of
the legitimate powers of the constitution.

I pray to God I may be mistaken in the opinion I entertain as to the
designs of gentlemen to whom I am opposed. Those designs I believe
hostile to the powers of this government. State pride extinguishes a
national sentiment. Whatever power is taken from this government is
given to the States.

The ruins of this government aggrandize the States. There are
States which are too proud to be controlled; whose sense of
greatness and resource renders them indifferent to our protection,
and induces a belief that if no general government existed, their
influence would be more extensive, and their importance more
conspicuous. There are gentlemen who make no secret of an extreme
point of depression, to which the government is to be sunk. To that
point we are rapidly progressing. But I would beg gentlemen to
remember that human affairs are not to be arrested in their course,
at artificial points. The impulse now given may be accelerated by
causes at present out of view. And when those, who now design well,
wish to stop, they may find their powers unable to resist the
torrent. It is not true, that we ever wished to give a dangerous
strength to executive power. While the government was in our hands,
it was our duty to maintain its constitutional balance, by
preserving the energies of each branch. There never was an attempt
to vary the relation of its powers. The struggle was to maintain
the constitutional powers of the executive. The wild principles of
French liberty were scattered through the country. We had our
Jacobins and disorganizes. They saw no difference between a king
and a president, and as the people of France had put down their
King, they thought the people of America ought to put down their
President. They, who considered the constitution as securing all
the principles of rational and practicable liberty, who were
unwilling to embark upon the tempestuous sea of revolution in
pursuit of visionary schemes, were denounced as monarchists. A line
was drawn between the government and the people, and the friends of
the government were marked as the enemies of the people. I hope,
however, that the government and the people are now the same; and I
pray to God, that what has been frequently remarked, may not, in
this case, be discovered to be true that they, who have the name of
the people the most often in their mouths, have their true interests
the most seldom