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This would be a practical concentration of all power in the Congress
of the United States; this, in the language of the author of the
Declaration of Independence, would be "precisely the definition of
despotic government."
I have preferred to reproduce these teachings of the great statesmen
and constitutional lawyers of the early and later days of the Republic
rather than to rely simply upon an expression of my own opinions.
We can not too often recur to them, especially at a conjuncture like
the present. Their application to our actual condition is so apparent
that they now come to us a living voice, to be listened to with more
attention than at any previous period of our history. We have been and
are yet in the midst of popular commotion. The passions aroused by a
great civil war are still dominant. It is not a time favorable to that
calm and deliberate judgment which is the only safe guide when radical
changes in our institutions are to be made. The measure now before me is
one of those changes.


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