ON THE EXPUNGING RESOLUTION

Delivered in the United States Senate January 12, 1837

M

R. PRESIDENT: It is now three years since the resolve was adopted by the Senate, which it is my present motion to expunge from the journal. At the moment that this resolve was adopted, I gave notice of my intention to move to expunge it; and then expressed my confident belief that the motion would eventually prevail. That expression of confidence was not an ebullition of vanity or a presumptuous calculation, intended to accelerate the event it affected to foretell. It was not a vain boast, or an idle assumption, but was the result of a deep conviction of the injustice done President Jackson, and a thorough reliance upon the justice of the American people. I felt that the President had been wronged; and my heart told me that this wrong would be redressed! The event proves that I was not mistaken. The question of expunging this resolution has been carried to the people, and their decision has been had upon it. They decide in favor of the expurgation; and their decision has been both made and manifested, and communicated to us in a great variety of ways. A great number of States have expressly instructed their senators to vote for this expurgation. A very great majority of the States have elected senators and representatives to Congress, upon the express ground of favoring this expurgation. The Bank of the United States, which took the initiative in the accusation against the President, and furnished the material, and worked the machinery which was used against him, and which was then so powerful on this floor, has become more and more odious to the public mind, and musters now but a slender phalanx of friends in the two Houses of Congress. The late Presidential election furnishes additional evidence of public sentiment. The candidate who was the friend of President Jackson,

the supporter of his administration, and the avowed advocate for the expurgation, has received a large majority of the suffrages of the whole Union, and that after an express declaration of his sentiments on this precise point. The evidence of the public will, exhibited in all these forms, is too manifest to be mistaken, too explicit to require illustration, and too imperative to be disregarded. Omitting details and specific enumeration of proofs, I refer to our own files for the instructions to expunge -to the complexion of the two Houses for the temper of the people-to the denationalized condition of the Bank of the United States for the fate of the imperious accuser-and to the issue of the Presidential election for the answer of the Union.

All these are pregnant proofs of the public will, and the last pre-eminently so; because, both the question of the expurgation, and the form of the process, were directly put in issue upon it.

A representative of the people from the State of Kentucky formally interrogated a prominent candidate for the presidency on these points, and required from him a public answer for the information of the public mind. The answer was given, and published, and read by all the voters before the election; and I deem it right to refer to that answer in this place, not only as evidence of the points put in issue, but also for the purpose of doing more ample justice to President Jackson by incorporating into the legislative history of this case, the high and honorable testimony in his favor of the eminent citizen who has just been exalted to the lofty honors of the American presidency:

"Your last question seeks to know my opinion as to the constitutional power of the Senate or House of Representatives to expunge or obliterate from the journals the proceedings of a previous session.

"You will, I am sure, be satisfied upon further consideration, that there are but few questions of a political character less connected with the duties of the office of President of the United States, or that might not with equal propriety be put by an elector to a candidate for that station, than this. With the journals of neither house of Congress can he properly have anything to do. But, as your question has doubtless been induced by the pendency of Colonel Benton's resolutions, to expunge from the journals of the Senate certain other resolutions touching the

ment, and the permission to apply for foreign succors, in virtue of ancient treaties, in the event of their being deemed necessary. The deputies gave the requisite authority by acclamation; and an equally good spirit was manifested by the peers, who granted every power that the ministers could possibly require. They even went further, and, rising in a body from their seats, declared their devotion to their country, and their readiness to give their personal services, if necessary, to repel any hostile invasion. The Duke de Cadaval, president of the Chamber, was the first to make this declaration; and the minister who described this proceeding to me, said it was a movement worthy of the good days of Portugal!"

I have thus incidentally disposed of the supposed imputation of delay in complying with the requisition of the Portuguese Government. The main question, however, is this: Was it obligatory upon us to comply with that requisition? In other words, had the casus fœderis arisen? In our opinion it had. Bands of Portuguese rebels, armed, equipped, and trained in Spain, had crossed the Spanish frontier, carrying terror and devastation into their own country, and proclaiming sometimes the brother of the reigning sovereign of Portugal, sometimes a Spanish princess, and sometimes even Ferdinand of Spain, as the rightful occupant of the Portuguese throne. These rebels crossed the frontier, not at one point only, but at several points; for it is remarkable that the aggression, on which the original application to Great Britain for succor was founded, is not the aggression with reference to which that application has been complied with.

The attack announced by the French newspapers was on the north of Portugal, in the province of Tras-os-Montes; an official account of which has been received by His Majesty's Government only this day. But on Friday an account was received of an invasion in the south of Portugal, and of the capture of Villa Vicosa, a town lying on the road from the southern frontier to Lisbon. This new fact established even more satisfactorily than a mere confirmation of the attack first complained of would have done, the systematic nature of the aggression of Spain against Portugal. One hostile irruption might have been made by some single corps escaping from their quarters-by some body of stragglers, who might have evaded the vigilance

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of Spanish authorities; and one such accidental and unconnected act of violence might not have been conclusive evidence of cognizance and design on the part of those authorities; but when a series of attacks are made along the whole line of a frontier, it is difficult to deny that such multiplied instances of hostility are evidence of concerted aggression.

If a single company of Spanish soldiers had crossed the frontier in hostile array, there could not, it is presumed, be a doubt as to the character of that invasion. Shall bodies of men, armed, clothed, and regimented by Spain, carry fire and sword into the bosom of her unoffending neighbor, and shall it be pretended that no attack, no invasion has taken place, because, forsooth, these outrages are committed against Portugal by men to whom Portugal had given birth and nurture? What petty quibbling would it be to say that an invasion of Portugal from Spain was not a Spanish invasion, because Spain did not employ her own troops, but hired mercenaries to effect her purpose? And what difference is it, except as an aggravation, that the mercenaries in this instance were natives of Portugal.

I have already stated, and I now repeat, that it never has been the wish or the pretension of the British government to interfere in the internal concerns of the Portuguese nation. Questions of that kind the Portuguese nation must settle among themselves. But if we were to admit that hordes of traitorous refugees from Portugal, with Spanish arms, or arms furnished or restored to them by Spanish authorities, in their hands, might put off their country for one purpose, and put it on again for another-put it off for the purpose of attack, and put it on again for the purpose of impunity-if, I say, we were to admit this juggle, and either pretend to be deceived by it ourselves, or attempt to deceive Portugal, into a belief that there was nothing of external attack, nothing of foreign hostility, in such a system of aggression-such pretence and attempt would, perhaps, be only ridiculous and contemptible; if they did not require a much more serious character from being employed as an excuse for infidelity to ancient friendship, and as a pretext for getting rid of the positive stipulations of treaties.

This, then, is the case which I lay before the House of ComHere is, on the one hand, an undoubted pledge of national faith-not taken in a corner-not kept secret between the

mons.

parties, but publicly recorded among the annals of history, in the face of the world. Here are, on the other hand, undeniable acts of foreign aggression, perpetrated, indeed, principally through the instrumentality of domestic traitors, but supported with foreign means, instigated by foreign councils, and directed to foreign ends. Putting these facts and this pledge together, it is impossible that His Majesty should refuse the call that has been made upon him; nor can Parliament, I am convinced, refuse to enable His Majesty to fulfil his undoubted obligations. I am willing to rest the whole question of to-night, and to call for the vote of the House of Commons upon this simple case, divested altogether of collateral circumstances; from which I especially wish to separate it, in the minds of those who hear me, and also in the minds of others, to whom what I now say will find its way. If I were to sit down this moment, without adding another word, I have no doubt but that I should have the concurrence of the House in the address which I mean to propose.

When I state this it will be obvious to the House that the vote for which I am about to call upon them is a vote for the defence of Portugal, not a vote for war against Spain. I beg the House to keep these two points entirely distinct in their consideration. For the former I think I have said enough. If, in what I have now further to say, I should bear hard upon the Spanish Government I beg that it may be observed that, unjustifiable as I shall show their conduct to have been-contrary to the law of nations, contrary to the law of good neighborhood, contrary, I might say, to the laws of God and man-with respect to Portugal!-still I do not mean to preclude a locus pænitentiæ, a possibility of redress and reparation. It is our duty to fly to the defence of Portugal, be the assailant who he may. And, be it remembered, that, in thus fulfilling the stipulation of ancient treaties, of the existence and obligation of which all the world are aware, we, according to the universally admitted construction of the law of nations, neither make war upon that assailant, nor give to that assailant, much less to any other power, just cause of war against ourselves.

Sir, the present situation of Portugal is so anomalous, and the recent years of her history are crowded with events so unusual, that the House will, perhaps, not think that I am unprof