perity, is indeed a fine and necessary preparation for the reception of the Whig doctrines; but more than this must be added: there must be a freedom from bigotry and from bias, and a disposition to submit all things to the trial of history and of experience. This is the manly liberality which prepares the mind of a true citizen for the reception of Whig doctrines.

The Whig party owes its origin to the contests, familiar to English history, in which, from the reign of James the First down to the period of our own Revolution, there was exhibited a continual struggle between those who, on the one side, contended for the rights of the people and the supremacy of the legislature, and their adversaries on the other, who maintained the authority of the Executive to restrain the popular privilege, and to suppress or check the expression of the will of the legislature. It was, throughout, a contest

to use the historical phrase, between the privilege of the people and the prerogative of the crown.' The revolution England of 1688, was the final triumph of the popular party.*

The same contest grew up in the colonies nearly one hundred years after, and the Declaration of Independence was the Whig manifesto in this quarrel. words of the Declaration against the encroachments of the executive power are as follows:-

It is not the intention of this article, nor of any other in this journal, to lay down a platform of Whig notions. "If ours were a party of perpetual change, affirming one thing to-day and repudiating it to-morrow; if we made promises which we never meant to perform; if we dealt in ambiguous protestations, purposely rendered obscure, with a view to the various and opposite interpretations which might adapt them to the conflicting opinions and prejudices of every region and section of the country,-in that case, we might recognize the necessity of appointing a few men every four years to write out and pub-in lish our occasional creed. We might instruct them to infuse into it a few indisputable popular truisms, with a view to claiming them as distinctive of our organization. We might enjoin upon them to mystify, by artful and equivocal language, whatever was likely to disturb the harmony of opinion amongst us-spargere ambigues voces; and we might require our creed to be fortified by whatever startling invention of the day seemed most apt to bring an accession of members. A party finding itself in such a category has need to build platforms every fourth year, and still greater to repair them with such timber as the growth of each year may supply. But the Whig Party needs no such joinery as this."* It cannot be explained in a breath, like a trick at cards. To be known, its spirit must be felt, and to feel that spirit rightly, requires more than the sudden heat of enthusiasm: Experience of men and things, a deep and ardent patriotism, rising into national jealousy, a jealousy of our rights and of our honor, of our possessions and our pros

*Speech of Mr. John P. Kennedy, delivered at the Whig meeting at Hagarstown, Maryland, Sept. 27th, 1848.—Nat. Intelligencer.

"He (the executive) has refused his assent to laws the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

"He has forbidden his governors to pass laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation until his assent should be attained.

"He has obstructed the administration of justice by refusing his assent to laws for establishing judiciary powers, &c.'

"These are a few of the charges of the Declaration."t

The war of the Revolution was the

second great triumph of the Whigs over their adversaries.

"The veto or refusal of executive assent

had become odioust in England, and no

Before the Revolution we were all good English Whigs, cordial in their free principles, and in their jealousies of their Executive magistrate.-Jefferson, Memoir, p. 65. ED. + Mr. Kennedy.

The English nation, by their ejection of the

monarch from the time of William the Third had had the temerity to employ it against the legislation of Parliament. But it had been employed against colonial legislation in various ways, to the great discontent of the country, almost as frequently and as capriciously as it has been employed of late years by our President. The establishment of American independence, it was believed, has thoroughly secured the people against this abuse. It is true, that a qualified veto was incorporated in the Constitution. But this was done not without dissent on the part of some of the most intelligent and sturdy republicans in the Convention--of whom Dr. Franklin was one of the most conspicuous. The veto was only allowed upon the representation, by the friends of the clause, that it was a power of such a character as would rarely be brought into use, and which would be found sufficiently guarded by the jealousy with which a republican government would naturally

watch its exercise.

"The argument was,that as monarchical England had not witnessed its exhibition for nearly a hundred years, republican America would surely find but few occasions to employ it. Yielding to such arguments, the Convention adopted the qualified veto, as we now read it in the Constitution.

"It is this veto which, as much as anything else worthy of note in the latter Administrations of our Government, has re-embodied the

Whig party. The veto power has utterly disappointed the expectations and overthrown the promises of the authors of the Constitution. It was intended, as the present Secretary of State once truly said, for the extreme medicine' of the Constitution, and it has become instead its daily bread.' It is no longer a qualified veto, but a party veto. It has never, in this latter day of its abuse, been used by a President against the measures of his own party; but its use has been frequent, almost invariable, against the prominent measures of his political opponents, when he and his party were in a minority in Congress. You cannot find a single measure of this new Democratic party that has been vetoed: there has not been a great and prominent Whig measure, on the

Stewarts, established "the right of revolution," by which their kings are kept in terror of the people, and dare not exercise a despotical prerogative; but our Executive, living under a firmer and more legitimate government, are in no fear of revolution, and go on confidently in the course of usurpation.

contrary, that a Democratic President has not vetoed. It seems to be almost a badge or test of this new Democracy that some bill or other shall be forbidden. There is scarcely a little his democracy, who does not think it essential mayor of a little corporation who stands up for

to his democratic character that he shall veto some act of his little Whig Common Councilthis pump or that lamp shall not be repaired : let them become extinct, to prove my devotion to democratic principles.'

"It has thus, sir, been made the great instrument for the increase of Executive power, and, taken in connection with the employment of Executive patronage to enlist parties in support of that power, it has wrought almost a civil revolution in the nature of our Government, converting it from one of republican equality and popular will, into one of party No constitutional monarchy has witnessed the proscription and high monarchical prerogative. exercise of higher or broader Executive power

than that with which we have become familiar in this republic of ours. The veto, as applied a dozen times in the last twenty years in this country, would have terminated the reign of Louis Philippe in France upon the first attempt

to exert it.'

with want of principles, will not, perhaps, Those who ignorantly charge the Whigs after reading the above paragraph, perse

vere in so absurd an accusation. But now, to silence in the most effectual manner all such idle accusations, let us recur to the history of the conduct of the party in this country, from the days of Jefferson and Adams, when the originators of the Constitution were divided against each other on the old question of powers and prerogative,--what should be conceded to the people, and what to government.

"What was known in the United States as the old Democratic party, was moulded, in a great degree, by Mr. Jefferson. Its antagonist was the old Federal party. Doubtless, sir, in the lapse of time, many men belonging to these two parties have honestly changed sides. Throwing out of view all that was personal in the feelings of these parties and which belonged to the day of their strife, and throwing off also all consideration of what was local or temporary in their respective points of difference, there was ground enough left for sincere and hearty conciliation of sentiment and feeling in regard to the questions of fundamental policy in the administration of our public affairs. I think that this conciliation of opinion and surrender of the prejudices and asperities of party feeling, are very notable at the close of Mr. Madison's administration, and throughout the whole career of those of Mr. Monroe and

tions of the Jameses and the Charleses of Eng- | the Whigs, "that they have no prinland revived, advocated, and enforced in these our days, and in republican America; and en

ciples," which, it must be confessed, comes only from the weakest and most ignorant of their adversaries, Mr. Kennedy proceeds to an examination of seyeral charges brought against the old democratic or modern Whig party, in the manifestoes published against them previous to the election.

In the platform of the so-styled Old Hunker faction, or right wing of the

had it only a NAME, it would be easier to write and speak,) the Whigs are charged with advocating,

forced, sir, by whom? Go now to Washing ton, to New York, Boston, anywhere, where there is a public officer, and you will find the stipendiaries and employés of the Executive, the office-holders, occupying every rostrum and public forum to teach the people these blessings of Executive mastership. Not a man amongst them speaks up for the Legislature; not a word is heard from them responsive to that old Whig sentiment which taught our fathers the value of an independent represent-modern "prerogative" party, (of which, ative Legislature, and the danger of trusting the Executive with the power of controlling its action. Not a word of this. Why? Because the Legislature has no patronage to bestow; it has no rewards to give; it has nothing but moral force and pure devotion to the liberties of the people. The Executive boldly and unblushingly comes into the field, with its countless hirelings, who speak, act, run, and ride everywhere as they are bid, for their bread, their daily wages, which they know will be forfeited upon the first exercise of an honest opinion on public affairs, and which wages are likely to be increased in proportion to their zeal in doing the miserable work of propagandism confided to them.

66

Now, Mr. President, so far as our position as Whigs has reference to this great and engrossing question of Executive power and influence, we are precisely on the ground occupied by Mr. Jefferson; and it is worthy of remark that Mr. Jefferson, acting in conformity with these principles, never in the course of his eight years of public administration, put his veto upon a single act of the Legislature; never pocketed' a bill, as it is called; never said, if you had consulted me I could have given you a bill better than the one you sent me.' Such doings belong only to the era of the new Democracy. And, sir, so far as the present position of our adversaries has reference to this same great and engrossing question, I will not say it is coincident with that of the Federalists at the period to which Mr. Jefferson alludes, but it goes a bow-shot beyond anything advocated by the Federalists of

that time; it is ultra and extra Federal in the sense in which these doctrines have ever been imputed to the Federal party. It is, in fact, a revival of the most odious and offensive doctrines of the cavaliers of Charles the First's

time-the very antipodes of all that we have been taught as vital to the success and distinctive excellence of free representative Government."

Having disposed of the leading point at issue between the two parties, which is perhaps sufficient of itself to silence that absurd objection brought against

1. The constitutionality and expediency of a national bank.

2. The constitutionality and expediency of making appropriations for internal improvements--roads, canals, rivers, and harbors.

3. The constitutionality and expediency of tariffs for the protection of the labor of the country.

"And, on the other hand, these builders of the platform claim for themselves to be opposed to the Whigs on all these points: to be irreconcileably adverse to the constitutionality of a bank; equally so to that of internal improvements; and, on the point of protection to American labor, they declare themselves at last, after abundant equivocation, the enemies of all useful and effective legislation having reference to that. Their most authentic exponents amongst their public speakers and their newspapers, go even further than this, and boast the party to be the strenuous and determined advocates of free trade.

"These three questions-the bank, the internal improvement, and the tariff-present what the party have for years past claimed to be the chief distinctive topics upon which they stand opposed to the Whigs. They are the tests of political fraternization. They who support the affirmative on these propositions are, in the new nomenclature of that anomalous party who have erected the Baltimore platform, Federalists; they who take the negative on those questions, call themselves the Democracy.

"I am aware that the Baltimore platform professes to exhibit some other materials for party distinction; it contains a schedule of minor political wares, which seem to have been thrown in for the sake of show. They are, in part, declarations concerning liberty and equality, which no party nor man in this country has ever disputed; and, in part, some very solemn trumpery touching a disclaimer of the exercise of doubtful powers; their attachment to a

"Then, as to the Internal Improvement question. Sir, everybody knows-everybody, at least, in this section of the country-that the Cumberland road originated in the administra- "But, sir, let us look at the Administration tion of Mr. Jefferson, and that he signed the of Mr. Madison. We may well suppose that first bill which brought it into existence. Every-eight years was scarcely sufficient to digest body also knows, sir, that the first system of internal improvements was, at a later date, proposed to the nation by Mr. Calhoun, and was, to use the language of Mr. McDuffie,