With this view, and for the reasons which
have been stated, I do hereby _solemnly protest_ against the
aforementioned proceedings of the Senate as unauthorized by the
Constitution, contrary to its spirit and to several of its express
provisions, subversive of that distribution of the powers of government
which it has ordained and established, destructive of the checks and
safeguards by which those powers were intended on the one hand to be
controlled and on the other to be protected, and calculated by their
immediate and collateral effects, by their character and tendency, to
concentrate in the hands of a body not directly amenable to the people
a degree of influence and power dangerous to their liberties and fatal
to the Constitution of their choice.
The resolution of the Senate contains an imputation upon my private as
well as upon my public character, and as it must stand forever on their
journals, I can not close this substitute for that defense which I have
not been allowed to present in the ordinary form without remarking
that I have lived in vain if it be necessary to enter into a formal
vindication of my character and purposes from such an imputation.
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