EXECUTIVE POWER.

No citizen can be insensible to the vast importance of the late proclamations and orders of the President of the United States. Great differences of opinion already exist concerning them. But whatever those differences of opinion may be, upon one point all must agree. They are assertions of transcendent executive power.

There is nothing in the character or conduct of the chief magistrate, there is nothing in his present position in connection with these proclamations, and there is nothing in the state of the country, which should prevent a candid and dispassionate discussion either of their practical tendencies, or of the source of power from whence they are supposed to spring.

The President, on all occasions, has manifested the strongest desire to act cautiously, wisely, and for the best interests of the country. What is commonly called his proclamation of emancipation, is, from its terms and from the nature of the case, only a declaration of what, at its date, he believed might prove expedient, within yet undefined territorial limits, three months hence, thirty days after the next meeting of Congress, and within territory not at present subject even to our military control. Of course such an executive declaration as to his future intentions, must be understood by the people to be liable to be modified by events, as well as subject to such changes of views,

respecting the extent of his own powers, as a more mature, and possibly a more enlightened consideration may produce.

In April, 1861, the President issued his proclamation, declaring that he would treat as pirates all persons who should cruise, under the authority of the so-called Confederate States, against the commerce of the United States.

But subsequent events induced him, with general acquiescence, to exchange them as prisoners of war. Not from any fickleness of purpose; but because the interests of the country imperatively demanded this departure from his proposed course of action.

In like manner, it is not to be doubted by any one who esteems the President honestly desirous to do his duty to the country, under the best lights possible, that when the time for his action on his recent proclamations and orders shall arrive, it will be in conformity with his own wishes, that he should have those lights which are best elicited in this country by temperate and well-considered public discussion; discussion, not only of the practical consequences of the proposed measures, but of his own constitutional power to decree and execute them.

The Constitution has made it incumbent on the President to recommend to Congress such measures as he shall deem necessary and expedient. Although Congress will have been in session nearly thirty days before any executive action is proposed to be taken on this subject of emancipation, it can hardly be supposed that this proclamation was intended to be a recommendation to them. Still, in what the President may perhaps regard as having some flavor of the spirit of the Constitution, he makes known to the people of the United States his proposed future executive action; certainly not expecting or desiring that they should be indifferent to such a momentous proposal, or should fail to exercise their best judgments, and afford their best counsels upon what so deeply concerns themselves.

Our public affairs are in a condition to render unanimity, not only in the public councils of the nation, but among the people themselves, of the first importance. But the President must have been aware, when he issued these proclamations, that nothing approaching towards unanimity upon their subjects could be attained, among the people, save through their public discussion. And as his desire to act in accordance with the wisest and best settled and most energetic popular sentiment cannot be doubted, we may justly believe that executive action has been postponed, among other reasons, for the very purpose of allowing time for such discussion.

And, in reference to the last proclamation, and the orders of the Secretary of War, intended to carry it into practical effect, though their operation is immediate, so far as their express declarations can make them so, they have not yet been practically applied to such an extent, or in such a way, as not to allow it to be supposed that the grounds upon which they rest are open for examination.

However this may be, these are subjects in which the people have vast concern. It is their right, it is their duty, to themselves and to their posterity, to examine and to consider and to decide upon them; and no citizen is faithful to his great trust if he fail to do so, according to the best lights he has, or can obtain. And if, finally, such examination and consideration shall end in diversity of opinion, it must be accepted as justly attributable to the questions themselves, or to the men who have made them.

It has been attempted by some partisan journals to raise the cry of "disloyalty" against any one who should question these executive acts.

But the people of the United States know that loyalty is not subserviency to a man, or to a party, or to the opinions of newspapers; but that it is an honest and wise devotion to the safety and welfare of our country, and to the

great principles which our constitution of government em bodies, by which alone that safety and welfare can be secured. And, when those principles are put in jeopardy every truly loyal man must interpose, according to his abil ity, or be an unfaithful citizen.

This is not a government of men. It is a government of laws. And the laws are required by the people to be in conformity with their will, declared by the Constitution Our loyalty is due to that will. Our obedience is due to those laws; and he who would induce submission to other laws, springing from sources of power not originating in the people, but in casual events, and in the mere will of the occupants of places of power, does not exhort us to loyalty, but to a desertion of our trust.

That they whose principles he questions have the conduct of public affairs; that the times are most critical; that public unanimity is highly necessary; while these facts afford sufficient reasons to restrain all opposition upon any personal or party grounds, they can afford no good reason, hardly a plausible apology,- for failure to oppose usurpation of power, which, if acquiesced in and established, must be fatal to a free government.

The war in which we are engaged is a just and necessary war. It must be prosecuted with the whole force of this government till the military power of the South is broken, and they submit themselves to their duty to obey, and our right to have obeyed, the Constitution of the United States as "the supreme law of the land." But with what sense of right can we subdue them by arms to obey the Constitution as the supreme law of their part of the land, if we have ceased to obey it, or failed to preserve it, as the supreme law of our part of the land.

I am a member of no political party. Duties, inconsistent, in my opinion, with the preservation of any attachments to a political party, caused me to withdraw from all

such connections, many years ago, and they have never been resumed. I have no occasion to listen to the exhortations, now so frequent, to divest myself of party ties, and disregard party objects, and act for my country. I have nothing but my country for which to act, in any public affair; and solely because I have that yet remaining, and know not but it may be possible, from my studies and reflections, to say something to my countrymen which may aid them to form right conclusions in these dark and dangerous times, I now, reluctantly, address them.

I do not propose to discuss the question whether the first of these proclamations of the President, if definitively adopted, can have any practical effect on the unhappy race of persons to whom it refers; nor what its practical consequences would be, upon them and upon the white popula ation of the United States, if it should take effect; nor through what scenes of bloodshed, and worse than blood. shed, it may be, we should advance to those final condi-tions; nor even the lawfulness, in any Christian or civilized sense, of the use of such means to attain any end.

If the entire social condition of nine millions of people has, in the providence of God, been allowed to depend upon the executive decree of one man, it will be the most stupendous fact which the history of the race has exhibited. But, for myself, I do not yet perceive that this vast responsibility is placed upon the President of the United States. I do not yet see that it depends upon his executive decree, whether a servile war shall be invoked to help twenty millions of the white race to assert the rightful authority of the Constitution and laws of their country, over those who refuse to obey them. But 1 do see that this proclamation asserts the power of the Executive to make such a decree.

I do not yet perceive how it is that my neighbors and myself, residing remote from armies and their operations, and where all the laws of the land may be enforced by con