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for a salutary retrenchment of expenditures, and in the accomplishment of many executive measures in the civil and military departments, directly conducive to this object, he has done all that could be done, through the influence of his office, to subserve the purposes of a wise and just economy. In short, without a more minute review of the principles and measures which have distinguished the administration of GOVERNOR LINCOLN, it has appeared to the Convention, as they doubt not it will appear to a large portion of the citizens of the Commonwealth, to be exceedingly desirable to secure the continuance of his services for another political term; and they have the satisfaction to announce, that in compliance with the unanimous invitation of the Convention, he has again consented to be a candidate for re-election.

The present Lieutenant-Governor having declined a re-election to the office which he has filled for several years, to the entire satisfaction of the community, the Convention have found themselves obliged to make choice of a person to be recommended to the support of the people as his successor. In making the selection from several respected and worthy citizens, they have been guided by a comparison of opinions from every part of the Commonwealth, and by the wish that all its interests and feelings should be consulted. In this view, they have been led to designate SAMUEL T. ARMSTRONG, of Boston, as a suitable candidate for the office of Lieutenant-Governor of the Commonwealth, for the ensuing political year. Mr. Armstrong has been distinguished through life, for the purity of his private character, his exemplary diligence in the practical pursuits of life, and his discharge of the various social and public duties, which have devolved upon him. The Convention, in selecting him as a candidate, have proceeded in full confidence of his qualifications for an upright discharge of the duties of his office, and in the belief that his nomination will be generally acceptable to the good people of the Commonwealth, whom they have the honor to repre

sent.

In turning their attention from the State Elections to that of a Chief Magistrate of the United States, the Convention are profoundly impressed with the magnitude and solemnity of the subject.

They cannot but regard the approaching presidential election as the most important which has been held in the United

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States, since the adoption of the Federal Constitution. The choice of the Chief Executive Officer is in all popular governments the matter of greatest difficulty, and is that in which the strength of the system is most severely tried. The periodical exercise of the right of suffrage in choosing a President is, for this reason, at all times the most important duty which the People of this free country are called upon to perform.

The present election is peculiarly momentous. If the existing Administration is renewed, it will be considered (though erroneously) as a sanction, by the People, of the encroachments which it has made and attempted upon the Constitution, laws, and great interests of the country.

When the present chief magistrate was seriously proposed as a candidate for the first office in the gift of the People, and the minds of men had recovered from the surprise, into which they were thrown, by the suggestion, various benefits were promised by his partizans, and various evils were foretold by his opponents, as likely to result to the country from his elevation. It is the deliberate and solemn sense of the Convention, that not one of these benefits has been enjoyed; while every evil anticipated has been more than realized. To support this proposition, the Convention believe they shall be obliged to allege but little as matter of fact against the Ad ministration, which is not both admitted to be true by its sup porters, and even claimed as a merit.

When the President was nominated, his partizans generally held forth the promise of his retirement at the close of his first term. In his own first message to Congress, he himself declared an amendment of the Constitution restricting the office to one term of four or six years to be advisable. But in the face of the pledge given by his friends and of his own proposal, even to take from the People the power, in all cases, to re-elect a President, he is himself a candidate for re-election. Not only this, but when a proposition was introduced into Congress by one of the most distinguished of those who had promoted his election, for such an amendment of the Constitution, the step was denounced as hostile to the President, by the presses in his interest.

A memorable piece of advice bad, in 1817, been given by the President himself to Mr. Monroe, to break down "the monster party," and to recall those then in the minority to a

share in the administration of the Government. This counsel gained for him the support of a large number of that class of citizens; and the People of the United States of all denominations, wearied with dissension and. discord, approved the sentiment as magnanimous and patriotic. But on his accession to power, he became himself the head of a party, the most intolerant and proscriptive ever known in the country. And not only this, but all who refuse to fall into it and support his administration, are not merely denounced by his presses, but denounced by the name of that party to which he had spoken in the language of conciliation. We accordingly not only behold the whole strength of the Administration press put forth to revive a distinction of parties, against which the President had protested, while such a protest was of service to him; but in order to give to him personally the benefit of this uncandid procedure, we see men eminent as democrats, (while that division of parties existed,) now denounced as federalists, and leading federalists supported as democrats, merely because they happen to be opposers or supporters of this Administration.

It had been the main objection to the last President, that having been selected from the three highest candidates by the House of Representatives, he had placed in his cabinet a distinguished member of that body, who had voted for him.Notwithstanding the unquestioned fitness of Mr. Clay for the office of Secretary of State, and the unreasonableness, not to say impossibility, of holding every man disfranchised for office, who may have contributed in any degree to promote the election of a President, the friends of the present incumbent deemed this appointment so dangerous an attempt on the purity of Congress, as to be itself sufficient ground of opposition to the administration of Mr. Adams. Gen. Jackson himself considered the danger so imminent, that he pressed upon Congress, in his first message, an amendment to the Constitution, disqualifying members of Congress for all appointments except the judicial. But notwithstanding this his own declared opinion of the impropriety of these appointments, a very large proportion of the most valuable offices in his gift have been conferred on members of the Senate and House of Representatives; and some of them on no conceivable grounds, but that of superior diligence and activity in promoting his own election.

It was warmly but most unjustly urged against the last Administration, that it abused its patronage to effect its own continuance in power and in his inaugural address, the present chief magistrate thought proper expressly to charge his predecessor with bringing "the patronage of the federal government into conflict with the freedom of elections." In violation of his pledge to pursue an opposite course, the present chief magistrate has removed a great number of officers for no other cause, than that of having been opposed to himself; and he has appointed very many for no other reason, but having supported him. And in addition to this, it is a fact too well known to be disputed, that at no period since the organization of the federal government has there existed even an approach toward the present systematic, intense, all-pervading operation of federal patronage on the freedom of election.

It is well known that, as it was objected to the late President, that he had not received a plurality of popular votes; so it was charged upon him, that there was a tendency in the measures of his administration against popular principles. No facts were or could be quoted to prove such a tendency; but the very vagueness and generality of the charge made it a convenient topic of popular declamation. In the present incumbent the people were promised that they should have a President, who would rather repel than arrogate power, and an administration conducted on purely republican principles. In his inaugural message he himself expressed the hope that he should have the "instruction," as well as "the co-operation" of the co-ordinate branches of the government. The contrast of the measures of his administration with these professions is of the most glaring and painful kind. The people have been treated with the most marked indignity, in the only way in which that can be done, in the action of the Executive Government,—we mean in the person of their representatives. The accredited organs of the press have made it one leading object to vilify the two houses of Congress; and the most disrespectful insinuations against their members have been authentically traced to the President himself. The power of the Veto, designed for the extremest cases, a monarchical feature of the British Constitution engrafted with questionable propriety on ours, has been exercised more frequently by him in three sessions of Congress, than by all his predecessors for forty years. So far from seeking "instruc

tion" of the co-ordinate branches of the government, he has in his Veto Message on the Bank declared, that the opinion of the Judges has no more authority over Congress, than the opinion of Congress over the Judges; and that on that point, "the President is independent of both." In the same message, he assigns as one reason for rejecting the bill for re-chartering the Bank, that the Executive was not called upon to furnish the project of such an institution."

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This Convention, although they propose to themselves, in this Address, to abstain from argument, and confine themselves to facts of indisputable notoriety, cannot but pause a moment, to remark upon the doctrines just cited, at war as they are with the letter, and still more at war with the spirit of the Constitution. It is, of course, unnecessary to say, that the "opinion of Congress" has no authority at all, except as expressed in a joint rule, relative to the form of business between the two Houses. Beyond this, an "opinion of Congress," as far as legal authority goes, is a nonentity. On the contrary, the opinion of the Court, on all matters duly brought before them, is legally binding on all concerned. The Constitution provides that "the Judicial power of the United States shall be vested in one Supreme Court, and in such inferior Courts as the Congress may ordain and establish," and that judicial power is to be exercised through the channel of the official opinions of the Court. Those opinions bind the President and Congress, who may change the law, but while it is the law, may not disobey it. Any process of reasoning to show that the opinions of the Court have no binding authority over the President and Congress, would show the same of every subordinate officer and every citizen; that is, that the Court has no authority at all. This Convention believe that such a doctrine was never before avowed under any government of laws. Most assuredly, language like this was never before addressed to the American people.

The last Administration was accused of extravagance, and among the most efficient instruments in putting it down, was the far-famed Committee of Retrenchment. It is a notorious fact, that, except in the year 1829, for which the appropriations were made under Mr. Adams, the expenses of the government have gone on increasing every year. For 1829 they were $12,669,490, for 1830 $13,229,533, for 1831, $14,777,991, and for 1832 the definite appropriations rise to

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