defend himself; and to the loss of senatorial responsibility, by shielding senators from public accountability for making up a judgment upon grounds which the public cannot know, and which, if known, might prove to be insufficient in law, or unfounded in fact:

the country; to destroy the confidence of the people in President Jackson; to paralyze his administration; to govern the elections; to bankrupt the State banks; ruin their currency; fill the whole Union with terror and distress; and thereby to extort from the sufferings and the alarms of the people, the restoration of the deposits and the renewal of its charter:

"And whereas the said resolve is of evil example and dangerous precedent, and should never have been received, debated, or adopted by the Senate, or admitted to entry upon its journal: Wherefore,

"And whereas the specification contained in the first and second forms of the resolve having been objected to in debate, and shown to be insufficient to sustain the charges they were adduced to support, and it being well believed that no majority could be obtained to vote for the said specifications, and the same having been actually withdrawn by the mover in the face of "Resolved, That the said resolve be expunged the whole Senate, in consequence of such objec- from the journal; and, for that purpose, that tion and belief, and before any vote taken there- the Secretary of the Senate, at such time as the upon; the said specifications could not after- Senate may appoint, shall bring the manuscript wards be admitted by any rule of parliamentary journal of the session 1833 '34 into the Senate, practice, or by any principle of legal implication, and, in the presence of the Senate, draw black lines secret intendment, or mental reservation, to re- round the said resolve, and write across the face main and continue a part of the written and thereof, in strong letters, the following words: public resolve from which they were thus with-Expunged by order of the Senate, this - day drawn; and, if they could be so admitted, they of in the year of our Lord 1837. "" would not be sufficient to sustain the charges therein contained:

CHAPTER CLX.

"And whereas the Senate being the constitutional tribunal for the trial of the President, when charged by the House of Representatives with offences against the laws and the constitution, the adoption of the said resolve, before any impeachment preferred by the House, was a breach of the privileges of the House; not warranted by the constitution; a subversion of EXPUNGING RESOLUTION.—MR. BENTON'S THIRD justice; a prejudication of a question which might legally come before the Senate; and a disqualification of that body to perform its constitutional duty with fairness and impartiality, if the President should thereafter be regularly impeached by the House of Representatives for the same offence:

"And whereas the temperate, respectful, and argumentative defence and protest of the President against the aforesaid proceeding of the Senate was rejected and repulsed by that body, and was voted to be a breach of its privileges, and was not permitted to be entered on its journal or printed among its documents; while all memorials, petitions, resolves, and remonstrances against the President, however violent or unfounded, and calculated to inflame the people against him, were duly and honorably received, encomiastically commented upon in speeches, read at the table, ordered to be printed with the long list of names attached, referred to the Finance Committee for consideration, filed away among the public archives, and now constitute a part of the public documents of the Senate, to be handed down to the latest posterity:

"And whereas the said resolve was introduced, debated, and adopted, at a time and under circumstances which had the effect of co-operating with the Bank of the United States in the parricidal attempt which that institution was then making to produce a panic and pressure in

SPEECH.

MR. PRESIDENT: It is now near three years since the resolve was adopted by the Senate, which it is my present motion to expunge from the journal. At the moment that this resolve was adopted, I gave notice of my intention to move to expunge it; and then expressed my confident belief that the motion would eventually prevail. That expression of confidence was not an ebullition of vanity, or a presumptuous calculation, intended to accelerate the event it affected to foretell. It was not a vain boast, or an idle assumption, but was the result of a deep conviction of the injustice done President Jackson, and a thorough reliance upon the justice of the American people. I felt that the President had been wronged; and my heart told me that this wrong would be redressed! The event proves that I was not mistaken. question of expunging this resolution has been carried to the people, and their decision has been had upon it. They decide in favor of the expurgation; and their decision has been both made and manifested, and communicated to us in a great variety of ways. A great number of

The

"Your last question seeks to know 'my' opinion as to the constitutional power of the Senate or House of Representatives to expunge or obliterate from the journals the proceedings of a previous session.

"You will, I am sure, be satisfied upon further consideration, that there are but few questions of a political character less connected with States, or that might not with equal propriety be put by an elector to a candidate for that station, than this. With the journals of neither house of Congress can he properly have any less been induced by the pendency of Col. Benthing to do. But, as your question has doubt

the duties of the office of President of the United

of the Senate certain other resolutions touching the official conduct of President Jackson, I preBenton's preamble and resolutions to be an act fer to say, that I regarded the passage of Col. of justice to a faithful and greatly injured public servant, not only constitutional in itself, but imperiously demanded by a proper respect for the well known will of the people."

States have expressly instructed their senators to vote for this expurgation. A very great majority of the States have elected senators and representatives to Congress, upon the express ground of favoring this expurgation. The Bank of the United States, which took the initiative in the accusation against the President, and furnished the material, and worked the machinery which was used against him, and which was then so powerful on this floor, has become more and more odious to the public mind, and musters now but a slender phalanx of friends in the two Houses of Congress. The late Presi-ton's resolutions, to expunge from the journals dential election furnishes additional evidence of public sentiment. The candidate who was the friend of President Jackson, the supporter of his administration, and the avowed advocate for the expurgation, has received a large majority of the suffrages of the whole Union, and that after an express declaration of his sentiments on this precise point. The evidence of the public will, exhibited in all these forms, is too manifest to be mistaken, too explicit to require illustration, and too imperative to be disregarded. Omitting details and specific enumeration of proofs, I refer to our own files for the instructions to expunge,-to the complexion of the two Houses for the temper of the people, -to the denationalized condition of the Bank of the United States for the fate of the imperious accuser, and to the issue of the Presidential election for the answer of the Union. All these are pregnant proofs of the public will, and the last pre-eminently so: because, both the question of the expurgation, and the form of the process, was directly put in issue upon it. A representative of the people from the State of Kentucky formally interrogated a prominent candidate for the Presidency on these points, and required from him a public answer for the information of the public mind. The answer was given, and published, and read by all the voters before the election; and I deem it right to refer to that answer in this place, not only as evidence of the points put in issue, but also for the purpose of doing more ample justice to President Jackson by incorporating into the legislative history of this case, the high and honorable testimony in his favor of the eminent citizen, Mr. Van Buren, who has just been exalted to the lofty honors of the American Presidency:

I do not propose, sir, to draw violent, unwarranted, or strained inferences. I do not assume to say that the question of this expurgation was a leading, or a controlling point in the issue of this election. I do not assume to say, or insinuate, that every individual, and every voter, delivered his suffrage with reference to this question. Doubtless there were many exceptions. Still, the triumphant election of the candidate who had expressed himself in the terms just quoted, and who was, besides, the personal and political friend of President Jackson, and the avowed approver of his administration, must be admitted to a place among the proofs in this case, and ranked among the high concurring evidences of the public sentiment in favor of the motion which I make.

Assuming, then, that we have ascertained the will of the people on this great question, the inquiry presents itself, how far the expression of that will ought to be conclusive of our action here? I hold that it ought to be binding and obligatory upon us! and that, not only upon the principles of representative government, which requires obedience to the known will of the people, but also in conformity to the principles upon which the proceeding against President Jackson was conducted when the sentence against him was adopted. Then every thing was done with especial reference to the will of the people! Their impulsion was assumed to be the sole motive to action; and to them the

ultimate verdict was expressly referred. The clusion to the arduous contest in which we have whole machinery of alarm and pressure-every been so long engaged; I allude to the general engine of political and moneyed power-was put tenor of his administration, and to its effect, for in motion, and worked for many months, to ex- good or for evil, upon the condition of his country. cite the people against the President; and to stir This is the proper time for such a view to be up meetings, memorials, petitions, travelling taken. The political existence of this great man committees, and distress deputations against now draws to a close. In little more than forty him; and each symptom of popular discontent days he ceases to be a public character. In a was hailed as an evidence of public will, and few brief weeks he ceases to be an object of poquoted here as proof that the people demanded litical hope to any, and should cease to be an the condemnation of the President. Not only object of political hate, or envy, to all. Whatlegislative assemblies, and memorials from large ever of motive the servile and timeserving might assemblies, were then produced here as evidence have found in his exalted station for raising the of public opinion, but the petitions of boys un- altar of adulation, and burning the incense of der age, the remonstrances of a few signers, praise before him, that motive can no longer exand the results of the most inconsiderable elec- ist. The dispenser of the patronage of an emtions, were ostentatiously paraded and magnified, pire-the chief of this great confederacy of as the evidence of the sovereign will of our con- States-is soon to be a private individual, stripstituents. Thus, sir, the public voice was every ped of all power to reward, or to punish. His thing while that voice, partially obtained through own thoughts, as he has shown us in the conpolitical and pecuniary machinations, was ad- cluding paragraph of that message which is to verse to the President. Then the popular will be the last of its kind that we shall ever receive was the shrine at which all worshipped. Now, from him, are directed to that beloved retirewhen that will is regularly, soberly, repeatedly, ment from which he was drawn by the voice of and almost universally expressed through the millions of freemen, and to which he now looks ballot boxes, at the various elections, and turns for that interval of repose which age and infirout to be in favor of the President, certainly no mities require. Under these circumstances, he one can disregard it, nor otherwise look at it ceases to be a subject for the ebullition of the than as the solemn verdict of the competent and passions, and passes into a character for the conultimate tribunal upon an issue fairly made up, templation of history. Historically, then, shall fully argued, and duly submitted for decision. I view him; and limiting this view to his civil As such verdict, I receive it. As the deliberate administration, I demand, where is there a chief verdict of the sovereign people, I bow to it. magistrate of whom so much evil has been pream content. I do not mean to reopen the case, dicted, and from whom so much good has come? nor to recommence the argument. I leave that Never has any man entered upon the chief mawork to others, if any others choose to perform gistracy of a country under such appalling preit. For myself, I am content; and, dispensing dictions of ruin and woe! never has any one been with further argument, I shall call for judgment, so pursued with direful prognostications! never and ask to have execution done, upon that un- has any one been so beset and impeded by a happy journal, which the verdict of millions of powerful combination of political and moneyed freemen finds guilty of bearing on its face an un-confederates! never has any one in any countrue, illegal, and unconstitutional sentence of condemnation against the approved President of the Republic.

I

But, while declining to reopen the argument of this question, and refusing to tread over again the ground already traversed, there is another and a different task to perform; one which the approaching termination of President Jackson's administration makes peculiarly proper at this time, and which it is my privilege, and perhaps my duty, to execute, as being the suitable conVOL. I.-46

try where the administration of justice has risen above the knife or the bowstring, been so lawlessly and shamelessly tried and condemned by rivals and enemies, without hearing, without defence, without the forms of law or justice!. History has been ransacked to find examples of tyrants sufficiently odious to illustrate him by comparison. Language has been tortured to find epithets sufficiently strong to paint him in description. Imagination has been exhausted in her efforts to deck him with revolting and.