely a peace- 
 ful and unoffending little community, but they are a community 
 of a very peculiar and interesting character. They are among 
 the last remnants of the once powerful native race that in former 
 
49 
 
 days occupied the whole country: they are the only tribe of this 
 great family that has made any considerable advances in civ- 
 ilization. It has often been doubted whether it were possible to 
 induce these natives to assume the habits that belong to Euro- 
 pean culture; and, until within a short time, the general opinion 
 was decidedly in the negative. For two centuries in succes- 
 sion the government and people of the United Stales have been 
 ursing, entreating, preaching, praying, compelling them, as it 
 were, to come within the pale, but all in vain. At length, a 
 single tribe takes us at our word, and comes in. They adopt 
 our religion, form of government, dress, manners and customs; 
 learn our language, make an alphabet for their own; rise, in 
 short, very nearly to a level with ourselves in all the arts and 
 accomplishments of civilized life. A community which has risen 
 in this way from civilization to barbarism, in the life-time of a 
 single generation, is a great moral and political curiosity. Their 
 history forms a very valuable addition to the experiments that 
 have been made upon the fortunes of our race. Every en- 
 lightened man would, for this reason — independently of any 
 other circumstance — watch their further progress with peculiar 
 interest, and would anxiously desire that no unfortunate acci- 
 dent might interfere with it. How, then, do we treat them? 
 How do we — a civilized and Christian community — conduct 
 ourselves towards this tribe of barbarians, whom wo have suc- 
 ceeded in converting into a civilized and Christian community 
 like ourselves.' Georgia says to them. Gentlemen, we have 
 succeeded in converting you from a tribe of barbarians into a 
 civilized and Christian community like ourselves, and to show 
 you the satisfaction we feel at your success and our own, we 
 proceed to appropriate your country, confiscate your property, 
 subject your persons to atrocious indignities, and destroy your 
 political existence. They appeal for redress to the government 
 of the United States. The government tells them — What? 
 That it cannot and will not protect them — that, whether 
 Georgia be right or wrong, she must have her way, and that 
 they had much better quit their country, emigrate to a distant 
 wilderness on the borders of the Red River, and there resume 
 their former modes of life. Strange, astonishing — incredible 
 as it may appear, after we have labored two centuries to civilize 
 these Indians, and have at last succeeded with a single tribe, 
 the first salutation which we address to them is a recommenda- 
 tion — what do we say.' — a peremptory injunction, issued in 
 contempt of a whole series of treaties, to return to barbarism. 
 And all this for the noble purpose of distributing a few more 
 acres of land by lottery among the inhabitants of a state where 
 there is now hardly one white family to the square mile ! 
 7 
 
50 
 
 4. But the most important and alarming aspect under which 
 we can look at these proceedings, is in their relation to the 
 constitutional autliority of the supreme court. We have now 
 reached that fearful crisis in our history, when a few months 
 will decide whether the constitution and with it the Union of 
 the states is to stand or fall. It is useless to attempt to conceal 
 from ourselves that, if Georgia carries her point against the 
 supreme court in this great case, the authority of that tribunal, 
 and with it the basis of all our institutions, is destroyed forever. 
 The decision of this question will depend upon the result of the 
 election of President. At the next term of the supreme court 
 to be held at Washington next winter, a return will be made 
 of the refusal of Georgia to execute the decree of last winter, 
 and the supreme court will then, agreeably to the provisions of the 
 statute, address a precept to the marshal of Georgia, requiring 
 him to execute the decree himself, and release the missionaries 
 from the penitentiary. Should we have in office at that time a 
 President who has the intelligence to know, and the manly 
 firmness to do, his duty, Georgia will not venture to resist: the 
 missionaries will be liberated: — the Cherokees will be main- 
 tained in the rights secured to them by treaty, and the whole 
 affair will pass ofi' without further trouble. If the present in- 
 cumbent should be re-elected, and Georgia should feel that 
 she is sustained and encouraged by the very power whose duty 
 it is to arrest her mad course, she will probably resist: — Jack- 
 son will refuse to employ the military force of the Union in aid 
 of the court, as he has already refused to employ it in the ex- 
 ecution of the intercourse act: — the decree will not be executed: 
 — the reign of law will terminate : — that of terror and violence will 
 commence; and with it will commence for us the Ions: series of 
 internal commotions, proscriptions, confiscations, — war.", foreign 
 and domestic, Avith all their frightful accompaniments and con- 
 sequences, — which make up the history of most other nations, 
 and from which, iu the goodness of Providence, we have thus 
 far been almost wholly exempt. 
 
 How fearful to reflect that such immense national interests are 
 staked upon the almost fortuitous results of a popular election, 
 which is to take place v.ithin six weeks throughout the whole 
 country ! — Are the wise and good — the fathers of families, who 
 wish to bequeath to their children the same blessings which 
 they inherited themselves from a virtuous and patriotic ancestry, 
 sufHciently alive to the emergency of the crisis? Are they 
 straining every nerve with the intense anxiety that men ought 
 to feel who know that every thing valuable is at hazard? 
 
 5. There is still one consideration connected with this sub- 
 
51 
 
 ject, more solemn than any to which we have hitherto adverted. 
 We have seen in this affair the authorities of Georgia and the 
 President of the United States combining to violate the respect 
 due to the sacred character of a minister of religion, with a 
 grossness hardly to be paralleled even in the history of barba- 
 rous communities. We have seen the MISSIONARIES, af- 
 ter having been not merely authorized, but invited, encouraged 
 and urged by the government to prosecute their labors of love 
 and piety in these remote regions, suddenly torn trom their 
 homes — dragged IN CHAINS and at the imminent risk of 
 their lives, through the wilderness, subjected to a mock trial, 
 and then committed to the PENITENTIARY— and all this 
 without their having been guilty of the slightest offence against 
 the public peace or the laws and constitution of the country. 
 We have seen this course of more than brutal violence continued 
 after the highest judicial authority of the country had solemnly 
 declared their innocence. 
 
 Is this again a trifling thing? Will the christian people of 
 the United States give their sanction, by placing him again in 
 ofiice, to the conduct of a President who treats the ministers of 
 the christian religion with open outrage — loads them with chains 
 — drags them from their peaceful homes to prison — commits 
 them in defiance of law like common criminals to the Peniten- 
 tiary, and violently keeps them there against the decision of 
 the highest law authority affirming their innocence? For 
 throughout this whole business we are to recollect that the real 
 difficulty lies not in the perversity of Georgia, who would not 
 dare to act unless she felt herself supported at head-quarters, 
 but in the contumacy of the President, who tacitly and openly 
 bears her out in all her violence. Will the people then sanction 
 these proceedings by continuing the President in office? Once 
 more we answer for them NO — a thousand times over, NO. 
 
 On this topic it would be vain and idle to enlarge: The min- 
 isters of the christian religion detained against law like common, 
 criminals in the Penittntiary ! All the eloquence of Demosthenes 
 and Patrick Henry could add nothing to the effect of such a sen- 
 tence. Gen. Jackson will feel it to his cost at the polls. 
 
 One of these ministers of religion, Dr. Butler, is a citizen of 
 this Commonwealth. He owes allegiance to Massachusetts, 
 and Massachusetts in turn is bound to protect him at home and 
 abroad from illegal violence. He is now violently detained in 
 prison by the authorities of Georgia, in defiance of a decree of 
 the Supreme Court declaring his innocence. If this violence 
 should be continued after the Court shall have ordered its own 
 officers to execute the decree, and the civil process shall be 
 
** .'1 
 
 04 
 
 entirely at an end, will it not be time for Massachusetts too to 
 hetr'in to think of her reserved rights? If the Government of 
 the United States cannot or will not protect our most respected 
 citizens in the exercise of the highest and most solemn functions 
 from the Penitentiary, will it not be time for us to begin to think 
 of taking their protection into our own hands? 
 
 13ut we must here finish this too long chapter. We cannot 
 conclude without expressing our admiration of the noble firm- 
 ness which has been shown by the Cherokees, in refusing to 
 accept the insidious proposals to emigrate, which have been 
 made to them by the General Government. With the fragments 
 of sixteen violated treaties scattered round them, is it not some- 
 thing like mockery for the government of the United States 
 even to ask them to conclude a seventeenth.-' Can it, in good 
 earnest, reasonably be supposed that they would be tempted 
 by any terms, however apparently favorable.' No; — let them 
 perish — if it must be so — in defence of their rights — by their 
 fire-sides — on the tombs of their fathers ! Let them fall — if it 
 must be so — as so many of the best and bravest of all nations 
 and ages — as so many of our own forefathers, fell before them — 
 fighting manfully the good fight of innocence against oppres- 
 sion ! How can they ever find a nobler or a happier way of 
 passing from the troubled scenes of this transitory world to the 
 permanent glories of a better? — But we do not apprehend this 
 result. The supreme court, with a manly firmness not inferior 
 to their own, has already declared in their favor: the People are 
 preparing to sustain the sentence at the polls: — the agents of 
 Georgia, who have bullied and blustered at their ease while 
 they knew that there was no danger, will make great haste to 
 draw in their horns, when they find themselves encountered by 
 the power of the United States in the hands of a President who 
 knows and W'ill do his dutv. The Cherokees will be supported 
 in ihcir rightful pretensions. THE PUBLIC FAITH MUST 
 AND WILL BE PRESERVED. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 THE BANK. 
 
 The reputation and fortune of the persons composing the ad- 
 ministration of any government seem to be, for the time being, 
 identified with the welfare of the nation ; and, by whatever 
 means they may have obtained power, one would suppose that 
 
53 
 
 they would naturally exercise it, in their own interest, with a 
 view to the public good. It is, therefore, almost as dithcult to 
 comprehend as it is to excuse the sort of demoniac frenzy with 
 which our present rulers have been, ever since their introduc- 
 tion into office, laboring to destroy ALL the great principles of 
 the national prosperity, and to subvert ALL the most important 
 and useful institutions of government. In the preceding chap- 
 ters, we have seen them carrying confusion and corruption into 
 all the departments of the public service, by treating the offices, 
 from the highest to the lowest, as the SPOILS OF VICTORY: 
 —arresting the progress of DOMESTIC INDUSTRY and 
 INTERNAL IMPROVEMENT:— prostrating the HONOR 
 of the country at the feet of the British ministry: — openly vio- 
 lating the PUBLIC FAITH with the Indian tribes:— outrag- 
 ing DECENCY and RELIGION in their treatment of the 
 missionaries : — shaking the authority of the SUPREME 
 COURT to its very foundation by abttting the proceedings of 
 Georgia; and by the abuse of the appointing and veto powers 
 in a great measure neutralizing the constitutional action of both 
 branches of CONGRESS. To complete the picture, we have 
 now to see them aiming a blow at the BANK OF THE 
 UNITED STATES, which, if not checked in time, as we 
 confidently trust that it will be, by the returning good sense and 
 patriotic ff^eling of the people, will throw the CURRENCY 
 into disorder, and condemn a large proportion of the most in- 
 dustrious and honorable citizens among us to immediate BANK- 
 RUPTCY. 
 
 We shall not undertake to say which of the various impolitic, 
 illeiial and unconstitutional proceedings of the present Adminis- 
 tration will prove, in the end, most injurious to the country; 
 but the one which will he attended with the greatest amount of 
 immediate and therefore certain and irremediable evil, is prob- 
 ably the destruction (if the Bank. Fortunately this is also the 
 one which more than any other has engaged the public atten- 
 tion. The merits of the question have been, for two years past, 
 discussed in every form, and the importance of sustaining the 
 Bank set forth with such clearness of illustration and irresistible 
 force of argument in reviews and other journals, reports of com- 
 mittees and speeches of members of congress, that tliere is 
 really no room or excuse for mistake. We may mention par- 
 ticularly, as one of the ablest arguments that have appeared 
 upon this subject, the speech delivered by Mr. Webster in the 
 senate upon the reception of the veto message, and which has 
 lately been reported for the newspapers. After so many ela- 
 borate and copious discussions, it may almost appear superflu' 
 
54 
 
 ous to treat this subject in the cursory form which belongs to 
 these essays. But it ought not to be wholly omitted in a gen- 
 eral review of the conduct of the Administration; and if our 
 hasty suggestions should affect only one mind that has not yet 
 been reached by the logic and eloquence of abler champions 
 of the good cause, our efforts may not, in the present divided 
 state of the people, be without a salutary and important in- 
 fluence. 
 
 The National Bank, though not properly apolitical institution, 
 is one of the most important and valuable instruments that are 
 used in the practical administration of the government. It 
 serves three great purposes: — It is the financial agent of the 
 Executive for all its receipts and payments: It aids in regulating 
 the currency, as far as this is composed of paper, by acting as 
 a check upon the local banks, and distributing through the 
 Union a safe and uniform emission of notes: and thirdly: It 
 performs, but in a much more effectual and extensive way than 
 any similar institution, the usual functions of a Bank, in ac- 
 commodating the public with loans of capital. For each and 
 ail of these purposes, the existence of the National Bank is, in a 
 manner, indispensable; and, were it even possible to get along 
 without it (as it certainly would not be), the sudden destruction 
 of the existing Bank, under the present economical circum- 
 stances of the country, would be attended with an extent of 
 individual suffering and loss of property unexampled perhaps 
 in the history of civilized communities. 
 
 When the first bank was first proposed, soon after the adoption 
 of the present constitution, the question was started whether the 
 governm.ent possessed, under that instrument, the power to es- 
 tablish such an institution. The political parties of the day 
 were divided upon this, as they were upon most other questions 
 that came before the nation, — not so much perhaps because the 
 matter was in itself very doubtful, as because parties that exist 
 on other accounts seek, and of course find, in every new topic 
 a new occasion for diflerence. The party which had been ori- 
 ginally opposed to the Bank possessed the almost undisputed 
 control of the legislative and executive departments of the gov- 
 ernment when the charter expired, and it was not at the time 
 renewed. Experience, however, soon satisfied the most intelli- 
 gent and powerful men among them that their theories on the 
 subject were erroneous, and that a Bank was absolutely indis- 
 pensable to the safe and prosperous conduct of the public affairs. 
 Within a few years after the expiration of the charter of the 
 former one, another was accordingly established, with a 
 larger capital and more extended powers. Mr. Madison, 
 
55 
 
 then President of the United States, and one of the most active 
 opponents of the other Bank, gave to this his cordial approbation. 
 In the mean time, the institution had received the sanction of 
 the Supreme Court ; and the tv/o great parties which had Ibr- 
 merly divided the country, and which comprehended all the ac- 
 tive citizens, being both in favor of it, it went into operation 
 with the unanimous assent and concurrence of the^ whole 
 people. 
 
 The results have been such as might have been expected 
 from such auspices. The currency of the country, which, at 
 the time when the Bank was established, was in a state of utter 
 and apparently irremediable disorder, was rapidly restored to 
 the sound and healthy condition, in which it has been ever since 
 and is now. The agency of the Bank, if not the only cause 
 that operated in the production of this most salutary change, 
 was unquestionably one of the most important and effective. 
 Having lent its aid in reforming the currency, the Bank enter- 
 ed on its regular course of official duty, which it has ever since 
 pursued with exemplary success. As the fiscal agent of the 
 Executive, it has exhibited a remarkable intelligence, efficiency, 
 energy, and, above all, INDEPENDENCE. This— as we 
 shall presently see — has been its real crime. As the regula- 
 tor of the currency, it has furnished the country with a safe, 
 convenient and copious circulating medium, and prevented the 
 mischiefs that would otherwise result from the insecurity of the 
 local banks. As a mere institution for loaning money, it has 
 been, as it were, the Providence of the less wealthy sections 
 of the Union. It has distributed with unsparing hand almost 
 the whole of its vast capital throughout the western states, 
 where capital, at any moderate rate of interest, would be other- 
 wise nearly inaccessible. The extent of the benefit conferred 
 in this way, not on the west only, but on the whole country, 
 will never be fully appreciated except, should that unfortunately 
 happen, by its loss. Through its dealings in exchange at 
 home and abroad, the Bank has materially facilitated the opera- 
 tions of our foreign and domestic trade. The important advan- 
 tages which have thus been derived from this institution have 
 been unattended by any countervailing evil. As its term ad- 
 vanced, and its officers acquired additional experience, it has 
 been constantly gaining on the public favor. There has been 
 no suspicion of abuse; not a lisp of complaint has been heard 
 on any account throughout the country; and since it has been 
 thought necessary, for electioneering purposes, to raise a clamor 
 against the institution, it is really curious, as well as melancho- 
 ly, to see how low the party managers have been content to 
 
56 
 
 stoop— to what wretched and pitiful shifts they have been driv- 
 en, in order to find any thing tliat could be tortured, by any art 
 or sophistry, into the appearance of rnal-administration. 
 
 Such was the condition of the Bank, and such the state of 
 the public opinion in regard to it when, in an evil hour, the 
 reins of government were entrusted to the hands of our present 
 rulers. Tiie hostility of Jackson to the institution was not 
 known or known only to confidential friends, previously to his 
 election, nor was it exhibited in the inaugural address: but in 
 his first message to Congress, he came out with an open denun- 
 ciation of the Bank as it is now constituted, and a recommenda- 
 tion of another, apparently of a totally different kind, the par- 
 ticular character of which, as it has not been explained, it 
 would of course be useless to discuss. The motives which led 
 to this extraordinary proceeding, are not distinctly known. — 
 ^Yhen we connect the time of its appearance with that of the 
 transactions in relation to the branch at Portsmouth, where the 
 independence of the officers of the Bank defeated the attempts 
 of the executive to make it subservient to party purposes, it 
 seems not improbable, especially considering the well-known 
 character of Jackson, that we are to look to these transactions 
 as the moving cause of his determination to destroy the institu- 
 tion. We have accordingly stated above that the INDEPEiV- 
 DENCE of the president and directors of the bank is their 
 only real crime. It is probable, however, that the party mana- 
 gers also calculated that they should gain something for elec- 
 tioneering purposes, by endeavoring to revive the prejudices 
 that were formerly entertained on this subject by the old re- 
 publican party, and by making use of it as a pretext for appeal- 
 ing to the worst passions of the uninformed part of the people. 
 This motive is as exactly in keeping- with the character of Van 
 Buren as the former one is with that of his master. The im- 
 mediate interest of the local banks may also perhaps have been 
 brought to bear in a slight degree on the question. Such 
 taken together were probably the causes of this proceeding ; 
 and the extent to which each may have operated in producing 
 the result, we must leave to the reader to decide. At all 
 events, the ostensible motives assigned in the first message, in 
 the re|)orts of the committee of the House of Representatives, 
 in the Veto message, and in the party newspapers, were obvious- 
 ly put forward merely ad caplandum, as we shall presently have 
 occasion to show. 
 
 The denunciation in the first message to Congress was un- 
 accompanied by any reasons, excepting the naked and shame- 
 less assertion, that the Bank had not accomplished the purposes 
 
57 
 
 for which it was instituted. In the second message to Congress, 
 delivered a ye;ir after, the denunciation was renewed in the 
 same laconic style, and it was repeated for the third time in 
 the message that was sent to Congress at the opening of the 
 last session. In the mean while, however, the members of the 
 cabinet had been changed, and there was a pretty important 
 new feature in the aspect of the Executive communications on 
 this subject. On the day following the delivery of the message, 
 a report was transmitted from the Secretary of the Treasury, 
 containing a regular and elaborate argument in favor of re-char- 
 tering the Bank. This circumstance, taken in connexion with 
 some passages in the message, of which the meaning might be 
 considered doubtful, were supposed by some persons to indicate 
 that Jackson had, under the influence of better counsels, re- 
 vised his opinion and was preparing to retrace his steps. For 
 ourselves, we were too well aware of his violence and wrong- 
 headedness to entertain any such hopes. At all events, how- 
 ever, it was clearly the policy of the friends of the Bank that 
 the subject should be brought up and carried through Congress 
 at the last session; in order that if Jackson should dare to re- 
 alize his threats, the people might have an opportunity of re- 
 versing his decision before it could be carried into effect. The 
 proceedings of Congress are too recent to require to be here 
 recapitulated. Though the report of the examining committee 
 of the House of Representatives was formally against the Bank, 
 the general result of their labors was decidedly favorable. The 
 majority were triumphantly refuted by Mr. Mc Duffie in the 
 name of the minority, and then in a separate report JONA- 
 THAN RUSSELLED by Mr. Adams. Van Buren's 'pre- 
 monitory symptom' skulked olT lame and whining from the field. 
 3Ir- Clayton has not yet found that ' convenient opportunity ' 
 for replying to Mr. Adams, which the opponents of the latter 
 gentlemen are not unfrequently a long time waiting for. The 
 bill for re-chartering the Bank passed triumphantly through both 
 houses. The President returned it with the celebrated Veto 
 Message. 
 
 This document — when Jackson shall have been, as we trust 
 he will be within a very few months, remanded to the Hermi- 
 tage: — when the people shall have long since recovered from 
 the temporary delusion that placed him in office: — when most 
 of the messages and other papers to which his name has been 
 affixed, shall have been sunk by their leaden dullness in the 
 gulf of oblivion: — this document — the Veto Message — will 
 probably be kept in memory, and often appealed to as a curious 
 example of the extent to which, at the commencement of the 
 
 8 
 
58 
 
 nineteenth century, the elected chief magistrate of a free, 
 civilized and enlightened people dared to insult the common 
 sense and moral feeling of his constituents. The indignant 
 outcry of the people has already passed judgment upon this un- 
 worthy paper and its author, so that it is nearly as superfluous 
 as it would be, within the limits of the present essay, impossible 
 to examine its contents in detail. We shall confine ourselves 
 to a few remarks upon those parts in which the subject is treated 
 under an economical point of view. 
 
 On this head, the doctrine of the President has at least the 
 merit of novelty. He gravely informs Congress that it is an 
 act of intolerable oppression, to furnish a man with capital to 
 carry on his business, on the ordinary condition of paying in- 
 terest for the use of it. lago counsels Cassio in the play to 
 put ' money in his pocket ' as an almost infallible method of 
 succeeding in all his enterprises. Gen. Jackson is evidently 
 of opinion that to put money in a man's pocket, is to subject 
 him to great and grievous embarrassment. — Now the Bank has, 
 it seems, been guilty of the high crime and misdemeanor of 
 placing sundry millions of foreign capital in the pockets of the 
 people of the United States, and also sundry millions of capital 
 belonging to the Atlantic cities, in the pockets of the West. 
 This is not all. Will posterity believe that in this humane and 
 enlightened age, the Bank, as the representative of the owners 
 of this foreign and eastern capital, has the barbarity to demand 
 of the western people, in whose pockets it is placed, the pay- 
 ment of six per cent, interest by the year for the use of it? 
 The fact would undoubtedly be considered incredible, did it not 
 rest upon the unquestionable authority of the President of the 
 United States. ' The debt due to the bank by the West,' says 
 the Veto Message, ' is principally a debt to the eastern and 
 foreign stockholders; the interest they pay upon it (:nark the 
 villany!) is carried into the eastern states and to England, and 
 is a burden upon their industry (poor souls!) and a drain of 
 currency which no country can bear without inconvenience and 
 occasional distress.' It seems then, from the President's show- 
 ing, that these poor people of the West are not allowed, as honest 
 men should be, to appropriate the earnings of others to their 
 own use, without fee or reward, as the SPOILS OF VICTO- 
 RY, but are actually subjected to the enormous imposition of 
 paying upon all the money they borrow, the charge of six per 
 cent, annual interest. This, to be sure, is ' flat burglary.' 
 The Bank permits itself to be made the instrument of this work 
 of iniquity and oppression, and is of course fairly obnoxious 
 to the execration of all the friends of justice and humanity. 
 
But how is the mischief to be remeuied ? — If the President 
 is admirable in discovering the nature of the disease, he is no 
 less admirable in applying the cure. These Western states, 
 who are thus oppressed with a loan of thirty millions of dollars, 
 and who are subjected to the intolerable hardship and burden 
 of paying six per cent, interest upon it are to be relieved — how, 
 gentle reader? — by being suddenly called upon to pay to these 
 same eastern and foreign stockholders, instead of the intolera- 
 ble six per cent, interest, the whole hundred per cent, capital 
 within two or three years. 
 
 Is not this excellent.^ — Is not this creditable to the govern- 
 ment and country .'' — Is not this a fine piece of work to go out 
 to Europe as a specimen of the perfection to which the science 
 of political economy has been carried by the ' freest and most 
 enlightened nation on the globe?' — It is an act of oppression to 
 furnish a man with capital to carry on his business: the way to 
 relieve him is to compel him to pay it back again at all sacri- 
 fices and at a moment's notice. These are discoveries of which 
 Alexander Hamilton and Albert Gallatin never dreamed. 
 Smith, Say and Ricardo might have pored over their books for 
 centuries, without ever stumbling upon them. The document 
 which contains them, will doubtless be valued, when the Wealth 
 of Nations and the Report on Manufactures are forgotten. Did 
 it never occur to the worthies of the Kitchen Cabinet, in the 
 course of their learned speculations on capital and credit, to 
 ask themselves the questions: Who compels the western peo- 
 ple to borrow this money, if they do not want it? — If they wish 
 to relieve themselves from the burden of the interest by paying 
 the principal, why cannot they do it as well without the destruc- 
 tion of the Bank as with it? 
 
 Seriously : — If this incredible nonsense were found in the 
 first attempt of a college freshman, a reader of ordinary intel- 
 ligence would shruo" his shoulders, pronounce the writer an in- 
 corrigible blockhead, and pass the work over in silence as below 
 criticism. When we see it presented by the Chief Magistrate 
 of the country, in a public message to Congress, as a ground 
 of action on the most important subjects, involving the interests 
 of the whole people, and the private fortunes of thousands of 
 the citizens, the case becomes alarming. What are we to think 
 of the capacity and information of the President and his ad- 
 visers? — If we suppose them sincere, what lamentable igno- 
 rance, we will not say of political science, but of the common 
 business of practical life ! — If, on the other hand, we suppose 
 them to possess but a moderate share of the most ordinary in- 
 formation, what barefaced imposition ! what profound contempt 
 for the intelligence of the people ! 
 
60 
 
 The objections of the committee of the House of Represent- 
 atives to the administration of the Bank, are about upon a level 
 in importance and justice, with those of the Kitchen Cabinet to 
 the renewal of the charter. One would suppose that the com- 
 mittee had been purposely laboring to make themselves ridicu- 
 lous. The Bank is, it seems, very strongly suspected of dealing 
 in American coin. Really, and is there not also room to sus- 
 pect that it has made loans and issued notes? Here are more 
 violations of the charter., which ought not to have escaped the 
 vigilance of the committee. Again : the branches have made 
 drafts upon the parent Bank, and, fearful to relate ! these drafts 
 have been struck from a copperplate engraving. Further still: 
 The Bank has made donations to sundry lamplighters and news- 
 paper carriers every new year's day, and various interned im- 
 provements on its real estate, by putting on new locks on doors 
 and desks when the old ones were worn out, and mending win- 
 dows when the glasses were broken: — the whole to the great 
 terror and dismay of the good citizens, and in open violation of 
 the charter and of the laws in such cases made and provided! 
 
 Such in sober earnest and with a very slight exaggeration, 
 which does not affect the merits of the question, are the charges 
 gravely preferred by a committee of the House of Representa- 
 tives against the Bank, as motives for refusing the renewal of 
 the charter, and cautiously submitted, without any opinion upon 
 their siiffieiejicij , to the judgment of the House. It is satisfactory 
 to reflect that the representatives of the people, who permitted 
 themselves to take so unworthy a course, not only failed in car- 
 rying with them the assent of the house, but received in public, 
 at the hands of their chairman, the indignant, bitter and eflec- 
 tive reproof which their conduct so justly merited. The com- 
 mon sense of the nation is now fully possessed of the subject, 
 and has passed a sentence on the proceedings of Messrs. Clay- 
 ton and Cambreleng, which can never be reversed. 
 
 The spirit that breathes through all these denunciations of the 
 Bank is, if possible, still worse than the reasoning contained in 
 them. For the first time, perhaps, in the history of civilized 
 communities, the Chief Magistrate of a great nation — the natural 
 and chosen guardian of order and the public peace — is found 
 appealing to the worst passions of the uninformed part of the 
 people, and endeavoring to stir up the poor against the rich. 
 If the Bank should be re-chartered, " the humble members of so- 
 ciety, the farmers, mechanics and laborers, who have neither 
 the time nor the means of securing like favors to themselves, 
 have a right," says the veto message, "to complain of the in- 
 justice of the government." The party journals are constantly 
 
61 
 
 harping on the same string. The Bank is denounced as a monied 
 aristocracy, subsisting in bloated arrogance upon the plunder 
 of the poor. Are these foul-mouthed calumniators so profoundly 
 ignorant of every fact connected with the subjects which they 
 are every day writing upon, as not to know that it is the precise 
 purpose of banks to furnish to the persons of moderate fortune 
 whom the President is pleased to designate &s " the humble 
 members of society " the opportunity of associating together, 
 and accommodating each other with mutual loans: — that these 
 associations are, as we have already remarked, tlie Providence 
 of the less wealthy portions of the Union and of the community: 
 — that a large proportion of the stock of all the banks is held 
 by the representatives of widows and orphans, who could not 
 otherwise readily find so good an investment for their property: 
 — that the rich can, without difficulty, accommodate themselves 
 in other ways, and that it would be to them a matter of entire 
 indifference if every bank in the country, national and local, were 
 struck out of existence tomorrow? Are they ignorant, we ask, 
 of these notorious and acknowledged truths? — No, they are not 
 — but they think, or hope, that by boldly misrepresenting facts, 
 and perpetually stimulating the vicious propensities of the mass 
 of the people, they shall be able to obtain the number of votes 
 necessary to continue them in office, and secure for another 
 term the possession of the SPOILS OF VICTORY. Such 
 is the object ; and, in the Jackson code of morality, the end 
 sanctifies the means : ALL'S FAIR IN POLITICS. 
 
 If there could possibly be any thing worse than the spirit and 
 temper of these proceedings, it would be the detestable system 
 of PERSONAL SLANDER by which they are supported. 
 Because a senator of the L^nited States stands up in his place 
 to sustain one of the most valuable and important institutions 
 of the country against an attack notoriously carried on as a 
 mere electioneering manoeuvre, he is charged at once by a 
 hundred presses with BRIBERY. In a late number of the 
 Washington Globe, we remarked an article headed Political 
 3Io7-alitij, and introduced by the following verses, which were 
 placed at the head as an epigraph : 
 
 Oil for a whip in every honest hand, 
 
 To lash the rascals naked through the land 1 
 
 On looking farther, we found that these rascals who were to be 
 lashed naked through the land by the pure and honest hands of 
 Isaac Hill and Amos Kendall, were no other than Messrs. Clay, 
 Webster, and their principal associates in congress, and that 
 their offence is to have recommended in their places the re- 
 
62 
 
 chartering of the Bank. The paper containing this article is, 
 as our readers know, the semi-official organ of the government. 
 So much for the right guarantied to members of Congress of 
 not being questioned in other places for words spoken in debate 
 in either house. The President himself does not scruple to 
 lend his personal countenance to this system, and has been 
 convicted of publicly retailing, in his tavern conversations, 
 durinc- his late journey to the West, the revolting calumnies of 
 the Globe. 
 
 Will this assassination of character be much longer tolerated 
 by the public opinion of the people of the United States ? Will 
 it be much longer borne that all distinctions of right and wrong 
 shall thus be habitually reversed, and the most abandoned and 
 profligate members of society permitted to fasten publicly upon 
 the foreheads of the best and purest, the brand of guilt ? Lay 
 what unction we will to our souls, the people are not innocent 
 in this matter. We consider it as a proof of a low state of 
 civilization in Spain, in Turkey, andin many other countries that 
 the roads are not safe : — that the stern decree of public senti- 
 ment does not lend force to the law — sweep the cowardly mis- 
 creants that infest them from the face of the earth, and enable 
 the traveller to pursue his journey in security. The reproach 
 is just ; but are not the moral assassins, that prowl through 
 every portion of this vast Union, equally criminal, and far more 
 cowardly than the cuthroats and cutpurses of the old world ? Is 
 it not equally the duty of the public to enforce the now wholly 
 ineffectual laws against them, and to declare with a voice too 
 clear and loud to be mistaken or disregarded, that THIS 
 THING SHALL NOT BE ? Is it not the bounden duty of 
 the people to place this odious vice upon the same footing with 
 other open offences against morals, which, if they cannot be 
 wholly suppressed, are at least compelled to hide their heads .' 
 The toleration which public opiliion now extends to slander is 
 criminal. We suffer for it in the elevation of corrupt and 
 •wicked rulers, which is chiefly brought about by the use of 
 this infamous engine. A reform like that which we sugg^est, 
 MUST TAKE PLACE. If it do not— if the system is per- 
 mitted to go on as it has done for some years past, from bad to 
 ■worse, the country will become uninhabitable. Men of honor 
 and probity will quit a region where they are not secured in the 
 best and most valuable of their possessions, character, and seek 
 in preference — if they can find no other refuge — the lion-haun- 
 ted forests of India, or the cannibal shores of New Zealand. 
 
 In this lowest depth of degradation there is yet a lower deep. 
 The proceedings in regard to the Bank indicate more distinctly 
 
63 
 
 than any other single symptom the fearful and disgraceful fact of an 
 irresponsible cabal behind the President's chair, overruling the 
 opinion of his known and responsible advisers. Air. McLane 
 in his Treasury Report, strongly recommended, as we have 
 remarked, the re-chartering of the Bank. The Kitchen Cabinet 
 veto the bill : and the Secretary of the Treasury retains his 
 commission ! Can the mere charm of holding an office so 
 completely bewilder the understandings even of intelligent and 
 upright men as to blind them to the plainest dictates of good 
 sense and honorable feeling ? Look to the mother country. 
 Was there ever a Chancellor of the Exchequer who would have 
 kept his place under such circumstances .' Since the President 
 preferred the policy of his secret cabinet in regard to the most 
 important measures, why did not Mr. McLane resign at once, and 
 permit the real Secretary to make his appearance ? We should 
 then have seen whether the people would endure the infamy of 
 being governed ostensibly, as they are substantially, by Amos 
 Kendall and Isaac Hill. 
 
 Such have been the proceedings in regard to the Bank, and 
 such the manner in which they have been defended. What 
 would be the effect of its destruction .•' It would unsettle the cur- 
 rency and carry desolation and bankruptcy through the whole 
 Western country. The debt of thirty millions due from that 
 section to the Bank CANNOT BE PAID. The attempt to 
 enforce it would ruin thousands of our most industrious and 
 valuable citizens, and arrest for years the prosperity of the whole 
 West. Will the people consent to this for the mere purpose of 
 securing to the military chieftain and his partizans the SPOILS 
 OF VICTORY for another term .' THEY WILL NOT. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 EXPLOSION OF PARTIES.— l^ITCHEN CABIXET. 
 
 In the preceding chapters, we have, agreeably to the plan 
 proposed at the commencement of the work, rapidly review- 
 ed the character and qualifications of Gen. Jackson and of 
 the leading members of his first Administration: — the means 
 by which they got possession of the government, and the man- 
 ner in which they have administered it. We have seen that 
 Jackson is himself entirely deficient in all the talents and ac- 
 complishments, required in the office of President of the Uni- 
 
64 
 
 ted States : — that his personal habits and the events of his pre- 
 cedinfT career, rendered him perhaps the only prominent man 
 in the cuimtrv, whom it was decidedly dangerous to entrust 
 with that office: — that he was elevated to it by a combination 
 of i)olitical leaders, who used his name and popularity as ma- 
 chinery to advance their own selfish projects, and finally, that 
 he has employed the influence it has given him to deprive the 
 people of" their most fiiitht'ul and valual)le servants; — to corrupt 
 the sources of the national prosperity, and to undermine the 
 most important institutions of government. 
 
 It only remains to comment briefly, in conclusion, upon the 
 explosion of parties which took place about a year ago in the 
 cabinet, on the spirit of the Administration as now constituted, 
 and on the means that are in use to sustain the party in power. 
 
 We remarked in one of our first chapters that the original 
 Jackson party consisted of three principal divisions, viz. tlie 
 personal adherents of the General, and the political 'friends of 
 Messrs. Calhoun and Van Buren. The General's own strength, 
 as far as he had any, lay in his supposed popularity with the 
 great body of voters, and this was the circumstance that in- 
 duced the political leaders to attach themselves to his cause. 
 The political influence of the party was almost wholly in the 
 hands of the friends of Messrs. Calhoun and Van Buren. But 
 these, although they had acted together for the immediate pur- 
 pose of ejecting Mr. Adams and bringing in Jackson, not only 
 had no community of opinion, feeling or interest, but were on 
 all essential points at open war with each other. Their views 
 on the great questions of internal policy which have almost ex- 
 clusively occupied the public attention for three years past, 
 were diametrically opposite, and the political pretensions of 
 their leaders came directly into collision. Both aspired to suc- 
 ceed Gen. Jackson in the Presidency, and neither would ad- 
 journ his claims for a single day. It was obvious enough that 
 these contradictory elements could not very long co-operate 
 harmoniously in the same political party : — that an explosion 
 must sooner or later take piace, and that this could not be de- 
 ferred beyond the time when the question of the succession 
 should come before the people. It was presumed that great 
 efforts would be made to preserve unity, until the re-election 
 of Jackson should be secured ; and it was thought not improb- 
 able, that under a strong sense of common interest and com- 
 mon danger, this might be effected. 
 
 Passion, however, proved too strong for policy. In a little 
 more than two years the explosion broke out with circum- 
 stances of so much violence and scandal, as not only to 
 
65 
 
 destroy entirely the chance of General Jackson's re-elec- 
 tion, and of the success of either of the rivals to the suc- 
 cession, but as to endanger very seriously the tranquillity 
 and permanence of the Union. The constantly increasing 
 zeal with which Mr. Calhoun has continued, liom year to 
 year, to urge the doctrine of nullification, must be attribu- 
 ted, in part at least, to his disappointment and disgust at find- 
 ing himself turned aside by the arts of an every way inferi- 
 or competitor, from the high career which he was once pur- 
 suing with so fair a prospect of success. — There are {ow strong- 
 er examples in history than this, of the irresistible force with 
 which the spontaneous and original impulses of our nature 
 overmaster all the combinations of art, and sweep down the 
 slender barriers by which calculation endeavors to dam them 
 up. 
 
 The breach among the SPOILERS had in fact become ir- 
 reparable even before they had entered into possession of the 
 PLUNDER. The Calhoun leaders — as we have already 
 had occasion to remark — were not consulted about the arrange- 
 ment of the Administration. Yan Buren assigned to himself 
 the lion's share of the spoils, and gave to the other divisions of 
 the party such representatives in the cabinet as he thought 
 best fitted to promote his own objects. We may well suppose that 
 the fiery spirit of the Southern champion did not very patiently 
 brook this indignity, but it was deemed expedient to suspend 
 an open rupture as long as possible. In his position as Presi- 
 dent of the Senate, and in the great superiority of the talents 
 of his partisans in Congress, Mr. Calhoun had some advantages 
 over his rival, who on the other hand controlled the cabinet and 
 the back stairs. It remained to be seen, which of these two 
 sorts of influence would preponderate. The two first years of 
 the Administration were chiefly occupied with the struggle of 
 the two parties for the ' esteem and confidence of Gen. Jack- 
 son,' the possession of which the leaders of one of them has 
 since publicly declared to be a title of honor sufficient to satisfy 
 the most extravagant ambition. 
 
 The history of these two years, carried out fully into all its 
 details, as it one day probably will be, would resemble a chap- 
 ter in the Scandalous Chronicle of the Greek Empire, or the 
 Memoirs of the French Court of the time of Louis XV., and 
 treated by a poweril'.l hand with perfect freedom, would be full 
 of entertainment and instruction. Nemesis, it is said, is always 
 on the watch. It was a singular and even laughable circum- 
 stance, that a party which had affected to charge Mr. Adams 
 — a man remarkable for a more than republican simplicity of 
 9 
 
66 
 
 manner — with a fondness for etiquette, should have been princi- 
 pally occupied for about two years in settling the question, wheth- 
 er a particular lady should or should not be received in the fash- 
 ionable circles of Washington. To effect her introduction 
 seems to have been, as we remarked before, during this period, 
 the leading object of the policy of Jackson and Van Buren; 
 to prevent it was, on the other hand, the not less constant ef- 
 fort of the adherents of Mr. Calhoun. This controversy was 
 for the time being the point upon which all the great political 
 affairs of the country were made to turn: — Negotiations with 
 foreign ministers — correspondence and conversations among 
 the members of the cabinet — discussions at the President's 
 house — on all occasions, this was the universal topic. If we 
 are rightly informed, the only cabinet meeting which was held 
 while Van Buren was Secretary of State was occupied with 
 the "discussion of this great question. It is foreign to our pur- 
 pose to enter into the arguments that were urged on both sides in 
 the course of these debates. The sanctuary of private life is not 
 to be invaded even for the purpose of supporting a good cause. 
 We may remark in general that whatever outward form and 
 coloring the controversy may have assumed, it was after all 
 substantially po/«7/ca/. The object of Mr. Van Buren was to 
 sustain the reputation and influence of Major Eaton, whom ho 
 had placed in the cabinet as the representative of the personal 
 friends of Jackson, and through whom he expected to exercise 
 an indirect influence over the General himself. The object of 
 Mr. Calhoun, was of course to counteract this influence, and if 
 possible to remove Eaton from Washington. 
 
 In this controvery, Van Buren came off with flying colors. 
 Although the fair exclusives of Washington obstinately refused 
 to unfold their drawing-room doors at the utterance of the 
 executive Open sesame! the President, with equal firmness, re- 
 fused to close his in compliment to their scruples, and after a 
 hard struggle, continued with unremitted vigor on both sides 
 through the long session of '29—30, the MALIGN INFLU- 
 ENCE, that is in substance, the influence of Van Buren, was 
 found to retain undiminished its original ascendency. It is 
 evident, in fact, that while the warfare between the rivals was 
 waged upon this ground, the advantage was wholly in favor of 
 the Secretary of State. He was in possession of the field. 
 He commanded the cabinet, the back-stairs, and the bed-cham- 
 ber. His talents, as far as he possesses any, fit him to act upon 
 this theatre. His little, narrow, sordid soul is at home in the 
 little arts, the little intrigues, the little miserable, mischievous 
 monkey tricks, that may be supposed to decide questions in a 
 
67 
 
 council of chambermaids. The Vice President, on the other 
 hand, moved in a sphere entirely aloof from this paltry ma- 
 noeuvering. His advantages lay in the superiority of his 
 friends in the two Houses of Congress. His and their great 
 talents, commanding eloquence, manly firmness and decision 
 of character, were all lost in this obscure contest, where the 
 only real disgrace was not to be defeated. 
 
 Finding, after a sufficiently long experiment, that there was 
 no possibility of dislodging the MALIGN INFLUENCE in a 
 quiet way from the councils of the palace, the Vice President, 
 with the vigor and boldness that belong to his character, de- 
 termined at once upon an open breach. Van Buren had 
 secured to himself the entire SPOILS of the VICTORY 
 which placed the combined party in power: he was pushing 
 for the succession with the full approbation and favor of Jack- 
 son. If Mr. Calhoun, for the sake of preserving the unity of the 
 party, were to acquiesce in this state of things until after Jack- 
 son should be re-elected for another term, the course of public 
 opinion would be settled, and his own chance for the succes- 
 sion lost forever. There was therefore no other resource left 
 to him but to take a stand at once, as he did. Thus \ an 
 Buren, by an excess of selfish and treacherous cunning — as 
 often happens in this kind of management — overreached him- 
 self Had he dealt more openly and fairly with Mr. Calhoun, 
 allowed him his full share of influence in the administration, 
 waiv(!d for the time his personal views, and confined himself to 
 an active discharge of the duties of his department (for which, 
 however, he was in all respects totally unqualified,) he would 
 probably at this moment have been Secretary of State, with a 
 fair prospect of the succession to the Presidency. 
 
 But on what ground was Mr. Calhoun to take his stand for 
 the purpose of making a public attack on his rival.' Here lay 
 the weakness of his case, and the reason why — although he 
 succeeded at once in demolishing his puny antagonist — he 
 made no impression upon the people in his own favor. The 
 controversy between him and Van Buren was, in substance, a 
 quarrel between two political leaders, who considered the of- 
 fices of government as the SPOILS OF VICTORY, about 
 the division of them. This was obviously a case where the 
 people of the United States could not reasonably be expected 
 to take much interest in favor of either of the combatants. 
 Whether the compact between the two leaders had been fairly 
 observed on both sides; — whether the automaton whom they 
 employed as the nominal distributer of spoils had done hia 
 work impartially between them, and if not, why? — were quea- 
 
C8 
 
 tions whicli the people hardly thought it worth their while to 
 discuss. When they saw Mr. Calhoun publicly take a stand 
 against his rival, the real ground for satisfaction was that this 
 open breach must necessarily break up the whole machinery 
 of the combined party, destroy all chance of the re-election of 
 Jackson, as well as of the success of either of the pretenders, 
 and afford the people an opportunity of placing in the princi- 
 pal offices of government men who do not consider them as 
 prizes for which the reckless and profligate are to gamble, 
 fight and bully, but as sacred trusts instituted for the public 
 good, and which no individual can accept or hold from any 
 other motive than regard for the public good, without assum- 
 ing a responsibility sufficiently serious to alarm the conscience 
 of all but the most hardened and abandoned reprobates. 
 
 The question, however, such as it was between the two 
 rivals, was publicly discussed. Why did Gen. Jackson bestow 
 his " esteem aud confidence " upon Mr. Van Buren, rather than 
 Mr. Calhoun? This interesting inquiry was made the subject 
 of various pamphlets, of much correspondence, and of many in- 
 terminable newspaper articles. Mr. Calhoun ascertained, as 
 he thought, that Van Buren had poisoned the mind of the Gen- 
 eral by artful misrepresentations of the part which he had taken, 
 as Secretary of War, in the Cabinet discussions upon Jackson's 
 conduct towards the Spaniards and the Seminoles. He pub- 
 lished a pamphlet containing what he considered the evidence 
 of such misrepresentation. The fact was denied by Van Bu- 
 ren, who summoned to his aid as v/itnesses Messrs. Crawford, 
 Forsyth, Hamilton and others. Mr. Calhoun, on the other 
 hand, invoked the testimony of his immediate friends. The 
 newspapers were occupied lor months with long statements and 
 counter-statements, and the battles of the Seminole war were 
 again fought and rcfought a hundred times over. The most 
 edifying part of the affair was to see these persons, who had 
 all for six years preceding been crying themselves hoarse in 
 charging Mr. Adams with a corrupt bargain, now with one ac- 
 cord appealing to him as a man in whose integrity and up- 
 rightness they could place implicit confidence for testimony in 
 support of their respective statements. Mr. Adams, with the 
 calm and modest dignity that belongs to his character, supplied, 
 without reflection or commentary, the facts that were wanted. 
 But the people, as we have said, took little or no interest in the 
 discussion, although it was abundantly seasoned throughout 
 with the hot spice of scandal. They only saw that their ene- 
 mies had come to daggers-drawing among themselves, and, 
 without taking much trouble to ascertain what it was all about. 
 
69 
 
 or which side was most in the wrong, began immediately to 
 make preparations for obtaining their own rights, which honest 
 men, who have been dispossessed of them, commonly avail 
 themselves of such occasions to recover. 
 
 Van Buren, on his side, with the magnanimity and patriotism 
 which distinguish all his proceedings, began to look after his own 
 interest. Aware of his utter inability to face the Vice Presi- 
 dent in an open discussion of any question before the people, 
 and also knowing that an open struggle between them would 
 be fatal to the imity of the party, he endeavored to prevent it 
 by a timely retreat from the field. He accordingly resigned 
 his place as Secretary of State, and Mr. McLane having 
 been recalled, accepted the post of Minister to England, 
 which, as he has since told us, (we have no doubt truly,) 
 he intended to occupy for the ' usual period ' of four years. 
 His calculation seems to have been to remain abroad over the 
 now pending election. If in consequence of his retreat the unity 
 of the party should be preserved, and Jackson re-elected, he would 
 assume the credit of a magnanimous sacrifice of his own inter- 
 est to the good of the party, and use it as an argument in sup- 
 port of his pretensions to the succession. If, on the other hand 
 — as was more probable — the party should break up completely, 
 and Jackson's re-election be defeated, he would still find him- 
 self in one of the most conspicuous places in the executive de- 
 partment of the government, from which he could watch the 
 movement of parties at home, and at a proper season make up 
 his mind which was likely to prove ' the Republican party,' or 
 in other words, the strongest side. In retiring himself from 
 the field, it was important, however, that he should not leave it 
 in possession of the enemy ; and, as two at least of his colleagues 
 in the Cabinet were devoted to Mr. Calhoun, it was necessary 
 to get rid of them, and fill their places with persons on whom 
 he could depend. 
 
 Some men would probably have found the operation rather 
 embarrassing; but this modest little gentleman possesses, as we 
 have already remarked, a patent right to outrage the most emi- 
 nent men in the country with impunity: and the privilege ex- 
 tends not only to political opponents, but to men of all parties, 
 including his own, whenever they are supposed to stand in the 
 way of his immediate selfish interest. With the same delicate 
 sense of justice and decorum which had marked his deportment 
 towards the public functionaries belonging to the preceding Ad- 
 ministration, he now turned upon his political friends, and, 
 without the slightest pretext or apology, rudely thrust out of the 
 highest and most responsible posts of the government the very 
 
70 
 
 men whom, two years before, he had selected from the whole 
 people as the persons most competent to fill them, with about 
 the same ceremony as a common citizen would practise in 
 changinfT his shoe-black. The form given to this proceeding 
 was that of an entire change of the heads of departments. A 
 correspondence took place between the retiring or ejected func- 
 tionaries and their chief, including several letters of mutual 
 explanation among themselves. The reason assigned by Van 
 Buren for tendering his resignation was that he nmst either re- 
 tire or disfranchise himself, — that is, surrender his claims to the 
 Presidency of the United States. In choosing the former part 
 of the alternative, he virtually proposes himself to the people as 
 a candidate for the succession. The people will of course take 
 him at his word. It would be unpardonable to lose the oppor- 
 tunity of having ' the sweetest little fellow in the world,' and 
 who is evidently as modest and ' innocent as sweet,' at the head 
 of the government. 
 
 But why did the other heads of departments quit their places? 
 Messrs. Ingham, Eaton, Branch and Berrien were not candi- 
 dates for the Presidency. They might have continued without 
 disfranchising themselves to hold the offices which they filled, in 
 the diplomatic phrase, ' with so much credit to themselves and 
 advantage to the country.' Why were they compelled to re- 
 tire? The President supplies the reason in one of his letters. 
 His ' Cabinet proper ' had been and must continue to be a unit 
 — which, done into English, seems to mean that, as the heads 
 of departments came into office together, they must all go out 
 at the same time. To this there could, of course, be no reply. 
 The consequence, to be sure, is not clear, but MUST is a bold 
 word, which carries every thing before it, and no doubt suited 
 admirably well the southern stomachs of the gentlemen to whom 
 it was addressed. Eaton, who was in the secret, came very 
 readily into the arrangement — Berrien, Branch and Ingham 
 fought hard. The whole scene was at once disgusting, pain- 
 ful, and, under certain aspects, irresistibly ludicrous. The 
 coarse and blundering style of the correspondence on the part 
 of Jackson and Eaton — the mutual defiance and recrimination 
 — the challenging — the lying in wait with pistols — in short, all 
 the circumstances of this strange transaction, taken together, 
 resembled the quarrel among the robbers in Gil Bias about the 
 distribution of the spoils, much more than a change in the ad- 
 ministration of the government of the " freest and most en- 
 liglitened nation of the globe." Mr. Senator Marcy has since 
 kindly informed us, in the name of the principal actor, that such 
 in fact is, and ought to be, the character of all important politi- 
 
71 
 
 cal movements. How lofty the standard of civilization which 
 admits and even publicly justifies such proceedings! We can- 
 not but think that if Chancellor Oxenstiern were now alive, he 
 would change the turn of his celebrated instruction to his son, 
 and would send him to Washington to see how much wisdom 
 and virtue are employed in governing the world. 
 
 Having thus cleared the stage of one set of actors, and filled 
 it with another, who enjoyed more of his " esteem and confi- 
 dence," Van Buren accepted the appointment of minister to 
 London, and sailed for Europe, apparently in the full persuasion 
 that the Senate of the United States, containing a majority of 
 members from two parties, not only politically opposed to him, 
 but of both which he had treated the most prominent men with 
 wanton and contemptuous indignity, would, from mere courtesy 
 lo him, confirm the nomination. It would be difiicult to find a 
 stronger example of the extent to which a complete absorption 
 of every other feeling and faculty, in blind devotion to self, can 
 obscure the perceptions of a naturally acute mind. We need 
 not say how early and how entirely this wise expectation was 
 disappointed. The worm that is trodden on, knows how to turn 
 — and it was hardly to be supposed that the towering spirits 
 from the east and west and south, who are now congregated in 
 the Senate, having the power in their hands, would be wholly 
 passive under the gratuitous insults which Mr. Van Buren had 
 thought proper to bestow upon them and their friends. Inde- 
 pendently of his disgraceful instructions to Mr. McLane, which 
 rendered it an imperious duly to withdraw him immediately 
 from London, his treatment of the public functionaries both of 
 the past and present Administration had excluded him entirely 
 from the pale of political courtesy. He was accordingly nega- 
 tived without ceremony. In his answer to the letter of con- 
 dolence addressed to him by some of his New York associates, 
 he very gravelv represents his case as an uncommonly hard 
 one. That the Representatives of twenty-four sovereign States 
 should venture for the weightiest reasons to recal Martin Van 
 Buren from a foreign mission is a hard case ; but that Martin 
 Van Buren, a little New York lawyer, should, without the 
 shadow of any motive but his own personal convenience, recal 
 the whole corps of foreign ministers — remove the most valuable 
 public servants by hundreds, and finally elbow his own col- 
 leagues out of the cabinet, is quite in the ordinary course of 
 things. This is really the sublime of self-conceit, and as Na- 
 poleon said of the sublime in other cases — comes within a step 
 of the ridiculous. Mr. Van Buren's reception on his arrival, 
 and the reception of his nomination as Vice President, will 
 
72 
 
 have partly satisfied him that the People are not much greater 
 admirers of Regency politics than the Senate. It does not ap- 
 pear however tliat lie is yet entirely roused from his dream of 
 delusion. His recent nomination of Mr. SPOILER Marcy 
 as the candidate for Governor in New York, if it be not a mere 
 bravado, .shows that he is quite insensible to the real state of 
 public opinion. — The sentence which the people will pass at 
 the close of this month upon that nomination, and at the same 
 . time upon his own pretensions to the Vice Presidency, will 
 probably open his eyes, or at all events will place him where 
 he will be for the rest of his life as harmless, and about as re- 
 spectable as his neighbor Aaron Burr has been for the last 
 thirty years. 
 
 The course pursued by the Vice President after the breaking 
 up of the party was entirely different from that of Van Buren, 
 and though sufficiently objectionable on other grounds, has at 
 least something manly and generous about it. Instead of act- 
 ing on the sauve qui pent principle, and endeavoring to secure 
 a provision for himself out of the wreck of the hopes and pros- 
 pects of the concern, he has withdravvn himself entirely from 
 the struggle for the succession, and after the close of his pre- 
 sent official term, will retire to private life. We trust, how- 
 ever, that he will appear again in Congress, where the eminent 
 and powerful men of all parties naturally find their place, and 
 where by meeting each other on the open field of free discus- 
 sion, they correct errors, forget local prejudices^ and learn to 
 act with a broad and general view to the welfare of the whole 
 country. Mr. Calhoun and his immediate friends now profess 
 what we deem very erroneous notions on the economical policy 
 of the country, and are apparently disposed to give them effect 
 by a course of measures repugnant to the constitution, and sub- 
 versive of the Union of the States. But in all these cases of 
 supposed grievances suffered by particular states or sections, 
 the alarm of threatened resistance has always very greatly ex- 
 ceeded the real danger. However imprudent may have been 
 the language, and to a certain extent the proceedings of the 
 Nullifiers, we can never believe that men of so much talent and 
 patriotism will ultimately insist that the minority are to rule the 
 majority, or v/ill for the promotion of any sectional or personal 
 purpose, lay violent hands on the sacred ark of the Union. 
 We can easily excuse a little intemperate language where it 
 evidently proceeds from the overflowing of an ardent and gen- 
 erous temper. We must recollect that the time has been when 
 we too were laboring under real or imaginary wrongs, and were 
 meditating projects little less violent than those which are now 
 
73 
 
 agitated in South Carolina. In the generous phrase of Burke : 
 JVe must pardon somefhing to the Spirit of Liberty, and we do it 
 with cheerfulness. We must and can cheerfully pardon any- 
 thing but undisguised and avowed corruption. We deem it a 
 fortunate circumstance that the chief direction of the nullifying 
 party should be in the hands of Mr. Calhoun. His undoubted 
 patriotism will induce him at all hazards to avoid any desperate 
 extremity, and his commanding character will give him the in- 
 fluence over his tViends which may be wanted for the purpose 
 of keeping them within bounds. We have said that his political 
 career was at an end ; but we are not sure after all tliat he may 
 not be reserved to render very important services to the Union. 
 The South has no more prominent citizen to present to the peo- 
 ple hereafter as a candidate for the highest marks of confidence 
 which they have to bestow ; and if Mr. Calhoun should return 
 to Congress, and, imitating the example of Mr. Clay in regard 
 to the Missouri question, should act the part of a mediator, and 
 employ his authority and talents in settling the questions that 
 now disturb the public tranquillity, on any ground of fair and 
 honorable compromise, he will find the friends of the country 
 in all quarters entirely disposed to acknowledge the service, 
 and to join with his immediate partisans in doing him honor as 
 a public benefactor. 
 
 Such however were the principal circumstances and imme- 
 diate results of the explosion in the Cabinet, which destroyed 
 the unity of the Jackson party, and with it all chance of the 
 General's re-election, or of the success of either of the pre- 
 tenders to the succession. The new cabinet was on the whole 
 an improvement on the former one, although each of the mem- 
 bers was on different accounts obnoxious to weighty objections. 
 3Ir. Livingston is tco old to sustain the buiden of the depart- 
 ment of State. Gov. Cass is pledged to the worst doctrines on 
 the Indian question. Mr. McLane had allowed himself to be 
 made the instrument of the national dishonor at London ; and 
 Woodbury had but recently truckled in the basest manner to 
 Isaac Hill — a depth of degradation below which no man could 
 well wish his worst enemy to descend. Objectionable however 
 as they on some accounts were, the people would probably 
 have considered the change as a favorable one, had it turned 
 out that these men were to be in fact the President's advisers. 
 But the course of events soon disclosed the alarming and dis- 
 graceful fact that the heads of departments constitute merely 
 the formal Government, and that the power is really lodged in 
 a secret irresponsible cabal which has since received the ap- 
 propriate and characteristic denomination of the KITCHEN 
 
 10 
 
74 
 
 CABINET. The existence and power of this cabal have been 
 apparent ever since the explosion, and have lately been proved 
 beyond the possibility of question by the proceedings in regard 
 to the Bank. 
 
 The report of the Secretary of the Treasury on this subject 
 contained the opinion of the responsible head of the financial 
 department ; the Veto Message registers the decree of the se- 
 cret council, by which that opinion was reversed. — Hitherto it 
 has been deemed the principle of our Government and the se- 
 curity of our liberty that wherever there was power there was 
 also responsibility. Now the responsible agents of the people 
 are paralyzed, and the real power is lodged in hands which the 
 people cannot reach. It has deserted the places of business 
 of the President's constitutional advisers, and taken up its abode 
 in obscure recesses, which the public eye cannot penetrate — 
 the bureaux of subaltern clerks or the closets and bed-chambers 
 of domestic dependents. In this respect our young Govern- 
 ment exhibits at the present moment the worst features of the 
 worst and most corrupt governments of the old world. This 
 state of things is new and ominous. It deserves the serious 
 reflection of every patriotic and well-meaning citizen. 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 SPIRIT OF JACKSONISM.— CONCLUSION. 
 
 In the preceding chapters, we have rapidly reviewed the 
 measures by which the present Administration rose to power, 
 and have exposed in detail the unconstitutional character and 
 ruinous tendency of their principal measures. At the close of 
 our last essay, we stated that since the dissolution of the Van 
 Buren cabinet, the effective power of the government had been 
 lodged in the hands of a secret and irresponsible cabal, some- 
 times denominated the Kitchen Cabinet, and the " Cabinet im- 
 proper." We propose to notice, in conclusion, the general spirit 
 of the Administration as now constituted, and of the party which 
 it represents, with the means which they employ to perpetuate 
 their influence. 
 
 The spirit of Jacksonism, the most remarkable exhibitions of 
 which we have separately examined and characterised, which 
 has been distinctly perceptible ever since the formation of the 
 Jackson party, and has become, from day to day, more and 
 
75 
 
 more apparent, especially since the organization of the " im- 
 proper Cabinet," is the same that prevailed in France at the 
 worst period of the Revolution, and was then known by the 
 name of JACOBINISM. As it then existed in France, 
 and as it now exists in this country, it may be described as a 
 spirit which aims at the subversion of social order and the regu- 
 lar and wholesome authority of law, for the purpose of concen- 
 trating the whole power of the country in the hands of a single 
 ruler. Its Alpha is ANARCHY, and its Omega DESPOT- 
 ISM. It addresses itself to the worst passions of the least in- 
 formed portion of the people ; — denounces the most valuable 
 and salutary institutions as intolerably oppressive, reviles the 
 possessors of property, talents, virtue, every thing that gives 
 distinction and influence in society, as tyrants and aristocrats; 
 — and when by these delusive and maddening appeals it has 
 brought the people to acts of open violence, and broken down 
 the existing forms of government, it erects upon their ruins a 
 throne for the boldest pretender, commonly some daring and 
 reckless military chieftain, who happens to be at hand at the prop- 
 er moment to take possession of it. This spirit was long ago de- 
 nounced by the great English apostle of the Rights of Man, un- 
 der the name of LICENSE. 
 
 License they mean when they cry Liberty ; 
 
 For who means (hat, must first mean wise and good. 
 
 It is a sort of political disease, naturally incident to free gov- 
 ernments, because it is the result of the excess or abuse of Lib- 
 erty. It has repeatedly frustrated the fairest prospects of polit- 
 ical improvement. At the period of the first English Revolu- 
 tion, it deluged the island of Great Britain in blood, and sub- 
 stituted for a well-regulated and orderly commonwealth, the 
 reign of violence, under the various names of the Long Parlia- 
 ment, Cromwell, and the Stuarts. In France it engendered the 
 brood of political and military agitators, who have for the last 
 half century kept that country, and to a considerable extent the 
 whole of Europe, in a state of uproar, and prevented the intro- 
 duction of the liberal constitutions which were called for by the 
 improved civilization of the age. In this country we have oc- 
 casionally seen some symptoms of it, but it has always been 
 promptly checked by the strong good sense and patriotic feel- 
 ing of the people; and although under a concurrence of pecu- 
 liar circumstances, it has obtained a temporary ascendancy for 
 the last three years, the body politic is evidently too healthy to 
 allow it to prevail for a very long time. Already we see in 
 every quarter the signs of a vigorous and general reaction, 
 which is destined, we trust, within a few weeks to expel it from 
 
76 
 
 the system, and to prostrate forever the imbecile and superan- 
 nuated despot who has been put forward as its personal repre- 
 sentative. 
 
 In this poHtical disease, wherever it has occurred, there have 
 been, as we have said, two distinct tendencies — one towards 
 disorganization and anarchy, the other towards despotism and a 
 concentration of the whole power of society in the hands of a 
 single ruler. The former is generally more observable in the 
 earlier and the latter in the later stages of the malady, but they 
 exist together, and develope themselves as circumstances hap- 
 pen to furnish occasion. 13oth these tendencies have been dis- 
 tinctly visible in the operations of Jacksonism. We have seen 
 it encouraging the encroachments of the States on the Federal 
 Government, denying the National Legislature all their most 
 important powers, openly defying the authority of the Supreme 
 Court, and encouraging the States to do the same; endeavor- 
 ing, in a word, to bring back the present Constitution to the 
 imbecility of the Old Confederation. We have seen it attempt- 
 ing to array the poor against the rich, denouncing the posses- 
 sion of property, talents, distinction of any kind, under the 
 name of aristucrarj/, as an unpardonable crime, and straining 
 every nerve to place the whole political influence in the hands 
 of those, who for want of education and good moral qualities, 
 are the least qualified to exercise it. Such are the proofs of 
 the disorganizing and anarchical tendency of Jacksonism. On 
 the other hand, we see but too plainly in tlie violent and ar- 
 bitrary conduct of the chief, and in the servile complaisance — 
 the insane man-worship of his flatterers — the evidences of a 
 tendency to strengthen the Executive branch ofthe Government, 
 which, if appearances were in other respects less favorable than 
 they are, would justly excitethe most serious alarm for the per- 
 manence of our institutions. 
 
 We have had occasion in the preceding essays to dwell at 
 considerable length upon some of the principal measures by 
 which the party have attempted to disorganize the government, 
 and substitute a wild anarchy for the beautiful and admirable 
 system of social order contained in the Federal Constitution. 
 The arbitrary tendency of Jacksonism is not less worthy of 
 consideration. Since the organization of the " Cabinet im- 
 proper," and especially during the late session of Congress, it 
 has displayed itself ahuost without disguise. In the appoint- 
 ment of Gvvinn, the President wrested trom the Senate their 
 constitutional share ofthe appointing power, and if this case is 
 to be regarded as a precedent, has taken into his own hands the 
 whole of that most important branch of the government. He 
 
77 
 
 arbitrarily returned the bill which granted interest to Maine and 
 Massachusetts on the advances they had made during the war, 
 while he approved that which gave the same allowance to South 
 Carolina. He openly claims the right of executing or not execu- 
 ting, at discretion, the very laws which he has himself approved. 
 He declares himself, in terms, entirely independent of the Su- 
 preme Court. He nullifies of his own mere motion a whole 
 series of solemn treaties concluded with the Indian tribes, and 
 the Intercourse Law, which makes it his duty to sustain these 
 treaties, if necessary, by military force. He does in fact substan- 
 tially what his own caprice happens to suggest, without the 
 slightest regard to the letter or spirit of the constitution. 
 
 In the mean time, what is the language of the partizan prints? 
 Are the soi-disant champions of State Rights and democr:icy 
 alarmed at these undisguised and almost avowed usurpations of 
 power by the Federal Executive? Quite the contrary. The 
 persons who are clamoring most loudly against the encroach- 
 ments of the Federal Government, and tlie influence of Aristo- 
 cracy, are the same who justify and applaud every act of Gen- 
 eral Jackson. These same persons aie constantly loading him 
 with the grossest and most fulsome flattery. Napoleon at the 
 height of his greatness did not receive more abject adulation 
 than is daily lavished upon the imbecile automaton who is 
 now the nominal head of our Government. The Globe tells 
 us that he was BORN TO COMMAND. The Indiana Times 
 assures us that he takes great interest in the welfare of his 
 SUBJECTS. Mr. Van Buren thinks that the GLORY of 
 acting under his orders, is enough to satisfy the most extrava- 
 gant ambition. Finally, a late Ohio paper, after inveighing 
 severely against the two opposition parties for having had the 
 temerity to form a coalition in that State, as they have done else- 
 where against a common enemy, remarks that " a republican 
 form of government is quite too mild and lenient " for such 
 offenders, and that " the despotic laws of a CROMWELL and 
 a ROBESPIERRE would mete out no more than justice to 
 such a combination of men ! ! ! " 
 
 The meaning of this seems to be clear. We understand 
 it to be, that if the party cannot retain the SPOILS OF VIC- 
 TORY in any other way, they will be fully justified in abolish- 
 ino- the present republican form of government, and investing 
 the man who was BORN TO COMMAND, with the dicta- 
 torial authority of a CROMWELL or a ROBESPIERRE. 
 
 Nor, extravagant as it may appear to some, do we consider 
 the apprehension of an attempt at such a change in the charac- 
 ter of the Government, as by any means chimerical. Should 
 
78 
 
 General Jackson be re-elected, it can scarcely be doubted 
 that the troubles in the Southern States will assume, under his 
 capricious and violent management, a more serious shape than 
 they now wear, and it is altogether probable that they will put on 
 the form of actual rebellion against the Government. In that 
 case, the President will be called upon as commander in chief 
 of the army to suppress the insurrection. The movement of 
 troops for this purpose would constitute the commencement of 
 a CIVIL WAR, of which the progress and conclusion are 
 beyond the reach of conjecture or prophecy. We only know 
 that in preceding cases of the same description, the military 
 commanders who have acquired distinction and influence, have 
 frequently abused it for the purpose of usurping an arbitrary 
 dominion over the whole or a part of their fellow-citizens. Is 
 there any thing in the character of Gen. Jackson or his principal 
 partizans, which should lead us to suppose that he would shrink 
 from making, or they from supporting him in a similar attempt.'' 
 Will any sober rnan undertake to say that he should consider 
 the tranquillity of the country as perfectly secure, if he heard 
 that Jackson was returning in triumph at the head of a victori- 
 ous army from a successful campaign in South Carolina.'' Is 
 it at all improbable that he might be induced to employ violent 
 measures against the Nullifiers, when moderate and legal ones 
 would have been sufficient, for the express purpose of obtain- 
 ing a pretence for developing a military power, to be after- 
 wards employed for other objects.'' For ourselves, without 
 intending to excite unnecessary alarm, or to attach undue con- 
 sequence to contingent evils, we are yet free to confess that 
 we agree entirely in the sentiment so powerfully expressed by 
 Mr. Webster, at Worcester — that the greatest danger connect- 
 ed with Nullification may perhaps after all result from meas- 
 ures adopted by the General Government for its suppression. 
 JNot that we believe that an attempt of the kind now supposed 
 could possibly succeed. We know too well the dauntless 
 courage and unconquerable spirit of liberty that distinguish 
 our countrymen, to imagine that any portion of them would 
 ever acquiesce for a moment in a violent assumption of politi- 
 cal power by a military leader. The granite rocks of New 
 England would stoop from their deep foundations to do hom- 
 age to a Usurper, as soon as the hardy and noble-minded men 
 who inhabit them. But the mere attempt would be the signal 
 for internal discord, and would form the commencement of a 
 series of troubles, which, however it might terminate, would 
 destroy the tranquillity and prosperity of the people for at least 
 one generation — perhaps forever. 
 
79 
 
 Such are the tendencies and spirit of Jacksonism. — ANAR- 
 CHY and social disorganization at the outset — Military usur- 
 pation and DESPOTISM at the close. — The means which 
 the party employ to perpetuate their influence, have been ad- 
 verted to in detail, from time to time, in the course of these re- 
 marks, and may be here briefly recapitulated in a few words. 
 They are principally two. 
 
 1 . The abuse of the patronage of the Government for the 
 purpose of controlling the freedom of elections. 
 
 2. The abuse of the Press. 
 
 1. ABUSE OF PATRONAGE. This, our readers re- 
 collect, was charged upon the preceding Administration by 
 General Jackson, and the reform of this supposed abuse was 
 declared by himself to be one of his principal objects and du- 
 ties. The charge, as made by him, was grossly and notoriously 
 false. During the administration of Mr. Adams there had been 
 no removals from office for political opinions. The Secretary of 
 State had not even thousht it worth his while to take the busi- 
 ness of publishing the laws from political opponents, for the 
 purpose of giving it to political friends. Two or three isolated 
 cases in which this had been done for other reasons, were the only 
 pretences which the partizan newspapers could tind for the fac- 
 tious and senseless clamor, which they raised upon this subject. 
 But the making of the charge, and the public declaration by 
 Jackson that he considered the reform of this supposed abuse 
 as one of his principal duties, increased, if possible, the strength 
 of the obligation which he was under before, to keep his own 
 conduct in this respect entirely clear of reproach and suspi- 
 cion. How this obligation has been observed, we have already 
 seen. It had been given out beforehand, by his partizans, that 
 Jackson would REWARD HIS FRIENDS AND PUN- 
 ISH HIS ENEMIES. The first acts of his administration 
 were a general sweep from oflSce of all the functionaries, high 
 and low, who were not his partizans, and the appointment of 
 others who were so to take their places. Finally, it has been 
 publicly avowed within a few months upon the floor of the 
 Senate of the United States, by one of the leaders of the party, 
 the immediate friend of Van Buren, and his candidate for 
 Governor of New York, that it is perfectly right and proper, 
 that the offices of Government should be distributed by the 
 President among his political partizans, as the SPOILS OF 
 VICTORY. — The party not only sacrifice without scruple 
 all regard for consistency and principle, but have at length 
 lost all sense of shame, and openly confess and triumph in their 
 infamy. 
 
80 
 
 The subaltern leaders are about as scrupulous and consist- 
 ent as the principals. Amos Kendall, for example, when he 
 entered on his office as Fourth Auditor of the Treasury, deemed 
 it an abuse of the patronage of Government, for the purpose of 
 controlling the freedom of elections, even to subscribe for a po- 
 litical newspaper, and actually made a great parade about stop- 
 ping one or two which, as he said, had been taken at the public 
 expense, by his predecessor. He considered it his duty to keep 
 himself aloof from politics, and attend exclusively to the busi- 
 ness of his office. From the tone of his letter to the editor of 
 the Baltimore Patriot, one would have supposed that he would 
 hardly feel himself at liberty to look into a newspaper. Not 
 long after this immaculate and scrupulous patriot became, as 
 he has been ever since, and is now, one of the principal writers 
 in the Washington Globe, the semi-official organ of the party, 
 and in point of style the most scurrilous paper, with the excep- 
 tion, perhaps, of the New Hampshire Patriot, that has ever 
 been published in this country. This is not all. Within a kw 
 weeks, this very Kendall, whose delicacy would not permit him 
 to subscribe for or even read the newspapers, wrote circular 
 letters under the frank of his office, to his correspondents 
 throughout the Western country, for the purpose of urging 
 them to make all possible efforts to extend the circulation of 
 the Extra Globe. The letters have been published, and are 
 not only not denied but openly avowed and justified by their 
 author, who, in the way of candor, seems to have taken a leaf 
 out of the book of Mr. Senator Marcy. 
 
 So much for the consistency and purity of Jacksonism, and 
 so much tor the reform of the abuse of" bringing the patronage 
 of Government into conflict with the purity of elections." The 
 degree to which this abuse is now carried by the Administration, 
 and the extent of the influence which they exercise by means 
 of it, are apparent. Consider the effect in the Post Office only. 
 It has been calculated that the whole amount of the salaries paid 
 to Postmasters, is from three to four hundred thousand dollars, 
 distributed through the country in moderate sums, mostly from 
 a hundred to a thousand dollars each. Notwithstanding the 
 honorable resistance made by Judge McLean, which cost him 
 his place, the principle was introduced at the very opening of 
 the Administration of regarding the whole of this immense sum 
 as a fund for maintaining and extending the influence of the 
 party. The reward and punishment principle was immediately 
 applied in this department as in all the others. The conse- 
 quence was, that the party now possess in every considerable 
 city, town and village throughout the Union, a salaried agent, 
 
81 
 
 holding his place on the tenure of party fidelity, invested with 
 the franking privilege, and with the official inspection and su- 
 perintendence of the whole correspondence of the people. At 
 this moment, every Postmaster in the country is, ex officio, an 
 agent for the Washington Glohe, and is employing the machine- 
 ry of the department, as far as he is able to control it, for the 
 purpose of extending the circulation of the odious tissue of ma- 
 lignity, slander, and falsehood which is issued in the extra num- 
 bers of that journal. 
 
 Does not every one feel that this single fact is enough of it- 
 self to vitiate entirely the freedom of the election? If with all 
 these disadvantages against them the people do in fact succeed 
 in defeating the re-election of Jackson, as we have now reason 
 to hope and believe that they will, it will undoubtedly be the 
 strongest proof of the irresistible effect of a general reaction of 
 feeling against notorious and avowed political profligacy, which 
 has yet been furnished in the history of this or perhaps any 
 other country. 
 
 2. ABUSE OF THE PRESS. The other principal means 
 by which the party maintain, as it was also the principal one 
 by which they acquired their ascendancy, is the abuse of the 
 Press. We have more than once adverted particularly to this 
 subject in the preceding chapters. The period that has elapsed 
 since the inauguration of President Jackson may be called em- 
 phatically the REIGN OF SLANDER. Never before, 
 perhaps, has a case occurred in the history of the civilized 
 world, in which the laws intended for the protection of personal 
 rights have been so openly and systematically set at defiance, 
 and have proved in practice so entirely inadequate to their ob- 
 ject. A hundred presses make it their daily and regular em- 
 ployment to calumniate every individual who dares to make 
 himself in any way conspicuous as an opponent of Jackson. 
 The most important public services, the purest and most ele- 
 vated private character, instead of affording any protection 
 against this system of moral assassination, only seem to invite 
 and direct the blow. Presidents Madison and Adams, Chief 
 Justice Marshall, Chancellor Kent, Bishop White, Messrs. 
 Clay, Sergeant, Webster, Frelinghuysen, Wirt; all the ablest, 
 best and most justly respected men among us, are daily libelled 
 in the foulest and grossest manner. Dark insinuations, — direct 
 and open falsehood — forgery — are employed in turn as they hap- 
 pen to be thought most likely to effect the immediate purpose. 
 An appeal to the courts of justice affords no redress. The 
 people, by listening for a course of years to this constant strain 
 of calumny and scandal, have become so much accustomed to 
 
 11 
 
82 
 
 it, that they have in some degree lost their sensibility to the 
 value of character, and public opinion no longer lends to the 
 law on this subject that sanction, without which all laws are a 
 dead letter. The consequence is, that few attempts are made 
 to enforce it, and the inconvenience of being constantly ca- 
 lumniated in the newspapers, is considered as a sort of tax which 
 every citizen must expect to pay, who devotes himself conscien- 
 tiously and firmly to the service of his country. 
 
 The extent to which this system of slander is carried, has 
 been in some instances curiously and almost ludicrously shown 
 by the unconscious admission of the slanderer. We alluded 
 in one of our preceding essays, to an article which appeared 
 in the Washington Globe under the head of Political Moralihj, 
 in which Messrs. Clay, Webster, and their principal associates 
 in Congress were politely described as rascals, who ought to be 
 lashed naked through the country — they having, it seems, been 
 guilty of the enormous offence of supporting, in the regular dis- 
 charge of their official duty, the bill for re-chartering the Bank. 
 The editor of the Boston Courier copied verbatim a great part 
 of this chapter, with such change of language as made it apply 
 to Gen. Jackson and his principal retainers. Immediately the 
 New York Evening Post, and the other leading Jackson presses 
 raised a tremendous outcry against the indecency of the oppo- 
 sition press ! ! ! 
 
 Another fact evinces singularly enough, the utter reck- 
 lessness with which the hired dealers carry on their trade 
 of calumny. About a year ago there appeared in the North 
 American Review, an article upon the state of political af- 
 fairs in England, which was afterwards republished at London 
 under the title of the Prospect of Reform, and was received 
 with a good deal of attention. Of all the essays that have 
 been written upon the subject, this was perhaps the most 
 democratic in its tendency. It went to show that the natural 
 result of the present movements would be a subversion of the 
 monarchical and aristocratical features of the British constitu- 
 tion, and the substitution for it of a republican government on 
 the model of our own. This result was spoken of as not only 
 natural but desirable and expedient. The article was accord- 
 ingly quoted by the opponents of reform in Parliament, and in 
 the journals, as containing an admission, by the friends of the 
 measure, that such were its tendency and probable results. 
 One would hardly have supposed that the publication of the 
 most democratic article that had appeared upon this question 
 would be regarded as a proof of aristocracy. Such however 
 was the fact. No sooner did the Jackson editors perceive that 
 
83 
 
 the article had been quoted by the British Tories, than, without 
 stopping to ascertain the purpose, or to read the paper, they 
 forthwith denounced the Review as aristocratic, and declared 
 that the proprietors were in the pay of the British aristocracy. 
 ii Satan should quote Scripture for his purpose. Scripture would 
 no doubt become in the opinion of these writers a very diabol- 
 ical matter. 
 
 Forgery, as we have said, is one of their habitual instru- 
 ments. The readers of this journal have within the last week 
 had occasion to notice the exposure of a most base and fla- 
 grant attempt of this kind, by Mr. Jeremiah Mason, lately a 
 distinguished Senator in Congress from New Hamoshire. But 
 we have neither space nor inclination to enlarge any further 
 upon the details of this disgusting topic. 
 
 If in any considerable town or village in this country it were 
 suddenly discovered that there was a building which was em- 
 ployed as the rendezvous of a gang of miscreants, who habitually 
 sallied out from It, to attack the persons and plunder the prop- 
 erty of the inhabitants, what would be the consequence? The 
 whole community would be in an uproar: — all ordinary business 
 would be suspended: — every active and patriotic citizen would 
 consider his person, his time, his labor, all his means and 
 faculties as in requisition for the public service, until the 
 nuisance should be abated. At the present moment, there are in 
 every considerable city and village in the Union one or more 
 buildings employed as the rendezvous of a company of persons 
 who make it their daily and habitual business to attack ihe 
 citizens in their reputations — a possession far more dear to 
 every honorable man than his person or his purse. These 
 companies of calumniators are banded together and form an 
 association that pervades the whole Union. Encouraged by 
 the criminal toleration of the public, they have the boldness to 
 call themselves a political party — they nominate candidates for 
 public offices. At the last election they actually succeeded in 
 choosing a President of the United States. Andrew Jackson 
 is the personal representative of this confederacy, and the pe- 
 riod of his administration may, as we have said, be justly de- 
 scribed, and will be known in the history of the country as the 
 JREIGN OF SLANDER. 
 
 What then is the duty under such circumstances of well- 
 meaning citizens? Is a state of public opinion, which tolerates 
 the open invasion of private rights, of the most important and 
 essential character, sound and healthy? Are the people inno- 
 cent in this matter? No. We have already said, and we re- 
 peat that the toleration of calumny and slander is the 
 
84 
 
 crying sin of the nation. IT MUST BE REFORMED. 
 
 The Press must be purified, or the country is lost. Whatever 
 may be the result of the present contest; whether we are, 
 doomed to endure for another four years the sway of Jackson, 
 or whether we succeed in placing the Government in the hands 
 of upright and patriotic men, it is equally the bounden and im- 
 perative duty of the real friends of the country to strike at the 
 root of the evil, by reforming the existing abuses of the Press. 
 Let it be understood that character is not to be outraged with 
 impunity, any more than person or property. Let it be under- 
 stood that the slanderer is to suffer in his person and property 
 the appropriate legal punishment for slander, and that this 
 is to take place steadily, uniformly, regularly, in every instance 
 until the plague is stayed. Let citizens of weight, influence 
 and principle, those who take the lead with so much honor and 
 success ill other philanthropic and patriotic enterprises, put 
 their hands to this great work, and it may easily be done. If 
 it be not, we shall have no security, should we even put a 
 temporary period to the present misrule, against the early re- 
 currence of a similar one, and the standard of civilization will 
 be gradually degraded, until the country will no longer be a 
 suitable residence for men of correct feelings and upright 
 character. 
 
 Such are the two principal means by which the Administra- 
 tion endeavor to maintain their influence — the abiise of jmiron- 
 age, and the ahjtse of the press. — There is yet a third, more 
 odious and alarming than either of these; too revolting to be 
 long dwelt upon, but which ought not to be wholly passed 
 over in a view of the conduct of our present rulers, and that 
 is 
 
 3. PERSONAL INTIMIDATION.— We have said that the 
 period which has elapsed since the usurpation of Jackson might 
 be called vith propriety the REIGN OF SLANDER:— the last 
 year has be<^n, without a metaphor, and in the direct and literal 
 meaning of ihe term — especially at the seat of Government — 
 the REIGN OF TERROR. It was predicted, by Mr. Sena- 
 tor Benton, long before the election of General Jackson, that 
 if he were ever made President, the Representatives of the 
 People would be compelled in self-defence to go armed. The 
 prediction has been verified to the letter. During the last 
 session of Congress, no member who dared to lift up his voice 
 with freedom against the abuses of the Government, felt himself 
 secure for a day from personal violence. One was actually 
 assaulted for words spoken in debate, and on appealing for 
 redress to the House of Representatives, obtained from the 
 
85 
 
 party majority a mockery of justice that rendered the injury 
 still more galling and outrageous. Another member was at- 
 tacked upon the steps of the Capitol, and only succeeded by 
 superior physical strength and dexterity in saving his life from 
 the most imminent peril. So notorious was the countenance 
 given to these outrages by the party majority, that Mr. Arnold 
 did not even think it worth his while to lay his case before 
 the House. When a third member who had been challenged 
 for words spoken in debate appealed for protection to the 
 House, the party majority coolly passed to the^order of the 
 day. In a fourth case, whefl a member was personally outraged 
 on the floor of the House, the matter was passed over without 
 the least notice. Towards the close of the session, the seat of 
 Government became in a word a sort of bear-garden: — challen- 
 ges, duels and personal assaults, were the order of the day: — 
 bludgeons, sword-canes, and pistols, had taken the place of all 
 other arguments. In the mean time, the President, who, to use 
 his own language, knows how ' to look with complacency on 
 blood and carnage ' — heard with apparent satisfaction the re- 
 port of these proceedings, and coolly remarked that a FEW 
 MORE INSTANCES OF THIS KIND WOULD TEACH 
 THE MEMBERS OF CONGRESS TO BE MORE 
 GUARDED IN THEIR EXPRESSIONS. If the People 
 are as intelligent as we believe them to be, it will not require 
 a few more instances, nor a few more speeches of this kind to 
 teach them, — however they may differ in opinion upon some 
 other questions, — who ought NOT to be President of the Uni- 
 ted States. 
 
 We have now completed, according to our feeble ability, the 
 task, which, with much reluctance and under a strong sense of 
 public duty, we had imposed upon ourselves. No individual can 
 be more strongly impressed than we are with the importance of 
 maintaining social order, and, as one of the means for effect- 
 ing this end, of giving, on suitable occasions, a fair and candid 
 support to the persons who are invested, for the time being, 
 with the administration of the Government. But when these 
 very persons, the selected and sworn guardians of social order, 
 are themselves its principal enemies, and employ their official 
 influence to break down the institutions upon which its preser- 
 vation chiefly depends, it then becomes the bounden duty of 
 every well-meaning citizen to oppose their continuance in 
 power. Towards the present incumbent in the chief magistra- 
 cy we have no unfriendly feelings, excepting such as have been 
 excited by his conduct in the administration. Up to the time 
 
86 
 
 of his election to the Presidency, we had entertained a more 
 favorable opinion of him than was perhaps common among ju- 
 dicious men, and had publicly defended some of his proceed- 
 ings which were considered obnoxious to serious objections, 
 but which admitted, as we thought, a better construction. 
 We regarded his elevation as a most dangerous experiment ; 
 but we indulged a hope that the evil might not turn out so 
 great as was generally expected. His administration has not 
 merely disappointed the faint hopes of doubtful friends, but 
 more than realized the worst apprehensions of his worst ene- 
 mies. His election has proved, what some who are now his 
 strongest political partizans foretold that it would be, a curse to 
 the counlry; and, if repeated for another term, will in all proba- 
 bility be its ruin. We have made such feeble efforts as lay in 
 our power to avert this catastrophe. We are aware how entire- 
 ly ineffectual any thing that we can say or do must be in deter- 
 mining the political movements of this great people; but if the 
 arguments which have been urged in these remarks shall have 
 made an impression upon the minds of a ^ew readers only, they 
 may not, in the present divided state of the country, be entirely 
 without some practical effect. With the fullest conviction of 
 their justice and importance, we submit them to the consider- 
 ation of our fellow-citizens, of whom we now respectfully take 
 our leave. 
 
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