Page:Life of Henry Clay (Schurz; v. 2).djvu/232

222 amendments formed an important part of the programme laid down by Clay in his principal speech in the campaign of 1840. They illustrate the dangerous tendency of that impulsive statesmanship which will resort to permanent changes in the Constitution of the state in order to accomplish temporary objects. It is more than probable that the same Clay who saw in the veto power “the parent of all ills,” when his favorite measures were defeated by Jackson's and Tyler's vetoes, would have thought very differently had he himself been put into the executive chair and confronted by a hostile Congress. Neither has the experience of the American people in any manner justified Clay's apprehensions as to the danger which the veto power without further restriction would bring upon the country. That power has, on the whole, been exercised with remarkable discretion and with salutary effect, especially as regards the financial concerns of the government, which throughout have been treated by the Executive with better judgment and a higher sense of honor than by Congress. The proposition to confer the power of appointing the Secretary of the Treasury and the Treasurer upon Congress, instead of the President, is hardly intelligible in our days. Neither can we understand why a President should not be permitted to take proper men from the two houses of Congress into his Cabinet. Clay had become so completely preoccupied by fears of executive encroachment that he was utterly unmindful of the