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the boasted shield of the liberties & rights of the poor and the rich, and the constitution itself, the great palladium of our republic, are to be displaced and annihilated whenever they stand in the way of executive pleasure; and without a struggle, without one redeeming effort, we are to slide off silently, quietly and submissively from the ground of a free republic which we now occupy, to that of an unlimited dictatorship in which our nominal President to say sic volo, sic jubeo. The adherents of Executive power may affect to Smile at this as extravagant and unfounded prophecy: but we will ask any cool and unprejudiced man in the community, if it be not the natural, the unavoidable consequence of yielding to the President the undisputed power of annulling, by his single fiat, the past treaties, laws, and adjudications of the United States? What is to impede him in this career? What is to stop or bind him? Treaties do not bind him, he discards them at pleasure. Acts of Congress do not bind him; he declares them unconstitutional. Judgments of the Supreme Court do not bind him; he pronounces them erroneous and disregards them. What is there that can arrest him, or avert the catastrophe to which we have pointed? There exists but one in theory; and with the extensive and desolating patronage wielded by the President, and the state of political immorality to which we have already advanced, it would be but mockery to refer us to that. It is manifest that if the course that already has been pursued is to be further tolerated, we have no Constitution. If the laws of Congress to be openly disregarded and set at naught, we have, virtually no legislature. If the decisions of the Supreme Court are to be annulled, we have no judiciary; for what is the difference between no Congress and a Congress whose acts are treated as nullities, or the difference between no judiciary and one whose decisions may be abolished at the pleasure of the Executive! There have been other recent indications of a startling nature. Straws, they say, will show which way the wind sits. Can the public have forgotten that very lately, when the Senate exercised its constitutional power of rejecting a nomination made by the President, the same official paper, the Globe, had the hardihood publicly to express its disapprobation of this power of the Senate, and to intimate the desire that it would be abolished. That paper is considered as the mere echo of the sentiments and wishes of the Executive. And what are we to auger from this impatience of all the salutary restraints of the Constitution? What are we to auger from it, more especially, when connected with the lofty and impervious spirit, so openly and fearlessly exhibited in the Executive acts to which we have referred. Let the people of the United States look to it. It was their pleasure to place a military chieftain, in the habit of absolute command, at the head of government: and if they suffer