ary's own
personal discretion; and whether, therefore, the interposition of the
authority of another, acting directly and conclusively on the subject,
deciding the whole question, even in its particulars and details, be not
an assumption of power?

The Senate regarded this interposition as an encroachment by the
executive on other branches of the government; as an interference with
the legislative disposition of the public treasure. It was strongly and
forcibly urged, yesterday, by the honorable member from South Carolina,
that the true and only mode of preserving any balance of power, in mixed
governments, is to keep an exact balance. This is very true, and to this
end encroachment must be resisted at the first step. The question is,
therefore, whether, upon the true principles of the Constitution, this
exercise of power by the President can be justified. Whether the
consequences be prejudicial or not, if there be an illegal exercise of
power, it is to be resisted in the proper manner. Even if no harm or
inconvenience result from transgressing the boundary, the intrusion is
not to be suffered to pass unnoticed. Every encroachment, great or
small, is important enough to awaken the attention of those who are
intrusted with the preservation of a constitutional government. We are
not to wait till great public mischiefs come, till the government is
overthrown, or liberty itself put into extreme jeopardy. We should not
be worthy sons of our fathers were we so to regard great questions
affecting the general freedom. Those fathers accomplished the Revolution
on a strict question of principle. The Parliament of Great Britain
asserted a right to tax the Colonies in all cases whatsoever; and it was
precisely on this question that they made the Revolution turn. The
amount of taxation was trifling, but the claim itself was inconsistent
with liberty; and that was, in their eyes, enough. It was against the
recital of an act of Parliament, rather than against any suffering under
its enactments, that they took up arms. They went to war against a
preamble. They fought seven years against a declaration. They poured out
their treasures and their blood like water, in a contest against an
assertion which those less sagacious and not so well schooled in the
principles of civil liberty would have regarded as barren phraseology,
or mere parade of words. They saw in the claim of the British Parliament
a seminal principle of mischief, the germ o