Matters may go smoothly enough when one House asks the other to punish
a member who is offensive to a majority of its own body; but how will it
be when, upon a pretence of insulted dignity, demands are made of
this House to expel a member who happens to run counter to its party
predilections, or other demands which it may not be so agreeable to
grant? It could never have been designed by the Constitution of the
United States to expose the two Houses to such temptations to collision,
or to extend so far the discretionary power which was given to either
House to punish its own members for the violation of its rules and
orders. Discretion has been said to be the law of the tyrant, and when
exercised under the color of the law, and under the influence of party
dictation, it may and will become a terrible and insufferable despotism.
This House, however, it would seem, from the unmistakable tendency of
its proceedings, takes a different view from that which I deliberately
entertain in common with many others.
So far as public interests or constitutional rights are involved, I have
now exhausted my means of defence. I may, then, be allowed to take a
more personal view of the question at issue. The further prosecution of
this subject, in the shape it has now assumed, may not only involve my
friends, but the House itself, in agitations which might be unhappy
in their consequences to the country.
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