but not in such a manner as necessarily and designedly to involve the country in war. Most truly, therefore, did the House of Representatives declare that the war had been uncon- stitutionally begun by the President.
Yet has this usurpation of power, leading to the sacri- fice of thousands of lives and millions of treasure, been unvisited with punishment. Thef offence has found an apology in the triumphs to which it has led ; and thus a sanction has been given to a precedent, that invests the President of the Republic with the royal prerogative of bringing upon the nation the calamities of war.
Nor is this the only instance, in which the President in his own person has exercised powers belonging only to the legislative branch of the Government. Although not per- mitted by the Constitution to appoint of his own will and pleasure, a single officer, or to take from the treasury a single cent, he established a system of tariffs and internal taxation in Mexico, appointing a horde of collectors, and accumulating at his own disposal, all the revenue that could be extorted at the point of the bayonet, from the miserable and impoverished Mexicans ; and all this with- out the slightest warrant from Congress. * ' I am under a deep conviction, that the President has no right whatever, to impose taxes internal and external on the people of Mexico. It is an act without the authority of the Constitution or laws, and eminently dangerous to the country.
If the President can exercise, in Mexico, a power expressly given to Congress, which he cannot exercise in the United States, I would ask where is the limit to his power in IMexico ? Has he also the power of making appropriations of money collected in Mexico, without the sanction of Congress ^ This he has already done. Has he the power to apply the money to whatever purposes he may think proper, and, among others, to raise a mili tarv force in Mexico, without the sanction of Congress ? This.