with others in placing on the records of the Senate my disapprobation of those sentiments.  On a vote which is to remain so long as any proceeding of the Senate shall last, and on a question which can never cease to be important while the Constitution of the country endures, I have desired to make public my reasons.  They will now be known, and I submit them to the judgment of the present and of after times.  Sir, the occasion is full of interest.  It cannot pass off without leaving strong impressions on the character of public men.  A collision has taken place which I could have most anxiously wished to avoid; but it was not to be shunned.  We have not sought this controversy; it has met us, and been forced upon us.  In my judgment, the law has been disregarded, and the Constitution transgressed; the fortress of liberty has been assaulted, and circumstances have placed the Senate in the breach; and, although we may perish in it, I know we shall not fly from it.  But I am fearless of consequences.  We shall hold on, Sir, and hold out, till the people themselves come to its defence.  We shall raise the alarm, and maintain the post, till they whose right it is shall decide whether the Senate be a faction, wantonly resisting lawful power, or whether it be opposing, with firmness and patriotism, violations of liberty and inroads upon the Constitution.

[Footnote 1:  Commonly called the Sedition Act, approved 14th July, 1798.]

[Footnote 2:  South Carolina.]

THE APPOINTING AND REMOVING POWER.

DELIVERED IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES, ON THE 16TH OF FEBRUARY, 1835, ON THE PASSAGE OF THE BILL, ENTITLED “AN ACT TO REPEAL THE FIRST AND SECOND SECTIONS OF THE ACT TO LIMIT THE TERM OF SERVICE OF CERTAIN OFFICERS THEREIN NAMED.”

Mr. President,—­The professed object of this bill is the reduction of executive influence and patronage.  I concur in the propriety of that object.  Having no wish to diminish or to control, in the slightest degree, the constitutional and legal authority of the presidential office, I yet think that the indirect and rapidly increasing influence which it possesses, and which arises from the power of bestowing office and of taking it away again at pleasure, and from the manner in which that power seems now to be systematically exercised, is productive of serious evils.

The extent of the patronage springing from this power of appointment and removal is so great, that it brings a dangerous mass of private and personal interest into operation in all great public elections and public questions.  This is a mischief which has reached, already, an alarming height.  The principle of republican governments, we are taught, is public virtue; and whatever tends either to corrupt this principle, to debase it, or to weaken its force, tends, in the same degree, to the final overthrow of such governments.  Our representative systems suppose, that, in exercising