ion, what general disregard of its provisions
might not their example be expected to produce? And who does not
perceive that such contempt of the Federal Constitution by one of its
most important departments would hold out the strongest temptations to
resistance on the part of the State sovereignties whenever they shall
suppose their just rights to have been invaded? Thus all the independent
departments of the Government, and the States which compose our
confederated Union, instead of attending to their appropriate duties and
leaving those who may offend to be reclaimed or punished in the manner
pointed out in the Constitution, would fall to mutual crimination and
recrimination and give to the people confusion and anarchy instead of
order and law, until at length some form of aristocratic power would be
established on the ruins of the Constitution or the States be broken
into separate communities.

Far be it from me to charge or to insinuate that the present Senate of
the United States intend in the most distant way to encourage such a
result. It is not of their motives or designs, but only of the tendency
of their acts, that it is my duty to speak. It is, if possible, to
make Senators themselves sensible of the danger which lurks under the
precedent set in their resolution, and at any rate to perform my duty
as the responsible head of one of the coequal departments of the
Government, that I have been compelled to point out the consequences
to which the discussion and passage of the resolution may lead if the
tendency of the measure be not checked in its inception. It is due to
the high trust with which I have been charged, to those who may be
called to succeed me in it, to the representatives of the people whose
constitutional prerogative has been unlawfully assumed, to the people
and to the States, and to the Constitution they have established that
I should not permit its provisions to be broken down by such an attack
on the executive department without at least some effort "to preserve,
protect, and defend" them. With this view, and for the reasons which
have been stated, I do hereby _solemnly protest_ against the
aforementioned proceedings of the Senate as unauthorized by the
Constitution, contrary to its spirit and to several of its express
provisions, subversive of that distribution of the powers of government
which it has ordained and established, destructive of the checks and
safeguards by which those powers wer