the acts inscribed on the cumbrous rolls which embody the compromises of this compromising country, to be sacred, irrevocable, indelible? Is this alone to be exempt from the universal law which, according to the first State paper in our archives, attaches itself to every social institution and every social arrangement? Strange inconsistency truly, that the same party should at the same moment approve of two different acts, one of which assumes that constitutions may be altered not only by the power that made them, but by a revolutionary movement of persons having nothing to do with the government, and the other maintains that an act of legislation cannot be changed, no matter how great the changes of opinion or of interest in which it originated! Strange inconsistency, that in the same country and by the same party, who maintain that one generation cannot bind another by the most solemn and formal stipulations, expressly binding themselves and their heirs and successors forever, it should be pretended that the moral obligation of an instrument, in its nature terminable, shall become from a mere vague and disputed principle of interpretation interminable! that the same persons who repudiate the legal contracts of their agents with third persons, founded on obligations which are at the bottom of all honesty between man and man in every-day life, and essential to the mechanism of industry, and to the preservation of good faith among individuals, should insist on those delicate moral obligations which are based only on considerations of harmony among themselves, and have no legal force whatever! Strange inconsistency, which maintains that the Constitution, the fundamental law of the State, can be indefinitely changed, and that those which are passed by a body created by the Constitution, and in virtue of powers created by it, are irrevocable and unchangeable. It is a fundamental principle in the spirit, and in the letter, and in the practice of our constitutions, that everything which does not regard third persons can be changed, and changed by the same power which created. The Constitution can be altered by the peo

ple who created it, in a manner which they have prescribed for themselves, or by revolution; the acts of Congress can be altered by Congress; the regulations of the executive department by that department. But if Mr. Tyler is correct, the compromise act and all the laws "meant to be inseparable " from that act, or which shall in future be meant to be inseparable, are alone of a perpetual moral obligation, and as irrevocable as the sacred laws of the Medes and Persians. If he is correct, this act and all its supplements are an anomaly in our institutions, and an exception to the most striking and universal characteristic of their spirit.

To the allegation, that the compromise act was intended to be a solemn compact or compromise perpetually to be adhered to, in spirit at least, there are then no less than three separate, distinct, and sufficient answers. The first is, that the intentions of the persons by whose agency it was concluded upon are so difficult to be ascertained, so impossible to be proved, and the testimony of the persons themselves is so various, that it is impossible to make them the ground of any obligation. The second is, that the act does not bear upon the face of it any mark of any intentions extending beyond the year 1842; that it contains no provisions regulating anything beyond that year; and that whatever may have been the intentions of the authors, their express regulations, although they might very well have been abrogated, have in fact been suffered to take full effect, for the time prescribed. That time is now expired, and it now becomes necessary to make a new compromise; whether in the spirit or the letter resembling or differing from the preceding one, it is for those, whose interests are to be again compromised, to say. The third is, that if the instruments of the compromise really did intend to do anything more than to pass a common act, having exactly the obligation and "the character" of a common act, and no more, they exceeded their powers as agents of the persons whom they represented, and whose interests they undertook to compromise, having received no

commission to make any other than such acts. There is in fact no reason to suppose that they intended to surpass their powers; no reason to suppose that they meant to give to this act any other than its legal and customary effect, any other character than what Mr. Tyler calls its "character in theory," which he admits, by this expression, may well be different from that which he has always regarded it as import

ing."

Another reason besides its name, which has erroneously led some persons to imagine that the compromise act had some character different from other acts, is, that it contains regulations relating to different and distinct points in the future, and changing as to those points. These appear like an assumption of a power to prescribe and regulate peremptorily for the future. But there was this implied and necessary condition arising from the nature of the act of regulation itself, "provided no future act of Congress otherwise ordains," of which the Congress could not by any terms, expression, or power of theirs divest it. Why should an act, relating to particular and fixed points of time, have more authority, or any other authority, than one which, like most acts, is for all time, unless, unless in both cases, it is otherwise ordered by the competent power. The condition is understood for both. It is equally efficacious for both; and I do not understand why it does not apply with equal force to a law of which the effect at different times is different, as to one of which the effect is intended to be forever the same.

This measure, (the suspension of the Distribution act,) says Mr. Tyler, is "in my judgment called for by a large number, if not a great majority of the people of the United States." What is this but that eternal pretext of usurpation, since usurpation was ever heard of, the alleged will of the people? Is it not the everlasting pretended warrant of every power which has, in the history of mankind, made itself despotic, at the expense of the other departments of the State? Was it not by this assumption, and by none other, that

Augustus, that Cromwell,* that Napoleon (those three names which are the type to every man's mind of the transition from the rankest democracy to the most absolute despotism) absorbed all the powers of the State? What security is there for the powers and the functions of any department of the State, if another may invade them upon a supposition so easily assumed, so difficult to disprove? If it may take for granted not only all that it hopes, but all that it wishes? What security have the legislative department of the government against the absolute dictation of the executive, if the executive is to be the judge of what acts of their predecessors have a moral obligation upon them, of what acts "the majority of the people " call for, what acts are necessary to produce harmony, and many other benefits, resulting from preceding legislation? of what acts enjoy a general acquiescence ? of what acts are called for by "the state of the public credit and finances?" and if the executive is to reject a money bill of the House of Representatives, because in his opinion there is a more proper way, a way prescribed by a former legislature, or formerly preferred by the present legislature, or a way impliedly pledged to the public creditors of raising the funds required, and that he shall not allow them to have recourse to any other?

Mr. Tyler asserts that "the Distribution act could not have become a law without the guaranty in the proviso of the law itself." Guaranty! Guaranty to whom, by whom? - who are the parties to this guaranty? The word in this application is nonsense. Does it mean that at the passage of every law those who vote for it guaranty to those, who only vote for it under certain conditions, the perpetual adhesion of all

*There is a confused canting about the Tyler messages which are not unlike some of those homilies of old Noll, by which he always prefaced some deed of daring usurpation. One can hardly give Mr. Tyler credit, however, for any deep laid schemes, or any purpose beyond the ostensible object. It shows, however, that the style of reasoning of usurpation is very much the same, whether that usurpation be from instinct or design, from imbecility or ambition.

future legislatures to those conditions? It is then the Members of Congress who are both the guarantors and the guarantied. By what right? Congress may, I admit, pledge the faith of the country to third persons; but where they have not done so, can they guarantee to each other the perpetuity of their own laws, and of every part of them? If they may thus guarantee a part of a law why not the whole? If Congress can abrogate the whole of a law, a fortiori, they can abrogate a part. If one Congress can pass a law which a former Congress rejected altogether, and upon any conditions whatsoever, they may surely pass a law, without a certain condition, which with a former Congress would have been indispensable. It was perfectly within the power of a former Congress to pass a Distribution law, with or without the proviso in question; it is equally in the power of the present Congress to do the same, or to annul the law altogether. The whole argument, then, rests upon a single idea, in point of theory, (and there is no other in the whole message,) that one Congress may, by so intending, in all cases, control all succeeding ones, and by a single assumption in point of fact, that they did so intend. The whole argument, in short, rests upon a single idea and a single fact, both of which are equally false.

Another argument of the same kind is, that it "would divert from the treasury a fund sacredly pledged for the general purposes of the government, in the event of a rate of duty above twenty per cent being found necessary for an economical administration of the government." One would think that, if the public creditor was interested in having this fund pledged to him, it would be as long as the government refused to appropriate more than twenty per cent duties, refused, in short, to assess itself at a sufficent rate to pay its expenses and debts, whatever they might be, and that as soon as it showed a disposition to appropriate a sufficient sum for that purpose, although it should exceed twenty per cent on the importations, it would become a matter of indif