Page:Works of John C. Calhoun, v1.djvu/249

 same discourse. Nor can they be found in the force of public opinion — operating through the Press; for it has been, therein, also shown, that its operation is similar to that of the right of suffrage; and that its tendency, with all its good effects in other respects, is to increase party excitement, and to strengthen the force of party attachments and party combinations, in consequence of its having become a party organ and the instrument of party warfare. Nor can the veto power of the President, or the power of the Judges to decide on the constitutionality of the acts of the other departments, furnish adequate means to resist it — however important they may be, in other respects, and in particular instances — for the plain reason, that the party combinations which are sufficient to control the two majorities constituting the elements of the government of the United States, must, habitually, control all the departments — and make them all, in the end, the instruments of encroaching on, and absorbing the reserved powers; especially the executive department — since the provisions of the constitution, in reference to the election of the President and Vice-President, have been superseded, and their election placed, substantially, under the control of the single element of federal numbers. But if none of these can furnish the means of effective resistance, it would be a waste of time to undertake to show, that freedom of speech, or the trial by jury, or any guards of the kind, however indispensable as auxiliary means, can, of themselves, furnish them.

If, then, neither the constitution, nor any thing appertaining to it, furnishes