Page:Review of the Proclamation of President Jackson.djvu/113

 have a right to suppose, that all legal means would be employed by the violators, to make their violation effectual; and so to prove, that the Judiciary cannot bind the Legislature.—We have the authority of the President himself for saying, that he feels himself as much bound by his oath to support the Constitution as any one else can do; and therefore, if his agency is required, whether by the Legislature or the Judiciary, to do any act which he believes unconstitutional, he will not be made to sin against his own conscience and to violate his oath. His new partisans used to censure him bitterly for this assertion: but yet he never made one more moral, legal, or constitutional than it is. This is a government of concurring powers, its departments are all co-ordinates, nor can any one of them move far in any direction, without encountering its fellow, by whose concurrence alone, it may proceed in that way.

Of all these departments, the Judiciary is the weakest, because, it cannot act until invited to do so, its sphere of action is very limited, nor can it do any positive act, without the permission of the Legislature, and the co-operation of the Executive.

But lastly, can the human mind conceive a more audacious proposition, than that which suggests, that in a controversy between the parties to a Covenant, by which covenant an agent is created, where the matter in dispute between the principals, regards the authority exerted by the agent, the decision of this controversy must be referred to the agent himself? The very exertion of the authority by the agent, is a decision that he believes he may rightfully do so; and after this, it is gravely proposed, to leave the matter to the final arbitrament of one who has already decided it, and who has decided it, too, with the approbation of the very persons who proposed such a reference. In transactions between man and man, none could hesitate what name to bestow upon such a proposition: but where the Sovereignty of the States and the freedom of their people is concerned, a gross fraud is metamorphosed into a political theory only. Nor will the case be changed materially if the nominated arbiter has never yet decided the question, provided that arbiter be the Supreme Court; this arbiter is not even given by lot. It is appointed by the supposed wrong doer, paid by him, accountable to him,