denied, that they have rendered service in the election of the very individual who makes this removal and makes this appointment.  Every man, Sir, must see that this is a vital stab at the purity of the press.  It not only assails its independence, by addressing sinister motives to it, but it furnishes from the public treasury the means of exciting these motives.  It extends the executive power over the press in a most daring manner.  It operates to give a direction to opinion, not favorable to the government, in the aggregate; not favorable to the Constitution and laws; not favorable to the legislature; but favorable to the executive alone.  The consequence often is, just what might be looked for, that the portion of the press thus made fast to the executive interest denounces Congress, denounces the judiciary, complains of the laws, and quarrels with the Constitution.  This exercise of the right of appointment to this end is an augmentation, and a vast one, of the executive power, singly and alone.  It uses that power strongly against all other branches of the government, and it uses it strongly, too, for any struggle which it may be called on to make with the public opinion of the country.  Mr. President, I will quit this topic.  There is much in it, in my judgment, affecting, not only the purity and independence of the press, but also the character and honor, the peace and security, of the government.  I leave it, in all its bearings, to the consideration of the people.

[Footnote 1:  Hon. Nathaniel Silsbee, President of the Convention, was Mr. Webster’s colleague in the Senate at the time referred to.]

EXECUTIVE USURPATION.

FROM THE SAME SPEECH AT WORCESTER.

Mr. President, the executive has not only used these unaccustomed means to prevent the passage of laws, but it has also refused to enforce the execution of laws actually passed.  An eminent instance of this is found in the course adopted relative to the Indian intercourse law of 1802.  Upon being applied to, in behalf of the MISSIONARIES, to execute that law, for their relief and protection, the President replied, that the State of Georgia having extended her laws over the Indian territory, the laws of Congress had thereby been superseded.  This is the substance of his answer, as communicated through the Secretary of War.  He holds, then, that the law of the State is paramount to the law of Congress.  The Supreme Court has adjudged this act of Georgia to be void, as being repugnant to a constitutional law of the United States.  But the President pays no more regard to this decision than to the act of Congress itself.  The missionaries remain in prison, held there by a condemnation under a law of a State which the supreme judicial tribunal has pronounced to be null and void.  The Supreme Court have decided that the act of Congress is constitutional; that it is a binding statute; that it has the same force as