f unjust power; they detected
it, dragged it forth from underneath its plausible disguises, struck at
it; nor did it elude either their steady eye or their well-directed blow
till they had extirpated and destroyed it, to the smallest fibre. On
this question of principle, while actual suffering was yet afar off,
they raised their flag against a power, to which, for purposes of
foreign conquest and subjugation, Rome, in the height of her glory, is
not to be compared; a power which has dotted over the surface of the
whole globe with her possessions and military posts, whose morning
drum-beat, following the sun, and keeping company with the hours,
circles the earth with one continuous and unbroken strain of the martial
airs of England.

The necessity of holding strictly to the principle upon which free
governments are constructed, and to those precise lines which fix the
partitions of power between different branches, is as plain, if not as
cogent, as that of resisting, as our fathers did, the strides of the
parent country against the rights of the Colonies; because, whether the
power which exceeds its just limits be foreign or domestic, whether it
be the encroachment of all branches on the rights of the people, or that
of one branch on the rights of others, in either case the balanced and
well-adjusted machinery of free government is disturbed, and, if the
derangement go on, the whole system must fall.

But the case before us is not a case of merely theoretic infringement;
nor is it one of trifling importance. Far otherwise. It respects one of
the highest and most important of all the powers of government; that is
to say, the custody and control of the public money. The act of removing
the deposits, which I now consider as the President's act, and which his
friends on this floor defend as his act, took the national purse from
beneath the security and guardianship of the law, and disposed of its
contents, in parcels, in such places of deposit as he chose to select.
At this very moment, every dollar of the public treasure is subject, so
far as respects its custody and safe-keeping, to his unlimited control.
We know not where it is to-day; still less do we know where it may be
to-morrow.

But, Mr. President, this is not all. There is another part of the case,
which has not been so much discussed, but which appears to me to be
still more indefensible in its character. It is something which may well
teach us the tendency of