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to be purified and redintegrated when extravagant abuse has cankered it.

In addition to an example of the treaty of peace which I have just been considering, let me put another, of which none of us can question the reality. The president may exercise the power of pardoning, save only in the case of impeachments. The power of pardoning is not communicated by words more precise or comprehensive than the power to make treaties. But to what does it amount? Is not every pardon pro hac vice a repeal of the penal law against which it gives protection? Does it not ride over the law, resist its command, and extinguish its effect? Does it not even control the combined force of judicature and legislation? Yet, have we ever heard that your legislative rights were an exception out of the prerogative of mercy? Who has ever pretended that this faculty cannot, if regularly exerted, wrestle with the strongest of your statutes? I may be told, that the pardoning power necessarily imports a control over the penal code, if it be exercised in the form of a pardon. I answer, the power to make treaties equally imports a power to put out of the way such parts of the civil code as interfere with its operation, if that power be exerted in the form of a treaty. There is no difference in their essence. You legislate in both cases subject to the power. And this instance furnishes another answer, as I have already intimated, to the predictions of abuse with which, on this occasion, it has been endeavoured to appal us. The pardoning power is in the president alone. He is not even checked by the necessity of senatorial concurrence. He may by his single fiat extract the sting VOL. I.

from your proudest enactmentsand save from their vengeance a convicted offender.

Sir, you have my general notions upon the bill before you. They have no claim to novelty. I imbibed them from some of the heroes and sages who survived the storm of that contest to which America was summoned in her cradle. I imbibed them from the father of his country. My understanding approved them, with the full concurrence of my heart, when I was much younger than I am now; and I feel no disposition to discard them now that age and feebleness are about to overtake me. I could say more-much more

upon this high question; but I want health and strength. It is perhaps fortunate for the house that I do; as it prevents me from fatiguing them as much as I am fatigued myself.

Speech of Mr. CLAY, on the Direct Tax.

Mr. Clay (speaker) said, the course had been pursued, ever since he had had the honour of a seat on this floor, to select some subject during the early part of the session, on which, by a general understanding, gentlemen were allowed to indulge themselves in remarks on the existing state of public affairs. The practice was a very good one, he said, and there could be no occasion more proper than that of a proposition to lay a direct tax.

Those who have for fifteen years past administered the affairs of this government, have conducted this nation to an honorable point of elevation, at which they may justly pause, challenge a retrospect, and invite attention to the 2 D

bright field of prosperity which | ing the interests of the people, and lies before us.

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giving to the whole physical powThe great objects of the com- er of the country an interest in the mittee of finance, in the report preservation of the nation. I have under consideration, are, in the been taught that lesson; that we first place, to provide for the pay- should never lose sight of the posment of the public debts, and in sibility, that a combination of desthe second, to provide for the sup- pots, of men unfriendly to liberty, port of the government, and the propagating what in their opinion payment of such expenses constitutes the principle of legitishould be authorised by congress. macy, might reach our happy land, The greater part of the debt, Mr. and subject us to that tyranny and C. admitted, had grown out of the degradation which seems to be one late war; yet a considerable por- of their objects in another country. tion of it consisted of that contract- The result of my reflections is, the ed in the former war for indepen- determination to aid with my vote dence, and a portion of it perhaps in providing my country with all of that which arose out of the wars the means to protect its liberties, with Tripoli and Algiers. Gentle- and guard them even from serious men had on this occasion, there- menace. Motives of delicacy, which fore, fairly a right to examine into the committee would be able to the course of administration here- understand and appreciate, pretofore, to demonstate the impolicy vented him from noticing some of of those wars, and the unjudici- his colleague's (Mr. Hardin's) reousness of the public expenditures marks; but he would take the ocgenerally. In the cursory view casion to give him one admonition, which he should take of this sub- that when he next favoured the ject, he must be allowed to say, he house with an exhibition of his tashould pay no particular attention lent for wit-with a display of to what had passed before in de- those elegant implements, for his bate. An honorable colleague (Mr. possession of which, the gentleHardin) who spoke the other day, man from Virginia had so handlike another gentleman who pre- somely complimented him, that he ceded him in debate, had taken oc- would recollect that it is bought, casion to refer to his (Mr. C.'s) and not borrowed wit, which the late absence from this country on adage recommends as best. With public business; but, Mr. C. said, regard to the late war with Great he trusted, among the fruits of that Britain, history, in deciding upon absence were a greater respect for the justice and policy of that war, the institutions which distinguish will determine the question acthis happy country, a greater con- cording to the state of things which fidence in them, and an increased existed when that war was declardisposition to cling to them. Yes, ed. I gave a vote for the declarasir, said Mr. C., I was in the neigh- tion of war, said Mr. C.-I exertborhood of the battle of Waterloo, ed all the little influence and taand some lessons I did derive from lents I could command to make it: but they were lessons which sa- the war. The war was made; it is tisfied me that national indepen- terminated; and I declare with dence was only to be maintained perfect sincerity, if it had been by national resistance against fo- permitted me to lift the veil of fureign encroachments; by cherish-turity, and to have foreseen the

precise series of events which has occurred, my vote would have been unchanged. The policy of the war, as it regarded our state of preparation, must be determined with reference to the state of things at the time that war was declared. Mr. C. said, he need not take up the time of the house in demonstrating that we had cause sufficient for war. We had been insulted and outraged, and spoliated upon by almost all Europe, by Great Britain, by France, Spain, Denmark, Naples, and to cap the climax, by the little contemptible power of Algiers. We had submitted too long and too much. We had become the scorn of foreign powers, and the contempt of our own citizens. The question of the policy of declaring war at the particular time when it was commenced, is best determined, Mr. C. remarked, by applying to the enemy himself; and what said he! that of all the circumstances attending its declaration, none was so aggravating, as that we should have selected the moment which of all others was most inconvenient to him; when he was struggling for selfexistence in a last effort against the gigantic power of France. The question of the state of preparation for war at any time is a relative question-relative to our own means, the condition of the other power, and the state of the world at the time of declaring it. We could not expect, for instance, that a war against Algiers would require the same means or extent of preparation as a war against Great Britain; and, if it was to be waged against one of the primary powers of Europe, at peace with all the rest of the world, and therefore all her force at command, it could not be commenced with so little preparation as if her whole

force were employed in another quarter. It is not necessary again to repel, said Mr. C. the stale, ridiculous, false story of French influence, originating in Great Britain, and echoed here. I now contend, as I have always done, that we had a right to take advantage of the condition of the world at the time war was declared. If Great Britain were engaged in war, we had a right to act on the knowledge of the fact, that her means of annoyance, as to us, were diminished; and we had a right to obtain all the collateral aid we could from the operations of other powers against her, without entering into those connections which are forbidden by the genius of our government. But, Mr. C: said, it was rather like disturbing the ashes of the dead now to discuss the questions of the justice or expediency of the war. They were questions long since settled, and on which the public opinion was decisively made up in favour of the administration.

He proceeded to examine the conditions of the peace and the fruits of the war; questions of more recent date, and more immediately applicable to the present discussion. The terms of the peace, Mr. C. said, must be determined by the same rule that was applicable to the declaration of war-that rule which was furnished by the state of the world at the time the peace was made; and, even if it were true that all the sanguine expectations which might have been formed at the time of the declaration of war were not realised by the terms of the subsequent peace, it did not follow that the war was improperly declared, or the peace dishonorable, unless the condition of the parties in relation to other powers remained substantially the

same throughout the struggle, and at the time of the termination of the war, as they were at the commencement of it. At the termination of the war, France was annibilated, blotted out of the map of Europe; the vast power wielded by Bonaparte existed no longer. Let it be admitted that statesmen, in laying their course, are to look at probable events, that their conduct is to be examined with reference to the course of events which in all human probability might have been anticipated-and is there a man in this house, in existence, who can say, that on the 18th day of June, 1812, when the war was declared, it would have been anticipated that Great Britain would, by the circumstance of a general peace, resulting from the overthrow of a power whose basements were supposed to be deeper laid, more ramified and more extended than those of any power ever were before-be placed in the attitude in which she stood in December, 1814? Would any one say that this government could have anticipated such a state of things, and ought to have been governed in its conduct accordingly? Great Britain, Russia, Germany did not expect not a power in Europe believed, as late even as January 1814, that, in the ensuing March, Bonaparte would abdicate and the restoration of the Bourbons would follow. What then was the actual condition of Europe when peace was concluded? A perfect tranquillity reigned throughout; for, as late as the first of March, the idea of Napolean re-appearing in France, was as little entertained, as that of a man's coming from the moon to take upon himself the government of the country. In December 1814, a profound and apparently a permanent peace existed: Great Bri

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tain was left to dispose of the vast force, the accumulation of twentyfive years, the work of an immense system of finance and protracted war-she was at liberty to employ that undivided force against this country. Under such circum. stances, it did not follow, Mr. C. said, according to the rules laid down, either that the war ought not to have been made, or that peace on such terms ought not to have been concluded.

What then, Mr. C. asked, were the terms of the peace? The regu lar opposition in this country-the gentlemen on the other side of the house, had not come out to challenge an investigation of the terms of the peace, although they had several times given a sidewipe at the treaty on occasions with which it had no necessary connection. It had been some times said that we had gained nothing by the war, that the fisheries were lost, &c. How, he asked, did this question of the fisheries really stand? By the first part of the third article of the treaty of 1783, the right was recognized in the people of the United States, to take fish of every kind on the Grand Bank and on all the other banks of Newfoundland; also in the gulf of St. Lawrence, and at all other places in the sea, where the inhabitants of both countries used at any time to fish. This right was a necessary incident to our sovereignty, although it is denied to some of the powers of Europe. It was not contested at Ghent; it has never been drawn in question by Great Bri tain. But by the same third article it was further stipulated, that the inhabitants of the United States shall have "liberty to take fish of every kind on such part of the coast of Newfoundland as British fishermen shall use (but not to dry

or cure the same on that island,) | jority of the American commissioners offered to renew it, upon the condition that the liberties in question were renewed to us. He was not one of that majority. He would not trouble the committee with his reasons for being opposed to the offer. A majority of his colleagues, actuated he believed by the best motives, made however the offer, and it was refused by the British commissioners.

and also on the coasts, bays and creeks of all other of his Britannic majesty's dominions in America; and that the American fishermen shall have liberty to dry and cure fish in any of the unsettled bays, harbours and creeks of Nova Scotia, Magdalen islands and Labrador, so long as the same shall remain unsettled; but so soon as the same or either of them shall be settled, it shall not be lawful for the said fishermen to dry or cure fish at such settlement, without a previous agreement for that purpose with the inhabitants, proprietors or possessors of the ground." The British commissioners, assuming that these liberties had expired by the war between the two countries, at an early period of the negotiation declared that they would not be revived without an equivalent. Whether the treaty of 1788 does not form an exception to the general rule, according to which treaties are vacated by a war breaking out between the parties, is a question on which he did not mean to express an opinion. The first article of that treaty, by which the king of Great Britain acknowledges the sovereignty of the United States, certainly was not abrogated by the war; that all the other parts of the same instrument, which define the limits, privileges and liberties attaching to that sovereignty were equally unaffected by the war, might be contended for with at least much plausibility. If we determined to offer them the equivalent required, the question was, what should it be? When the British commissioners demanded, in their projet, a renewal to Great Britain of the right to the navigation of the Mississippi, secured by the treaty of 1783, a bare ma

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If the British interpretation of the treaty of 1783 be correct, we have lost the liberties in question. What the value of them really is, he had not been able to meet with any two gentlemen who agreed. The great value of the whole mass of our fishery interests, as connected with our navigation and trade, was sufficiently demonstrated by the tonnage employed; but what was the relative importance of these liberties, there was great contrariety of statements. They were liberties to be exercised within a foreign jurisdiction, and some of them were liable to be destroyed by the contingency of settlement. He did not believe that much importance attached to such liberties. And supposing them to be lost, we are perhaps sufficiently indemnified by the redemption of the British mortgage upon the navigation of the Mississippi. This great stream, on that supposition, is placed where it ought to be, in the same independent condition with the Hudson, or any other river in the United States.

If, on the contrary, the opposite construction of the treaty of 1783 be the true one, these liberties remain to us, and the right to the navigation of the Mississippi, as secured to Great Britain by that instrument, continues with her.

But, Mr. C. said he was surpri sed to hear a gentleman from the

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