To make sure of our object, shall we locate it nowhere, and have Congress
hereafter to hold its sessions, as the loafer lodged, "in spots about"? I
make no allusion to the present President when I say there are few
stronger cases in this world of "burden to the many and benefit to the
few," of "inequality," than the Presidency itself is by some thought to
be. An honest laborer digs coal at about seventy cents a day, while the
President digs abstractions at about seventy dollars a day. The coal is
clearly worth more than the abstractions, and yet what a monstrous
inequality in the prices! Does the President, for this reason, propose to
abolish the Presidency? He does not, and he ought not. The true rule, in
determining to embrace or reject anything, is not whether it have any
evil in it, but whether it have more of evil than of good. There are few
things wholly evil or wholly good. Almost everything, especially of
government policy, is an inseparable compound of the two; so that our
best judgment of the preponderance between them is continually demanded.
On this principle the President, his friends, and the world generally act
on most subjects. Why not apply it, then, upon this question? Why, as to
improvements, magnify the evil, and stoutly refuse to see any good in
them?

Mr. Chairman, on the third position of the message the constitutional
question--I have not much to say. Being the man I am, and speaking, where
I do, I feel that in any attempt at an original constitutional argument I
should not be and ought not to be listened to patiently. The ablest and
the best of men have gone over the whole ground long ago. I shall attempt
but little more than a brief notice of what some of them have said. In
relation to Mr. Jefferson's views, I read from Mr. Polk's veto message:

"President Jefferson, in his message to Congress in 1806, recommended an
amendment of the Constitution, with a view to apply an anticipated