that
spirit which make their voice resistless, have been able to say to
prerogative, "Thus far shalt thou come, and no farther." I need hardly
say, Sir, that into the full enjoyment of all which Europe has reached
only through such slow and painful steps we sprang at once, by the
Declaration of Independence, and by the establishment of free
representative governments; governments borrowing more or less from the
models of other free states, but strengthened, secured, improved in
their symmetry, and deepened in their foundation, by those great men of
our own country whose names will be as familiar to future times as if
they were written on the arch of the sky.

Through all this history of the contest for liberty, executive power has
been regarded as a lion which must be caged. So far from being the
object of enlightened popular trust, so far from being considered the
natural protector of popular right, it has been dreaded, uniformly,
always dreaded, as the great source of its danger.

And now, Sir, who is he, so ignorant of the history of liberty, at home
and abroad; who is he, yet dwelling in his contemplations among the
principles and dogmas of the Middle Ages; who is he, from whose bosom
all original infusion of American spirit has become so entirely
evaporated and exhaled, that he shall put into the mouth of the
President of the United States the doctrine that the defence of liberty
_naturally results to_ executive power, and is its peculiar duty? Who is
he, that, generous and confiding towards power where it is most
dangerous, and jealous only of those who can restrain it,--who is he,
that, reversing the order of the state, and upheaving the base, would
poise the pyramid of the political system upon its apex? Who is he,
that, overlooking with contempt the guardianship of the representatives
of the people, and with equal contempt the higher guardianship of the
people themselves,--who is he that declares to us, through the
President's lips, that the security for freedom rests in executive
authority? Who is he that belies the blood and libels the fame of his
own ancestors, by declaring that _they_, with solemnity of form, and
force of manner, have invoked the executive power to come to the
protection of liberty? Who is he that thus charges them with the
insanity, or the recklessness, of putting the lamb beneath the lion's
paw? No, Sir. No, Sir. Our security is in our watchfulness of executive
power. It was the consti