now of the most prevalent doctrine on this point. But you have no power to remove them by address; their office is not for a term of years; they are not incapacitated at any advanced age; and nothing, therefore, will be able to displace them, but the grim tyrant who dethrones all. The gentleman on the committee from Maine does, consequently, with great propriety, admit that this increase is an experiment. How long should we pause upon the danger and magnitude of a similar experiment in the executive department, which, in its structure and nature, is most kindred to the judiciary? A proposition to double the number of the executive would not only require an entire change in the constitution, but what patient reflection and long deliberation! But now, in the judicial department, designed for the greatest stability, a similar change is to be completed in the hurry of a single session; and with no useful effect from it, even in anticipation, but the removal of a grievance in the local administration of justice in a single section of country. This removal can be effected by other remedies, which have the sanction of experience, and are entirely free from danger; and yet, can gentlemen still insist upon this experiment, so contrary to all experience, and so beset with the most imminent dangers?

The immediate consequence of adding to the Supreme Court, at once, a number equal to one-half its original number, and equal to the whole now necessary to pronounce any decision, and all this addition to be made from one section of the country, it is not for me, at this time, to prophesy. But nobody can be so purblind as not to see the fatal example thus set to future Congresses, and to the different States in our Union. Do gentlemen believe that, hereafter, equally plausible apologies cannot be found for a further increase? They exist, even now, in the east and north, for a still larger increase. Because, pass this bill, and they are entitled to seven more judges, on some of the equal principles advanced in support of this. Moreover, these apologies will multiply in numberless grounds in every section, if we now pass this bill, and hereafter push into practice the boasted expansiveness of the principle it enforces. Mark the progress of it. At the end of the first eighteen years of our government, to remove a local grievance, we add a single judge to the bench of the Supreme Court; at the end of the next eighteen years, we are called on to add three more; and, pursuing this course and ratio, at the end of the next eighteen years, our Supreme Court will consist of nineteen judges; and, in only thirty-four years beyond that time, of one hundred and twenty-seven judges.

Whether we shall then have reached a point to be stopped by the fear of patronage or expense in so splendid a system, or whether we then shall have reached a point of practical inconvenience, will depend altogether upon the fashionable opinions of the age, on new judicial theories, on plausible apologies, on analogies and exigencies. It may then be justly said, as now, that the court is not so large as the

English House of Lords. Pardon me, sir; we shall never, in such a career, reach a point of fear or practical inconvenience, in the opinions of any quarter of our Confederacy which may hereafter wish to engraft some species of new fruit upon the old stock. Certainly not, with power and influence in any profligate hands, that might seek hereafter to raze to its foundation any principle consecrated by their records.

I am not to be misunderstood: I speak solely of the tendency of this principle, and of the use which may be made of it, under the sanction of our precedent, when, at some ill-starred crisis, the winds blow and the waves beat; and not of the objects or motives which now, in a political calm, may actuate any friend of the present bill.

I regret that the nature of the subject has forced me to make any sectional allusions or examinations, with a view to ascertain the extent and character of the sectional grievances the bill proposes to remedy. It has been painful. But I am not accustomed to shrink from what appears to me a duty; and feel conscious that no honorable mind person who knows my real feelings and opinions towards the regions to be affected by the local operation of this bill will suspect or impute to me, towards them, anything short of the highest respect and the kindest wishes.

no

If the passage of the other bill on your table, creating another district in the seventh circuit, will not remove all their local grievances, I am anxious that two new districts may be formed, with circuit powers; and then the Supreme Court would remain untouched and unendangered.

If this will not satisfy the just wishes and claims of the six new States, I am willing to go further, and adopt any reasonable plan placing the whole Union, in all respects, as to judicial system, on the most perfect equality; taking care, however, not to include in their plan any addition to the Supreme Court.

But I have not embarrassed this motion with the details of any such system, lest the force and bearing of the general principle and operation of this projected increase of judges of the Supreme Court might be lost sight of in details alone. Yet, that the Senate may not be in doubt as to my particular views concerning such a system, I will merely suggest that, with only our present number of judges in the Supreme Court, and the whole Union divided into seven circuits, with new districts whenever necessary, a most perfect equality would be caused, as to the system in the whole Union, in the three old Atlantic States, as well as in the six new States; and this enlargement of the circuits would be in analogy to former changes, including Vermont, Rhode Island, North Carolina, and Maine.

If to the district judges in each district were given circuit powers, all the business could be transacted with despatch, and with the addition of neither a host of circuit judges nor judges of the Supreme Court.

Once a year only the judge of the Supreme Court might attend in each circuit, to sharpen their faculties and increase their knowledge of local law, by aiding the district judge at nisi prius, and, at the same time, if thought best, to act as an intermediate tribunal, on law questions, between the district judge and the Supreme Court. The district judges are now competent to these duties, or should be made so; the law even now devolving these duties on them, in the absence of the judge of the Supreme Court.

But a most important advantage in such a system would be what is suggested by the Nashville memorial, and what most imperiously demands consideration in any system, that it leaves to the judges of the Supreme Court ample time for a grave and thorough and prompt discharge of all their cardinal duties, as the great balance-wheel of the whole Confederacy.

"Were the Circuit Courts held in each State or District but once a year, this would enable the judges of the Supreme Court to hold their sessions for a much longer period of time, to complete the business before them. The inconvenience of having but one circuit a year would be much less than that arising from the great delay which now exists in the disposition of causes in the Supreme Court." Nashville Memorial Congressional Register, Ap. 75.

But this project is merely a hint en passant. I am not tenacious of any detail in any change which shall be necessary and well adapted to remove all the existing grievances, if it shall not, at the same time, make any dangerous inroad upon the Supreme Court itself, or create a host of unnecessary judges at a time when, I sincerely believe, we have ample judicial material, if duly distributed, for all the legitimate business of our Federal Courts, without any increase whatever of judges, except, perhaps, one or two new district ones in the Seventh Court.

Under these views, I had intended to offer some further remarks against this great increase of judges, on the general ground of its useless multiplication of offices, its useless increase of executive patronage, and its useless addition to our present vast expenditures. Not losing sight, in these remarks, however, of the important consideration, that we are now ten millions of people instead of three, twenty-four States instead of thirteen, with a territory doubled, and a revenue trebled.

But I cannot permit myself, at this time, to weary longer the patience of the Senate. I have invoked their attention to what I deem the fatal tendency of the present measure, in the manner my sense of duty has enjoined; and if my warnings, like those of Cassandra, should be disregarded, I shall only add, that, for the welfare of my country, they will not, I hope, like hers, prove true.

MISSION TO PANAMA.*

I owe some apology for the violation of an injunction of silence, which circumstances had imposed upon me, in respect to the merits of the proposed mission to Panama. I had, from the first perusal of the documents, entertained but one opinion concerning its probable danger and impolicy. The able report of the Committee on Foreign Affairs, against its expediency, remained unanswered. An early decision of the question seemed a favorite object with almost every member; and, therefore, I had supposed that little benefit would result from debate, until some gentleman, of a different opinion about the mission, should attempt to shake the premises or conclusions of that report. Nobody had made this attempt, till the worthy member from Rhode Island, yesterday, entered the field of argument. Such a version of the documents was then given, and some such principles of action avowed, as tended to alarm my mind about the accuracy of its previous convictions. Last evening, therefore, I devoted a few hours to the re-perusal of the President's confidential communications, under a fixed determination to renounce, as far as possible, every prepossession, and follow, in my vote, whithersoever their facts and principles should direct. For, I must confess that I never could acquiesce in the doctrine avowed by the ingenious gentleman before mentioned, that he was not obliged to vote for the resolution on your table, although unable to designate any error in the statements or reasonings of the report on which the resolution rests. Will he inform us why we are endowed with reason, unless it is to be our guide in action? I must know him too well to believe, for a moment, he could intend to countenance the slavish position, that we, of course, should vote against any resolution not conformable to executive recommendation. But his mistake, probably, consisted in this: conclusions which affirm facts contrary to all our experience, as that no external matter exists, though we are hourly striking our feet and hands against external substances, may well be doubted, however ingenious the reasoning, because, the facts themselves being contradicted by indubitable testimony, there must be some error in the data or inferences leading to such conclusions. But the resolution, that it is not now expedient to send ministers to Panama, is not pretended to affirm any fact thus contradicted. So, conclusions which prostrate all distinctions between virtue and vice may well justify us in doubting some of the statements or reasoning which produce them, because they embody what is palpably contrary to the moral law written on the hearts of all. But no one pretends that the

*Substance of a speech delivered in the Senate of the United States, March 1st, 1826, on the following resolution, reported by the Committee on Foreign Affairs. "Resolved, That it is not expedient, at this time, for the United States to send any ministers to the Congress of American Nations, assembled at Panama.”

resolution now under consideration possesses such a character; and, consequently, like most propositions in legislation and politics, it must be assented to, unless some one can discover and describe a fallacy in the grounds upon which it has been vindicated.

The gentleman from Rhode Island seemed to possess a presentiment that no real discovery of that kind could be made, else no apology would exist for his resort to a doctrine so novel in a deliberative assembly, so abhorrent to every feeling of rational and independent beings. But I concede that he afterwards undertook to maintain that this Congress at Panama was merely for the purpose of negotiating treaties; that it was to be a transient, unorganized assembly; that it would be destitute of any sovereign powers, and that its objects were altogether peaceful. If this had been successfully maintained, many of the positions in the report would still remain unanswered. But others would, surely, be shaken; and hence it becomes important to ascertain, as accurately as may be, the real character of the Panama Congress. It is manifest that this must be done without any regard to its name as a "Congress," or to the title of its members as "plenipotentiaries," on both of which so great stress has been laid. For the word "Congress" is so equivocal as to be applicable either to a body, in point of power, like our old "Congress" of A. D. 1775, or like our present "Congress," now in session, or like the "Congress of Verona. And the word "plenipotentiaries"-meaning only persons with full power to do what is assigned to them is elastic enough to include delegates for any objects whatever. Indeed, our own cabinet seem to have considered it as mere India-rubber, or else to have entertained no definite notions whatever on the subject; since, in the documents before us, they have called the persons to be sent to this Congress by no less than six distinct titles. In one place, "envoys extraordinary;" in another, "ministers plenipotentiary;" another, "diplomatic agents;" another, "commissioners;" another, deputies," and in another, "representatives.' (See President's nomination, December 26, 1825; Clay to Obregon, November 30, 1825, page 8 and 9, documents; Clay's Report, December 20, 1825, page 4.*)

But the origin, object, actual power, and essential character, of the assembly at Panama,called by whatever name, or its members by whatever title, appear, in some degree, in the documents before us; and, far as may be, I admit, must be settled by the treaties which created it, by the correspondence of the States interested, and by the official declarations of our own cabinet. And when my friend from South Carolina adverted to pamphlets, manifestoes, and reviews, upon this point, it was only to exhibit more in detail what is essentially disclosed in the confidential communications now before us.

* The documents referred to, and the pages, are those as printed originally and confidentially by the Senate.