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instigation of rivals engaged in the same trade. Many complaints on this subject have reached the government. A respectable naval force on the coast, is the natural resort and security against further occurrences of this kind.

The surrender to justice of persons who, having committed high crimes, seek asylum in the territories of a neighboring nation, would seem to be an act due to the cause of general justice, and properly belonging to the present state of civilization and intercourse. The British provinces of North America are separated from the states of the Union by a line of several thousand miles, and along portions of this line the amount of population on either side is quite considerable, while the passage of the boundary is always easy.

Offenders against the law on the one side, transfer themselves to the other. Sometimes, with great difficulty, they are brought to justice, but very often they wholly escape. A consciousness of immunity, from the power of avoiding justice in this way, instigates the unprincipled and reckless to the commission of offences, and the peace and the good neighborhood of the border are consequently often disturbed.

In the case of offenders fleeing from Canada into the United States, the governors of states are often applied to for their surrender, and questions of a very embarrassing nature arise from these applications. It has been thought highly important, therefore, to provide for the whole case by a proper treaty stipulation. The article on the subject, in the proposed treaty, is carefully confined to such offences as all mankind agree to regard as heinous, and destructive to the security of life and property. In this careful and specific enumeration of crimes, the object has been to exclude all political offences, or criminal charges, arising from wars, or intestine commotions. Treason, misprision of treason, libels, desertion from military service, and other offences of similar character, are excluded.

And, lest some unforeseen inconvenience or unexpected abuses should arise from the stipulation, rendering its continuance, in the opinion of one or both of the parties, not longer desirable, it is left in the power of either to put an end to it at will. The destruction of the steamboat Caroline, at Schlosser, four or five years ago, occasioned no small degree of excitement at the time, and became the subject of correspondence between the two governments. That correspondence having been suspended for a considerable period, was renewed in the spring of last year, but no satisfactory result having been arrived at, it was thought proper, though the occurrence had ceased to be fresh and recent, not to omit attention to it on the present occasion. It has only been so far discussed in the correspondence now submitted, as it was accomplished by a violation of the territory of the United States. The letter of the British minister, while he attempts to justify that violation upon the ground of a pressing and overruling necessity, admitting, nevertheless, that even if justifiable, an apology was due for it, and accompanying this acknowledgment with assurances of the sacred regard of his government for the inviolability of national territory, has seemed to me sufficient to warrant forbearance from any further remonstrance against what took place, as an aggression on the soil and territory of the country. On the subject of the interference of the British authorities in the West Indies, a confident hope is entertained, that the correspondence which has taken place, showing the grounds taken by this government, and the engagements entered into by the British minister, will

be found such as to satisfy the just expectation of the people of the United States.

The impressment of seamen from merchant-vessels of this country, by British cruisers, although not practised in time of peace, and therefore not at present a productive cause of difference and irritation, has, nevertheless, hitherto been so prominent a topic of controversy, and is so likely to bring on renewed contentions at the first breaking out of a European war, that it has been thought the part of wisdom now to take it into serious and earnest consideration. The letter from the secretary of state to the British minister, explains the grounds which the government has assumed, and the principles which it means to uphold. For the defence of these grounds, and the maintenance of these principles, the most perfect reliance is placed on the intelligence of the American people, and on their firmness and patriotism, in whatever touches the honor of the country, or its great and essential interests.

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A RESOLUTION of the senate, of the 21st of June last, requested the president to communicate to the senate, so far as he might deem it compatible with the public interests, what measures, if any, had been taken to obtain the recognition, by the Mexican government, of such claims of American citizens as were laid before the late joint commission, but were not finally acted on by it, and the satisfaction of such claims as were admitted by said commission; also, whether any facts had come to his knowledge calculated to induce a belief that any such claims had been rejected in consequence of the evidence thereof having been withheld by the Mexican government, its officers, or agents; and any other information which - he might deem it expedient to communicate relative to said claims; and another resolution of the 6th instant requested the president, so far as he might deem it compatible with the public service, to communicate to the senate the measures taken to obtain the performance of the stipulations contained in the convention with Mexico, in relation to the awards made by the commissioners and umpire under said convention.

In the present state of the correspondence and of the relations between the two governments on these important subjects, it is not deemed consistent with the public interest to communicate the information requested. The business engages earnest attention, and will be made the subject of a full communication to Congress at the earliest practicable period.

PROTEST.

AUGUST 30, 1842.

To the House of Representatives of the United States:

By the constitution of the United States, it is provided that " every bill which shall have passed the house of representatives and the senate shall, before it become a law, be presented to the president of the United States; if he approve, he shall sign it; but if not, he shall return it, with his objections, to that house in which it shall have originated, who shall enter the objections at large upon the journal, and proceed to reconsider it."

In strict compliance with the positive obligation thus imposed upon me by the constitution, not having been able to bring myself to approve a bill which originated in the house of representatives, entitled, "An act to provide revenue from imports, and for other purposes," I returned the same to the house, with my objections to its becoming a law. These objections, which had entirely satisfied my mind of the great impolicy, if not the unconstitutionality, of the measure, were presented in the most respectful, and even deferential terms. I would not have been so far forgetful of what was due from one department of the government to another as to have intentionally employed, in my official intercourse with the house, any language that could be, in the slightest degree, offensive to those to whom it was addressed. If, in assigning my objections to the bill, I had so far forgotten what was due to the house of representatives, as to impugn its motives in passing the bill, I should owe, not only to that house, but to the country, my most profound apology. Such departure from propriety is, however, not complained of in any proceeding which the house has adopted. It has, on the contrary, been expressly made a subject of remark, and almost of complaint, that the language in which my dissent was couched was studiedly guarded and cautious.

Such being the character of the official communication in question, I confess I was wholly unprepared for the course which has been pursued in regard to it. In the exercise of the power to regulate its own proceedings, the house, for the first time, it is believed, in the history of the government, thought proper to refer the message to a select committee of its own body, for the purpose (as my respect for the house would have compelled me to infer) of deliberately weighing the objections urged against the bill by the executive, with a view to its own judgment upon the question of the final adoption or rejection of the measure.

Of the temper and feelings in relation to myself of some of the members selected for the performance of this duty, I have nothing to say. That was a matter entirely within the discretion of the house of representatives. But that committee taking a different view of its duty from that which I should have supposed had led to its creation, instead of confining itself to the objections urged against the bill, availed itself of the occasion formally to arraign the president for others of his acts since his induction into office. In the absence of all proof, and, as I am bound to declare, against all law or precedent in parliamentary proceedings, and, at the same time, in a manner which would be difficult to reconcile with the comity hitherto sacredly observed in the intercouse between independent and co-ordinate departments of the government, it has assailed my whole official conduct, without a shadow of a pretext for such assault; and, stopping short of im

peachment, has charged me, nevertheless, with offences declared to deserve impeachment.

Had the extraordinary report which the committee thus made to the house been permitted to remain without the sanction of the latter, I should not have uttered a regret or complaint upon the subject. But, unaccompanied as it is by any particle of testimony to support the charges it contains, without a deliberate examination, almost without any discussion, the house of representatives has been pleased to adopt it as its own, and thereby to become my accuser before the country and before the world. The high character of such an accuser, the gravity of the charges which have been made, and the judgment pronounced against me by the adoption of the report upon a distinct and separate vote of the house, leave me no alternative but to enter my solemn protest against the proceeding, as unjust to myself as a man, as an invasion of my constitutional powers of chief magistrate of the American people, and as a violation, in my person, of rights secured to every citizen by the laws and the constitution. That constitution has intrusted to the house of representatives the sole power of impeachment. Such impeachment is required to be tried before the most august tribunal known to our institutions.

The senate of the United States, composed of the representatives of the sovereignty of the states, is converted into a hall of justice; and, in order to insure the strictest observance of the rules of evidence and of legal procedure, the chief-justice of the United States, the highest judicial functionary of the land, is required to preside over its deliberations. In the presence of such judicatory, the voice of faction is presumed to be silent, and the sentence of guilt or innocence is pronounced under the most solemn sanctions of religion, of honor, and of law. To such a tribunal does the constitution authorize the house of representatives to carry up its ac cusations against any chief of the executive department whom it may be lieve to be guilty of high crimes and misdemeanors. Before that tribunal the accused is confronted with his accusers, and may demand the privi lege, which the justice of the common law secures to the humblest citi of a full, patient, and impartial inquiry into the facts, upon the testimony of witnesses rigidly examined, and deposing in the face of day. If such a proceeding had been adopted toward me, unjust as I certainly should have regarded it, I should, I trust, have met, with a becoming constancy, a trial as painful as it would have been undeserved. I would have manifested, by a profound submission to the laws of my country, my petfect faith in her justice; and, relying on the purity of my motives and the rectitude of my conduct, should have looked forward with confidence to a triumphant refutation in the presence of that country, and by the solemn judgment of such a tribunal, not only of whatever charges might have been formally preferred against me, but of all the calumnies of which I have hitherto been the unresisting victim.

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As it is, I have been accused without evidence, and condemned without a hearing. As far as such proceedings can accomplish it, I am deprived of public confidence in the administration of the government, and denied even the boast of a good name-a name transmitted to me from a patriot father, prized as my proudest inheritance, and carefully preserved for those who are to come after me, as the most precious of all earthly possessions. I am not only subjected to imputations affecting my character as an individual, but am charged with offences against the country so grave and so heinous, as to deserve public disgrace and disfranchisement.

I am charged with violating pledges which I never gave; and because I execute what I believe to be the law, with usurping powers not conferred by law; and, above all, with using the powers conferred upon the president by the constitution from corrupt motives and for unwarrantable ends. And these charges are made without any particle of evidence to sustain them, and, as I solemnly affirm, without any foundation in truth.

Why is a proceeding of this sort adopted at this time? Is the occasion for it found in the fact, that having been elected to the second office under the constitution, by the free and voluntary suffrages of the people, I have succeeded to the first, according to the express provisions of the fundamental law of the same people? It is true that the succession of the vice-president to the chief magistracy has never occurred before, and that all prudent and patriotic minds have looked on this new trial of the wisdom and stability of our institutions with a somewhat anxious concern. I have been made to feel too sensibly the difficulties of my unprecedented position, not to know all that is intended to be conveyed in the reproach cast upon a president without a party. But I found myself placed in this most responsible station by no usurpation or contrivance of my own. I was called to it, under Providence, by the supreme law of the land, and the deliberatelydeclared will of the people. It is by these, the people, that I have been clothed with the high powers which they have seen fit to confide to their chief executive, and been charged with the solemn responsibility under which those powers are to be exercised. It is to them I hold myself answerable, as a moral agent, for a free and conscientious discharge of the duties which they have imposed upon me. It is not as an individual merely that I am now called upon to resist the encroachment of unconstitutional power. I represent the executive authority of the people of the United States; and it is in their name (whose mere agent and servant 1 am, and whose will, declared in their fundamental law, I dare not, even were I inclined, to disobey) that I protest againt every attempt to break down the undoubted constitutional power of this department, without a solemn amendment of the fundamental law.

I am determined to uphold the constitution in this, as in other respects, to the utmost of my ability, and in defiance of all personal consequences. What may happen to an individual is of little importance; but the constitution of the country, or any of its great and clear principles and provisions, is too sacred to be surrendered, under any circumstances whatever, by those who are charged with its protection and defence. Least of all should he be held guiltless who, placed at the head of one of the great departments of the government, should shrink from the exercise of its unquestionable authority on the most important occasions; and should consent, without a struggle, to efface all the barriers so carefully created by the people to control and circumscribe the powers confided to their various agents. It may be desirable, as the majority of the house of representatives has declared it is, that no such checks upon the will of the legislature should be suffered to continue. This is a matter for the people and the states to decide; but until they shall have decided it, I shall feel myself bound to execute, without fear or favor, the law as it has been written by our predecessors.

I protest against this whole proceeding of the house of representatives, as ex parte and extra judicial. I protest against it, as subversive of the common right of all citizens to be condemned only upon a fair and impartial trial, according to law and evidence, before the country. I protest against

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