which might be used with greater effect for unhallowed purposes than
the control of the public press. The maxim which our ancestors derived
from the mother country that "the freedom of the press is the great
bulwark 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