Executive Patronage (American President), BQR for 1841

Executive Patronage 

[From the Boston Quarterly Review for July, 1841]

It is not our intention to enter into any elaborate criticism of this address from the president of the United States. As an important state paper, it falls far below that of Mr. Tyler's immediate predecessor. General Harrison's Inaugural address has been underrated, and unjustly accused of being non-committal. A president, on entering upon the duties of his office, ought not to be expected to go into a detailed statement of the measures or the policy he will recommend, or to which he will or will not give his official sanction. All he can do with decency, is to state his views of the principles of the government he is called to administer, and the spirit in which he proposes to administer it. This General Harrison did as fully as could be required. The fault of his address was not in its no-meaning, but in its wrong meaning; in embodying in their exaggerated form, the principle errors which have obtained, or do obtain, in regard to the nature of the federal constitution and government. 

These errors may all be summed up in the one fundamental error of regarding the federal government as instituted by, and resting on, the will of the majority; as a government which, in the words of General Harrison, "a breath of the majority has made and can unmake." If this were true, the some seven large states containing a majority of the population would have the constitutional right to govern, at will, the other nineteen. The local interests of these would rightfully rule, regardless of the diverse interests of all the rest. But it is well known that the constitution is not made by the will of the simple majority, but by the concurring majorities of the several states, and the government can never exercise, without usurpation, any power which more than one-fourth of the states choose to withhold. Consequently, the government must, in practice, confine itself to what concerns all the states in common, and leave  those matters and interests, which are peculiar to each, to the exclusive supervision and control of the state governments. 

It was losing sight, for a moment, of this important fact, that led Mr. Madison to adopt the rule for determining the constitutional powers of the government, now so strenuously insisted on by the party in power. Mr. Madision, in his justification of himself for having signed the bill incorporating the late bank of the United States, when he has opposed a bank on the ground of its unconstitutionality, alleged that a "power repeatedly exercised by congress, and acquiescence of the people, should be taken as constitutional." A more dangerous rule it is not easy to conceive of. If the stress be laid on the acquiescence of the people, it virtually abrogates the constitution; for it leaves the majority free to pass any law they please, that the people will tolerate; which is precisely what the case would be, were there no contitution at all. If the stress be laid on the repeated exercise of the power, it asserts that wrong by repetition becomes right. If on the repeated exercise by congress, it claims for the simple majority in congress the power of determining what the constitution shall be, of altering or amending it,-a power which, according to the constitution itself, belongs only to the concurrence of the several states, or at least to three-fourths of them. 

The adoption of this rule by Mr. Madison, we presume, accounts for the fact, that he is now the pattern statesman with those who could once hardly find in the English language words of sufficient force to express their abhorrence of him and his measures, and the fact, that he is now the pattern statesman with these, should teach the old Republican state-rights party that they have too feebly protested against the rule to which he, in an evil hour, gave his high authority. Mr. Madison was a great and a good man, whose services to his country are not easily measured; but the injury he occasioned, in this instance, to the cause of constitutional liberty, is one from which we shall be long in recovering. It was indeed one of those mistakes, to which the wisest and best of men are liable in cases of perplexity and emergency; but it is one which the earliest opportunity should be seized of correcting.

Mr. Tyler and his party have adopted this fatal rule for determining the constitutional powers of the government; we trust that we shall, therefore, be pardoned for having entered our protest against it, as a rule which virtually abrogates the constitution, converts the federal government into a government of unlimited powers, and gives to the simple majority, acting through congress, freedom to pass any law they please, providing the people will acquiesce, and not rise in rebellion and plunge the country into the horrors of civil war.  

Mr. Tyler and the party now in power, so far as we can collect, appear to believe that the great danger of our liberties lies in the "tendency of power to concentrate in the hands of a single individual;" and therefore that the evil we should most studiously guard against is executive usurpation and the extension of executive patronage. But, in our judgment, this belief of theirs is founded on a superficial view of the actual tendencies in our own country. They do not seem to us to have noted with sufficient care the wide difference there is between our confederacy and one of the small city-republics of antiquity. The tendency they dread is resisted by the vast extent of our territory, and the division into separate, sovereign states; by the diverse interests and institutions of different sections; the multiplicity of rival candidates, with nearly equal pretensions and abilities; and by the general equality of our citizens. 

No one man, however eminent his talents or his services, can ever succeed in commanding the suffrages of all the states. Always will there be entire states in opposititon; and one state, under our system, is always competent to bring the government back, in any of its departments, within constitutional limits. The danger, Mr. Tyler dreads so much, can exist only in small communities, where the interests are homogeneous, but where the population is divided horizontally, and parties are noble against ignoble, or rich against poor. There indeed rival parties may aid the concentration of power in the hands of their respective leaders, because each may find it necessary to do so in order to secure its triumph over the other. But with us parties are not and cannot be formed according to the horizontal division. The trial has been made, and without success. Our population is all noble; and though we have rich and poor, neither party takes in all the rich or all the poor. 

Our population also has an innate jealously of power, when exercised by a single individual, an hereditary hostility to it, which has come down to them from their ancestors, who warred against monarchy, to the knife, in the family of the Stuarts. This innate dread, this hereditary hostility to this concentration of power, which characterizes nearly the whole of the American people, is no mean safeguard, and deserves altogether more reliance than Mr. Tyler and his party seem disposed to give it. 

Then, again, our presidents are in the main simple executive officers. Saving a conditional veto, they are neither makers nor judges of the law. The president, it is true, commands the army and navy; but he cannot declare war; he cannot unsheathe the sword till the people, through their representatives, command him. He perhaps, in a certain transcendental sense, may be said to hold the purse, but he cannot open it or take a cent there from, till the 'law gives him leave, and tells him what to do with it. His usurpations, from the nature of the case, must be open, palpable, and therefore easily guarded against; and be they what they may, as they are always ministerial usurpations, they can always be remedied by a simple change of administration. 

The real danger, to which our liberties are exposed, lies, we apprehend, in legislative usurpations, our people are not so much on their guard; and these are always usurpations which receive the sanction of the majority; for no law can pass the two houses of congress without the consent of the majority through their representatives. The opposition to them comes only from the minority. They must then always be hard to resist, and still harder to redress. New elections, or the gradual enlightenment of the people, will not redress them; because they are demanded by the interests of the majority, and the majority will return representatives pledged to sustain them. 

Legislative usurpations, furthermore, are rarely looked upon in the light of usurpations by the great mass of the people. They have the sanction of the majority, and it is no easy matter to convince the people, that what has the sanction of the majority, is or can be usurpation. The prevailing creed of the country asserts, with scarcely any but moral limitations, the absolute right of the majority to govern. We also retain the memory of the struggle of our fathers with the monarchs of England, when all power, conquered from the monarch by the parliament, was thought to be so much gained to liberty. We go on the supposition that all power exercised by the legislature, freely chosen by the whole people, is exercised by the people themselves; and that power exercised by the people themselves is coincident with freedom. We have not yet learned, that the people taken as individuals, may be completely enslaved to the people taken as the body politic, or civil society; that to establish the absolute freedom of the people, as a body politic, to do whatever they please, is to establish the absolute subjection of the whole people, taken as individuals. The ambiguity of the word people deceives us, and leads us to infer, that where the popular sovereignty is complete, there is absolute freedom, when in fact there is and can be only absolute subjection. But recognizing always the popular sovereignty in the acts of the legislature, and identifying popular sovereignty with freedom, we rarely fear legislature usurpation, and in general suffer without alarm the legislature to grasp powers which it has no right to exercise. 

Here is the real danger. There is a wide difference between popular sovereignty and true freedom, and the people as a body politic, as civil society may be as tyrannical in their acts as any despot, and encroach on the rights of the individual citizen with far greater impunity, and with far less danger of insurrection, rebellion, or revolution. We regret that Mr. Tyler, when discoursing on the danger to which our liberties are exposed, did not see proper to remind us that power could concentrate in the hands of congress, as well as in the hand of the president, and that the true policy of the country should be to guard against this concentration in the hands of either branch of the federal government. 

Our fears of legislative usurpations, so far as concerns the federal government, are by no means imaginary. The federal legislature is steadily is steadily usurping powers not delegated to it, and bringing under the action of the federal government matters of which its framers never intended it should take cognizance. Already has it engrossed the chief business of legislation, and become in fact the only important legislative body in the country. If its usurpations be not checked, and more effectually than they were under the administrations of Jackson and Van Buren, it will not be long before consolidation is consummated. Mr. Van Buren's administration, as far as it went, was in the main unexceptionable; but somewhat deficient in boldness and nerve. The hand that guided had its cunning, but not quite all the vigor desirable. A little more of the rough energy of Jackson would have been an improvement. Nevertheless, the country may count itself not a little favored by Providence, if it do not long have to regret the defeat of that much calumniated administration, if it soon find another as good, as faithful to the constitution. 

We know of but one remedy for the evil we have here pointed out, and that consists in a hearty return to the fundamental idea of the federal government, to the state-rights principles of the old Republican party of '98; in understanding that our maxim, the majority must rule, can apply to the federal government only within the limits prescribed by the constitution; that the constitution is paramount to the will of the majority , and rests on the concurrence of the several states, each of which is, for itself, its own judge of the grant of powers it has made to the Union. This will prove a peaceable and an efficient remedy; and between this and complete consolidation there is, as far as we can see, no stopping-place. 

But although we regard the chief danger as lying in legislative usurpation, we are still inclined to regard the executive patronage as too great, as dangerous, and requiring to be curtailed. But here again we are under the necessity of differing from Mr. Tyler. He seems to fancy that the evil lies in the active interference, as individual citizens, of office-holders in elections, and therefore seeks to guard against it by declaring such interference a disqualification for holding office. He tells us that no man shall hold office under him, who takes an active part in politics. But the evil, in our judgment, does not lie in the interference; nor is it one that can be reached by Mr. Tyler's rule of non-interference. 

The rule is itself a flagrant instance of its own violation. It is, to say the least, no mean stretch of executive authority. It strikes at the rights of the states, by presuming to say what part certain of their citizens may or may not take in their political contests. It brings the patronage of the government into direct conflict with the freedom of elections, by enabling the executive to control them by all the force derivable from men's love of office, or desire to share in government plunder. It enables him to make every office-holder in the land his servile tool, and furnishes him the means, if disposed to use them, of buying up every prominent political opponent he can induce to accept of an office, and thus often to distract, and in the end discomfit the party opposed to his administration. Is there no executive encroachment in this? Is this the efficient way of curtailing executive patronage?

Then, again, the rule in unequal, and will operate only on political opponents. No administration will ever dismiss a faithful and efficient officer because he uses his best exertions, as a citizen to sustain it. Mr. Tyler could not have supposed his constituents would credit his assertion, that he would apply the rule equally to his friends and opponents. Has he done it? Has he removed any of his friends who held office under the late administration? Are we to infer that none of them took an active part in the late presidential election? We presume not; and yet we have not heard that any of them have been removed. Nor will Mr. Tyler remove any officer of his own appointing, however active or zealous a politician, if not found waiting as a faithful and efficient officer. No administration can afford to dismiss its friends for doing what all of the things it most desires them to do; and Mr. Tyler should have respected the good sense of the American people too much to have pretended to the contrary. He should have spared them at least that insult. For himself, though blessed with his usual "good luck," we can assure him, that long before his term of office expires, his administration may need the active and zealous support of all the friends it can retain or make, whether they be in office or out of office. 

Mr. Tyler's rule encroaches also on the rights of the man and the citizen. The man and the citizen are not sunk in the officer. An office-holder may do whatever he has a right to do as a man and a citizen, not incompatible with the faithful discharge of his official duties. In what manner he exercises these rights is no concern of the federal executive, for he is accountable for their exercise to another tribunal. To inquire how he votes, how many speeches he makes, or how much money he spends for electioneering purposes, is an extra-judicial, if we may say so, as it would be to inquire whether he lives in a frame-house or a log-cabin, drinks hard cider or champagne, eats white bread or brown, and sleeps on a feather-bed or a pallet of straw. The relation between the executive and the office-holder is purely official, and no question transcending that relation can be rightfully entertained. If the officer neglect his official duty, he should be removed, not for taking part as a citizen in politics, but for neglecting the duties of his office; if he transgress the laws of the state in which he resides, he should be turned out, not for his electioneering, but because every government is bound to see that its agents respect the laws of the sovereign within whose limits they reside. 

The rule, furthermore, is indefinite. What is interfering in elections,-"active partisanship," as it is called? He who goes quietly to the polls and deposits his vote, is an active politician, compared with one who votes not at all; and a partisan, for he most likely votes for one party or another. Shall the citizen be deprived of his right to vote, because he is an office-holder under the federal government? We have not heard this pretended. Where then will you stop? May not the officer, without forfeiting his office, tell his honest convictions to his neighbor on political matters? If not, you abridge the freedom of speech, a thing which no branch of the federal government can attempt, without violence to the constitution. If he may tell his honest convictions to one man, why not to as many as choose to listen to him? If in one place, in one position, why not in another? Where then will you draw the line between simple non-interference at all and the most active interference compatible with official fidelity, the laws of the state, and general morality?

But the evil does not lie in the part the office-holder, in his simple capacity of a citizen, takes in the politics of the state or confederacy. The citizens loses, in general, more then he gains by the office. The man who holds an office has, as is well known, almost always less influence when he addresses his fellow-citizens on political subjects, than he would have were he wholly disconnected with office. If he sustain the administration, he is regarded as personally interested in its success, as wishing to keep the administration in power for the sake of retaining his place; if he oppose the administration, he is regarded as ungrateful, as cursing the hand that feeds him, and so has little influence. That administration cannot be very oppressive, which keeps men in office who use their best exertions to overthrow it. In a word, an office-holder taking part, as a citizen, in politics, goes out before his fellow-citizens under disadvantages rather than advantages, and can rarely, if ever, exert with the mass his legitimate share of influence. There is then no need of Mr. Tyler's rule. 

The evil does not lie here, but elsewhere. It lies not in any interference of the office, as a citizen, but in his official interference. No office-holders, except such as have patronage to bestow, can cause any portion of the evil; and those who have patronage to bestow, cause it not by voting, writing, or lecturing, but by bestowing their patronage, not with reference to fitness for office, but with reference to services rendered or to be rendered to the party. A collector of the customs, for instance brings his office to bear on elections, when he appoints to office, or removes from office, with reference to these services. His duty is to select his officers with sole reference to the public service, and he transcends the line of his duty when he has reference to any thing else. Other things being equal, he may no doubt select his personal or political friends in preference to those who are neither the one nor the other; but he interferes officially, whenever in his appointments he leaves it to be understood that the persons appointed, in addition to faithful officers, are to be also active partisans; or when he removes a faithful and efficient officer, who is not an active partisan, and appoints to his place one who is the supreme executive, however causes the chief part of the evil, and is guilty of direct official interference, when, on his accession to power, he removes from office those who had opposed his election, and fills their places with the most active and least scrupulous of his partisans. 

The real cause of complaint seems to us to lie in the fact, that a change of administration involves a general change of office-holders throughout the country. Not because one set of men are turned out and another set put in, for in this alone we see no great harm; but because so long as it is so, office-holders must feel that their chance of retaining their places depends solely on keeping their party in power; and because office-seekers,- a much hungrier and more numerous herd,-must see that their chance of obtaining office depends on ousting that party, and putting in another. The effect of this is to bring into our elections elements which should always be foreign to them, is to make them contests for place, perhaps even more than for principles. Here is the evil. These removals, which make so much noise, do not disturb us; the public good is rarely promoted by keeping a man in office, who would be essentially injured by being removed. But any policy on the part of the administration, which has a direct tendency to bring personal and selfish considerations into our elections, should be avoided as much as possible. The stability of popular institutions, in a great measure, depends on the purity of elections, and on making them contests for principle, and not for place. On this point the late presidential campaign should read us an instructive lesson,-a lesson which should be all the more deeply impressed on our minds, and hearts, from the fact that a righteous Providence has already taken to their reward several of the prominent actors in it. The country can bear much, but not the frequent repetition of the scenes enacted during the last year by the present dominant party. Such demoralizing scenes as they enacted to the bacchanalian shouts of "hard cider," and "log cabins," are poorly atoned for by their present extraordinary pretensions to piety and virtue. Mr. Tyler may well call upon the country to fast, not indeed because an infirm old man, who filled up his three score years and ten, has been removed from a post for which he had scarcely a single qualification, but for the arts his party resorted to in order to win their victory, the falsehoods they circulated, the deceptions they practised, the low and sinister motives to which they appealed, and by which they were governed. A few more such victories, won by similar means, and it will be time for even the most sanguine among us to begin to despair of the republic. 

We pretend not to say that the desire to obtain office led to all the extravagant and mischievous proceedings, by which the present dominant party succeeded in raising itself to power. There were other and more powerful causes at work; there were men who wanted not the government so much for the sake of office, as to aid them in their speculations, to pay their debts, and raise the price of stocks lying dead on their hands. Here were the more active cases of that disgraceful scramble, which whill hand down the name of Whig to everlasting infamy. Still the love of office had its influence, and served to swell the tide of corruption. 

The remedy, the means of separating the scramble for office from our election contests, is far from being easy to find, or to apply. It may perhaps be found, to some extent, in lessening the emoluments of office, so that they shall not be worth scrambling for. This would do somewhat. If office-holding should, in a pecuniary point of view, fall below the general average of business, so as to demand a sacrifice on the part of the officer, it would not be sought after. But in this case could offices be filled by men worthy to hold them?

In addition to this, if consistent with an efficient executive, which we must always have, and with which we must not dream of dispensing, we may make the appointing power and power of removal the same; that is, in all cases, where the consent of the senate is necessary to complete the appointment, it shall be necessary to the removal. The president should have only the power of suspending, during the recess of the senate, such officers as may be unfaithful, inefficient, or incapacitated. For ourselves, we incline to the opinion, that the power of removal is incident to the power of appointing, and should be so regarded. 

Furthermore, we might make all appointments for a term of years fixed by statute, and all officers during that term, -expecting those whose political opinions necessarily have a direct bearing on the administration,-irremovable, except for causes previously specified by law. The end we aim at is preventing a change in administration from involving any general change in the incumbents of office; to get rid, in a word, of the "spoils" principle, and with it the influence which love of office now has in our elections. If this be desirable, as we hold it is, we see not how it can be done without taking away a portion of the discretionary power of the executive. As a first principle in political science, we should leave the executive as little discretionary power as is compatible with is efficiency. These two measures would take away the greater part of its discretionary power, not over appointments, but other removals and give to the office-holder, so long as faithful and efficient, a certain independence of the administration. This would add much to the dignity of office-holding, and enable us to fill public offices with men of worth and independence, men who are reluctant to take and office, when they know that the first revolution of the political wheel may throw them out. In vacant at once, but successively; consequently, a change we have complained of. 

The terms of years should unquestionably be short, not exceeding four years at most, because all offices ought to be frequently vacated, so as to prevent the growth of corruption, and to give the appointing power an opportunity of making such changes in regard to their incumbents as the public good may seem to require. New appointments, however, should be made at the pleasure of the appointing power, from the old incumbents or from new applicants. In this way you secure the advantages of rotation in office, without its odiousness and want of legal sanction. Embody always in law that public opinion which you would have reign. 

These two changes, it strikes us, will prove an effectual remedy for the evil we have pointed out, so far as in the nature of things a remedy is possible; and against them we are unable to discover any insurmountable objection. No doubt the members of the cabinet and the principle fiscal officers should entertain similar views with those of the president, but these would in general be men who would resign in case of any wide discrepancy of opinion between them and the executive; if not, make them an exception to the general rule. So far as it concerns the great mass of office-holders, it matters not to the public, though it may to party, what their political opinions are, provided they are good officers; and good officers they may be, with one political creed as well as with another. 

Some of our friends fear that these changes would impair the efficiency of the executive; if so, they ought not to be adopted. But unless we would have despotism, we must place some limit by law to the executive power; and no limit would, in our judgment, be too strict that would leave it room for the prompt and faithful execution of the laws. The inability to remove a faithful and able officer for a mere difference in opinion, when that difference could not interfere with official conduct, it would seem need not impair executive efficiency; and beyond this we do not purpose to go.

Others, again, object to the interposition of the senate in removals, on the ground that the senate is an aristocratic body, and we ought therefore to be on our guard against swelling its importance, or enlarging the sphere of its action. We do not sympathize with them either in their views of the senate, or in their fears of aristocracy. We never, if we can help it, suffer ourselves to be misled by mere words; and these terms, aristocrat and democrat, have been handied about so much, that they now stand for any thing or nothing, according to the temper of those who use them. 

Ever since the senate had the audacity to place itself in opposition, on certain occasions, to General Jackson's administration, it has been, with some, a mark of democracy to stigmatize it as an aristocratic body. We are sorry to see this, as its evinces a tendency from which we have much to dread for our liberties. The nature of all popular masses is to make war upon whatever interposes an obstacle to the immediate realization of their projects. If their favorite executive finds an obstacle in the senate, then it is, down with the senate; if a favorable legislature is frustrated in its attempts to carry some popular measure, by the executive veto, then it is, down with the veto; if the cry of liberty is up, and men are bent upon freeing the slave, but find the constitution in the way of the kind of action they would adopt, then it is, down with the constitution; human rights are older than constitutions, and shame on the coward, who would be deterred from vindicating them by fear of a piece of musty parchment. 

This is a dangerous tendency, and the one against which we should always be on our guard. The institution we would sweep away, because it is unfavorable to the realization of the project we have at heart to-day, may turn out to be the only institution by which we can realize the still dearer project we may entertain to-morrow. The senate, which interposes a barrier to-day to a popular executive, and therefore seems to be aristocratic, may to-morrow interpose a barrier to executive usurpations. This tendency, we speak of, is encouraged by many good men, because they confound what should always be kept distinct-popular sovereignty and the freedom of the citizen. They call alike democracy, the absolute sovereignty of the people, and the maintenance of the individual citizen in all his natural rights. Their theory is, establish the first, and the second is secured. Hence, whatever opposes in any instance the popular sovereignty is termed by them aristocratic, and unfavorable to liberty. We repeat to them what we never cease to repeat, and what we have ever occasion to repeat, that between popular sovereignty and individual liberty there is a wide difference; and that to clear the way for the free, unobstructed dominion of the people as civil society, is but clearing the way for anarchy or despotism. The people, as a body politic, are as supreme in this country as they ought to be. The liberty we should now struggle for, is not, strictly speaking, democratic liberty, that is, the liberty of the people, but individual liberty, or securing to each and every citizen the free and full enjoyment of all his natural rights. And this is to be done, not by shouting "aristocracy," or "democracy," but by wisely organizing the state, so that it shall have no power to encroach on the individual, but be always able and obliged to protect him. Liberty with us is to be carried out, not by the heavings to and fro of a lawless mob, but by the orderly workings of constitutional government. In this country we are permitted to seek no reforms but in accordance with and through constitutional government. Our first duty to liberty, to the inalienable rights of man, is to establish and maintain constitutional order. Consequently, every attack we make on the sacredness of constitutions is a stab at the very heart of liberty. 

With this view of the method we must adopt to promote true liberty, we cannot view with indifference the attacks which some of our friends make on the senate. The senate is unquestionably a conservative body, and wo to the state that has not somewhere in its organization a conservative body. Without the conservative element embodied in the senate, our federal government would soon fall to pieces. The senate represents the states, in their sovereign capacity, and tends to preserve their independence. It no doubt now and then serves as a check upon the will of the majority; but this is one of its recommendations. It preserves the government from yielding to every burst of popular passion, and from being swayed by every undulation of popular caprice. It therefore gives stability and something of systematic unity to the action of the government. 

The senate is an essential part of the federal constitution, and unless we would destroy the constitution itself, we should beware of throwing suspicion on it. For our part, we are satisfied with the constitution as it is. It is to us a miracle of wisdom. We see clearly the hand of Providence in it, and we have a soft of religious veneration for it. We do not believe it needs amendment, or that we are capable of amending it. The less we attempt to alter or amend it, the better will it be for us, and for all who are to come after us. Let us encourage then no disparagement of any of its provisions. Let us take it as it is, and make it the guide of our political action; and therefore let us leave the senate standing. Destroy the senate, and the independence of the states will fail to be recognized, the American community will become a consolidated mass, whom whoso can may ride by the grace of God, as king or kaiser. 

"But the senate is an aristocratic body." What then? Perhaps your state is none the worse for that. Solomon exhorted men in his day not to be religious over much; if he lived now, he could not fail to exhort us not to be democratic over much. We do little but scream democracy from morning till night, and from night till morning; and those of us who scream the loudest are by no means the truest friends to real equality. Aristocracy is a natural element of every society, and should be recognized in every state, unless we mean by aristocracy institutions or doctrines, which create artificial distinctions between men and man, subordinating the many to the few. Whatever opposes the maintenance of all the natural rights of every citizen, should be opposed; but we are aware of nothing in the senate, either in its constitution or the mode in which its members are selected, that makes it in the least more hostile to these natural rights than is the house of representatives; nor do we discover that the senate has ever shown any more disposition to abridge the natural freedom of the citizen, than is commonly shown by our state legislatures. We believe some of the most distinguished advocates of equal rights the country can boost, are to be found at this moment in the senate. If such men as Mr. Calhoun, Mr. Walker, Mr. Wright, Mr. Buchanan, Mr. Benton, not to mention any more, are aristocrats, where are our democrats, in any sense in which it would not be a misfortune to be a democrat? It will hardly do to call a body, of which such men as these are leading members, aristocratic. That aristocracy which consists in the possession of eminent talents, in being distinguished by the performance of eminent services to one's country, is honorable, not censurable and deserving of confidence, not distrust. 

But we close. We have introduced this objection mainly for the purpose of protesting against the tendency in our community of which we regard it as one of the symptoms. We would warn our countrymen against this tendency-a tendency of which they who are governed by it are in general unconscious. With this, we leave the suggestions we have thrown out, to go for what they are worth.