of civil and religious liberty" is one of the most precious legacies
which they have left us. We have learned, too, from our own as well as
the experience of other countries, that golden shackles, by whomsoever
or by whatever pretense imposed, are as fatal to it as the iron bonds of
despotism. The presses in the necessary employment of the Government
should never be used "to clear the guilty or to varnish crime." A decent
and manly examination of the acts of the Government should be not only
tolerated, but encouraged.

Upon another occasion I have given my opinion at some length upon the
impropriety of Executive interference in the legislation of
Congress--that the article in the Constitution making it the duty of the
President to communicate information and authorizing him to recommend
measures was not intended to make him the source in legislation, and, in
particular, that he should never be looked to for schemes of finance. It
would be very strange, indeed, that the Constitution should have
strictly forbidden one branch of the Legislature from interfering in the
origination of such bills and that it should be considered proper that
an altogether different department of the Government should be permitted
to do so. Some of our best political maxims and opinions have been drawn
from our parent isle. There are others, however, which can not be
introduced in our system without singular incongruity and the production
of much mischief, and this I conceive to be one. No matter in which of
the houses of Parliament a bill may originate nor by whom introduced--a
minister or a member of the opposition--by the fiction of law, or rather
of constitutional principle, the sovereign is supposed to have prepared
it agreeably to his will and then submitted it to Parliament for their
advice and consent. Now the very reverse is the case here, not only with
regard to the principle, but the forms prescribed by the Constitution.
The principle certainly assigns to the only body constituted by the