An Argument on the Powers, Duties, and Conduct of the Hon. John C. Calhoun PDF Download

Author: Patrick Henry
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781331311966
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 60

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Book Description
Excerpt from An Argument on the Powers, Duties, and Conduct of the Hon. John C. Calhoun: A Vice President of the United States, and President of the Senate In the Chair of President of the Senate, Mr. Calhoun has, indeed, very rarely volunteered a call to order; for "questions touching the latitude or freedom of debate" have not been presented from a quieter to which inclination prompted him to direct such an exercise of his power; while, on the other hand, his disappointment found consolation, and his yet thirsty ambition encouragement, in the declamations of every enemy to the Government. When, however, in a striking and mournful instance, the national money, time, and character, had been prostituted, for hour after hour, day after day, week after week, and almost month after month, to the irrelative rhapsodies of a once powerful mind; rhapsodies which, if ever they approached the subject of discussion, did so, like the conic asymptotics, without ever touching it; - rhapsodies which were not only really, but avowedly, the offspring of systematic hostility to men, without reference to measures; rhapsodies which, though sometimes illumined by a lingering ray of genius, were oftener in a style of gross reviling, discreditable to him who uttered, and more discreditable to him who permitted them: When a spectacle thus humiliating to the American name, had been exhibited before the American Senate, without one effort of authority, or one hint of disapprobation, from its President, the rising murmurs of public indignation reminded him that some excuse was necessary, for having sacrificed the proprieties of office to the sympathies of a desperate ambition. After his partisans had displayed much newspaper chivalry in his behalf, his own mind "bestowed its most deliberate" and anxious attention, by night and by day," - not on the extent of his power in preserving order; a question on which any school boy who could read, or any man of plain common sense who could not read, might have informed him; - but on devising some mode of palliating a flagrant official non-feasance. The result of those daily and nocturnal meditations, is his Address, on the 15th inst., to the Senate; - a document which merits a high place in a museum of logical curiosities. Its cardinal proposition is, that an others, of whose existence the power to preserve order in the body which he presides over is the vital blood, has no power to do so, which this body does not expressly, and in terms, confer. The inevitable corollary to this proposition is, that if the body omitted to confer such power, it might, so far as would depend on the presiding officer, be a scene of uncontrolled confusion and anarchy. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.