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does it amount? Is not every pardon, pro hac vice, a repeal of the penal law against which it gives protection? Does it not ride over the law, resist its command and extinguish its effect? Does it not even control the combined force of judicature and legislation? Yet, have we ever heard that your legislative rights were an exception out of the prerogative of mercy? Who has ever pretended that this faculty cannot, if regularly exerted, wrestle with the strongest of your statutes? I may be told, that the pardoning power necessarily imports a control over the penal code, if it be exercised in the form of a pardon. I answer, the power to make treaties equally imports a power to put out of the way such parts of the civil code as interfere with its operation, if that power be exerted in the form of a treaty. There is no difference in their essence. You legislate, in both cases, subject to the power. And this instance furnishes another answer, as I have already intimated, to the predictions of abuse, with which, on this occasion, it has been endeavored to appal us. The pardoning power is in the president alone. He is not even checked by the necessity of senatorial concurrence. He may, by his single fiat, extract the sting from your proudest enactments, and save from their vengeance a convicted offender.

Sir, you have my general notions upon the bill before you. They have no claim to novelty. I imbibed them from some of the heroes and sages who survived the storm of that contest to which America was summoned in her cradle. I imbibed them from the father of his country. My understanding approved them with the full concurrence of my heart, when I was much younger than I am now; and I feel no disposition to discard them now that age and feebleness are about to overtake me. I could say more much more upon this question; but I want health and strength. It is, perhaps, fortunate for the house that I do, as it prevents me from fatiguing them as much as I fatigue myself.

320

SPEECH OF WILLIAM PINKNEY,

IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES,

FEBRUARY 15, 1820,

ON

THE MISSOURI QUESTION.

The bill from the house of representatives, for the admission of Missour into the Union, with a clause prohibiting the introduction of slaves into the new state, being under consideration, Mr. Pinkney spoke as follows:

As I am not a very frequent speaker in this assembly, and have shown a desire, I trust, rather to listen to the wisdom of others than to lay claim to superior knowledge by undertaking to advise, even when advice, by being seasonable in point of time, might have some chance of being profitable, you will, perhaps, bear with me if I venture to trouble you once more on that eternal subject which has lingered here, until all its natural interest is exhausted, and every topic connected with it is literally worn to tatters. I shall, I assure you, sir, speak with laudable brevity— not merely on account of the feeble state of my health, and from some reverence for the laws of good taste which forbid me to speak otherwise, but also from a sense of justice to those who honor me with their attention. My single purpose, as I suggested yesterday, is to subject to a friendly, yet close examination, some portions of a speech, imposing certainly on account of the distinguished quarter from whence it came-not very imposing (if I may so say, without departing from that respect which I sincerely feel and intend to manifest for eminent abilities and long experience) for any other reason.

I believe, Mr. President, that I am about as likely to retract an opinion which I have formed, as any member of this body, who, being a lover of truth, inquires after it with diligence before he imagines that he has found it; but I suspect that we are all of us so constituted as that neither argument nor declamation, levelled against recorded and published decision, can easily discover a

practicable avenue through which it may hope to reach either our heads or our hearts. I mention this, lest it may excite surprise, when I take the liberty to add, that the speech of the honorable gentleman from New-York, upon the great subject with which it was principally occupied, has left me as great an infidel as it found me. It is possible, indeed, that if I had had the good fortune to hear that speech at an earlier stage of this debate, when all was fresh and new, although I feel confident that the analysis which it contained of the constitution, illustrated as it was by historical anecdote rather than by reasoning, would have been just as unsatisfactory to me then as it is now, I might not have been altogether unmoved by those warnings of approaching evil which it seemed to intimate, especially when taken in connection with the observations of the same honorable gentleman on a preceding day, "that delays in disposing of this subject, in the manner he desires, are dangerous, and that we stand on slippery ground." I must be permitted, however (speaking only for myself), to say, that the hour of dismay is passed. I have heard the tones of the larum bell on all sides, until they have become familiar to my ear, and have lost their power to appal, if, indeed, they ever possessed it. Notwithstanding occasional appearances of rather an unfavorable description, I have long since persuaded myself that the Missouri Question, as it is called, might be laid to rest, with innocence and safety, by some conciliatory compromise at least, by which, as is our duty, we might reconcile the extremes of conflicting views and feelings, without any sacrifice of constitutional principle; and in any event, that the Union would easily and triumphantly emerge from those portentous clouds with which this controversy is supposed to have environed it.

I confess to you, nevertheless, that some of the principles announced by the honorable gentleman from New-York,* with an explicitness that reflected the highest credit on his candor, did, when they were first presented, startle me not a little. They were not, perhaps, entirely new. Perhaps I had seen them before in some shadowy and doubtful shape,

"If shape it might be called, that shape had none
Distinguishable in member, joint, or limb."

But in the honorable gentleman's speech they were shadowy and doubtful no longer. He exhibited them in forms so boldly and accurately defined-with contours so distinctly traced-with features so pronounced and striking, that I was unconscious for a moment that they might be old acquaintances. I received them as novi hospites within these walls, and gazed upon them with aston

* Mr. King.

S s

ishment and alarm. I have recovered, however, thank God, from this paroxysm of terror, although not from that of astonishment. I have sought and found tranquillity and courage in my former consolatory faith. My reliance is that these principles will obtain no general currency; for, if they should, it requires no gloomy imagination to sadden the perspective of the future. My reliance is upon the unsophisticated good sense and noble spirit of the American people. I have what I may be allowed to call a proud and patriotic trust, that they will give countenance to no principles, which, if followed out to their obvious consequences, will not only shake the goodly fabric of the Union to its foundations, but reduce it to a melancholy ruin. The people of this country, if I do not wholly mistake their character, are wise as well as virtuous. They know the value of that federal association which is to them the single pledge and guarantee of power and peace. Their warm and pious affections will cling to it as to their only hope of prosperity and happiness, in defiance of pernicious abstractions, by whomsoever inculcated, or howsoever seductive and alluring in their aspect.

Sir, it is not an occasion like this, although connected, as contrary to all reasonable expectation it has been, with fearful and disorganizing theories, which would make our estimates, whether fanciful or sound, of natural law, the measure of civil rights and political sovereignty in the social state, that can harm the Union. It must, indeed, be a mighty storm that can push from its moorings this sacred ark of the common safety. It is not every trifling breeze, however it may be made to sob and howl in imitation of the tempest, by the auxiliary breath of the ambitious, the timid, or the discontented, that can drive this gallant vessel, freighted with every thing that is dear to an American bosom, upon the rocks, or lay it a sheer hulk upon the ocean. I may perhaps mistake the flattering suggestions of hope (the greatest of all flatterers, as we are told) for the conclusions of sober reason. Yet it is a pleasing error, if it be an error, and no man shall take it from me. I will continue to cherish the belief, in defiance of the public patronage given by the honorable gentleman from New York, with more than his ordinary zeal and solemnity, to deadly speculations, which, invoking the name of God to aid their faculties for mischief, strike at all establishments, that the union of these states is formed to bear up against far greater shocks than, through all vicissitudes, it is ever likely to encounter. I will continue to cherish the belief, that, although, like all other human institutions, it may for a season be disturbed, or suffer momentary eclipse by the transit across its disk of some malignant planet, it possesses a recuperative force, a redeeming energy in the hearts of the people, that will soon restore it to its wonted calm, and give it back its

accustomed splendor. On such a subject I will discard all hysterical apprehensions-I will deal in no sinister auguries—I will indulge in no hypochondriacal forebodings. I will look forward to the future with gay and cheerful hope, and will make the prospect smile, in fancy at least, until overwhelming reality shall render it no longer possible.

I have said thus much, sir, in order that I may be understood as meeting the constitutional question as a mere question of interpretation, and as disdaining to press into the service of my argument upon it prophetic fears of any sort, however they may be countenanced by an avowal, formidable by reason of the high reputation of the individual by whom it has been hazarded, of sentiments the most destructive, which, if not borrowed from, are identical with, the worst visions of the political philosophy of France, when all the elements of discord and misrule were let loose upon that devoted nation. I mean "the infinite perfectibility of man and his institutions," and the resolution of every thing into a state of nature. I have another motive, which at the risk of being misconstrued, I will declare without reserve. With my convictions, and with my feelings, I never will consent to hold confederated America as bound together by a silken cord, which any instrument of mischief may sever, to the view of monarchical foreigners, who look with a jealous eye upon that experiment which is now in progress amongst us in favor of republican freedom. Let them make such prophecies as they will, and nourish such feelings as they may: I will not contribute to the fulfilment of the former, nor minister to the gratification of the latter.

Sir, it was but the other day that we were forbidden (properly forbidden, I am sure, for the prohibition came from you) to assume that there existed any intention to impose a prospective restraint on the domestic legislation of Missouri-a restraint to act upon it contemporaneously with its origin as a state, and to continue adhesive to it through all the stages of its political existence. We are now, however, permitted to know that it is determined by a sort of political surgery to amputate one of the limbs of its local sovereignty, and thus mangled and disparaged, and thus only, to receive it into the bosom of the constitution. It is now avowed that, while Maine is to be ushered into the Union with every possible demonstration of studious reverence on our part, and on hers with colors flying, and all the other graceful accompaniments of honorable triumph, this ill-conditioned upstart of the west, this obscure foundling of a wilderness, that was but yesterday the hunting-ground of the savage, is to find her way into the American family as she can, with an humiliating badge of remediless inferiority patched upon her garments, with the mark of recent, qualified manumission upon her, or rather with a brand upon her fore

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