290
WRITINGS OF SAM HOUSTON, 1851
law which would increase the indebtedness of the nation by an addition of two millions and a half. And are we to be denounced for the course we are pursuing? Are we to be afraid of popular responsibility? I invoke popular opinion. I ask the people to say upon whom responsibility rests. They will find out the secret. It was the endeavor by the majority to force on the minority an obnoxious and unconstitutional bill. We have arrested and withstood it. I have occupied no portion of the time of this session. I have been anxious for the transaction of business. I have done what I thought it my duty to do for the passage of the appropriation bills, that the wheels of the Government might continue in their course unobstructed, and the Executive be sus- tained. His friends have wounded him; it is in his own house that he has found his worst enemies. And yet the blame is thrown on the opposition to this bill. Sir, this is a bill of abominations, and if it does contain some provisions that are right and con- stitutional, that does not justify us in sanctioning the obnoxious portions of it. Nor will I ever surrender a senatorial privilege while I stand on this floor by yielding to any pressure from with- out with which I can be threatened. As long as I am here, all I ask is that I may have a fair opportunity to discuss and delib- erate on every measure that is presented; .but I will not have a measure thrust upon me with the purpose of making me swallow it, or be punished for not liking the physic. I will have none of it; "throw physic to the dogs." I have had no agency in consuming the time of the Senate in this discussion. I have voted silently. I simply rose at this time for the purpose of expressing my detestation of the latitudinous construction given to the Constitution by this bill. When gentle- men threatened me and my associates with popular chastise- ment, I felt bound to give utterance to my sentiments on this occasion. I will never sacrifice an honestly-formed opinion to any menace that can come from any quarter to coerce me. I cannot sacrifice one principle that I have cherished from my earliest convictions of constitutional law up to the present moment. I cannot sacrifice a principle which I regard as the safeguard of the Constitution. I look to a latitudinous construction of that instrument upon the subject of internal improvements, without estimates and without ascertaining the amount of expenditure necessary, as one of the greatest evils that can afflict the coun- try. I have been prepared to sacrifice everything to the passage
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