Hippolyte A. Taine - "The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 6"

Burton Egbert Stevenson - "The Home Book of Verse, Volume 4"

G. A. Henty - "Saint Bartholomew's Eve"

G. A. Henty - "Forest & Frontiers"

Annual Bibliography of Commonwealth Literature 2007
This paper argues that discourses of love in Ghanaian market literature for youth offer a view into complex negotiations of agency and empowerment. Drawing on Deborah Durham's notion of youth as "social `shifters'" and Francis Nyamnjoh's conception of the "interconnectedness" of agency, I take Ghanaian market literature as one specific case of how African literature for youth foregrounds questions of continuity and change as African societies enter into increasingly complex global relations. In this literature for youth, received notions of love, often constructed out of impressions from American pop and hip hop music, carry new notions of agency that compete with existing "domesticated" forms. Authors like Ike Tandoh and Evelyn Tay employ discourses of love to offer youth alternative avenues for empowerment in a context of socio-economic disenfranchizement. In a creative process of "straddling", this writing both reveals and reproduces the contradictions that obtain in youth configurations of agency.

Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams.

J >> Josiah Quincy >> Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams.




"The first thing I said, in reply to Mr. Wilberforce, was: 'No; you
may as well save yourselves the trouble of making any proposals on
that subject; my countrymen, I am very sure, will never assent to
any such arrangement.' He then entered into an argument, the full
force of which I felt, when I said to him, 'You may, if you think
proper, make the proposal; but I think some other mode of getting
over the difficulty must be resorted to; for the prejudices of my
country are so immovably strong on that point, that I do not believe
they will ever assent.'

"I returned home, and, under the administration of Mr. Monroe, I
filled the office of Secretary of State; and in that capacity I was
the medium through which the proposal of the British government was
afterwards made to the United States to arrange a special right of
search for the suppression of the slave-trade. This proposition I
resisted and opposed in the cabinet with all my power. And I will
say that, although I was not myself a slaveholder, I had to resist
all the slaveholding members of the cabinet, and the President also.
Mr. Monroe himself was always strongly inclined in favor of the
proposition, and I maintained the opposite ground against him and
the whole body of his official advisers as long as I could.

"At that time there was in Congress, and especially in the House, a
spirit of concession, which I could not resist. From the year 1818
to the year 1823, not a session passed without some movement on this
point, and some proposition made to request the President to
negotiate for the mutual concession of this right of search. I
resisted it to the utmost; and so earnest did the matter become,
that, on one occasion, at an evening party in the President's house,
in a conversation between myself and a distinguished gentleman of
Virginia,--a principal leader of this movement, now living, but not
now a member of this house,--words became so warm that what I said
was afterwards alluded to by another gentleman of Virginia, in an
address to his constituents, against my election as President of the
United States. It was made an objection against me that I was an
enemy to the suppression of the slave-trade. That address and my
reply to it are in existence, and the latter in the hands of a
gentleman of Virginia now in this house, and who can correct me if I
do not state the matter correctly. The address was written, and
would have been published, with an allusion to what I had said in
the conversation (which the writer heard, although it was not
addressed to him), but the gentleman with whom I was conversing went
to him, and told him that if he did refer in print to that private
conversation, he would never speak to him; and so it was suppressed.
I state these facts, sir, that I may set myself right on this
question of the right of search.

"At that time a gentleman, who was the leader of one of the parties
in this house, had endeavored from year to year to prevail with the
house to require of the President a concession of the right asked.
I name him to honor him; for he was one of the most talented,
laborious, eloquent, and useful men upon this floor. I allude to
Charles Fenton Mercer, of Virginia. Session after session, he
brought forward his resolution; and he continued to press it,
until, finally, in 1823, he brought the house by yeas and nays to
vote their assent to it; and, strange to say, there were but nine
votes against it. The same thing took place in the other house. The
joint resolution went to the President, and he accordingly entered
into the negotiation. It was utterly against my judgment and
wishes; but I was obliged to submit, and I prepared the requisite
despatches to Mr. Rush, then our minister at the court of London.
When he made his proposal to Mr. Canning, Mr. Canning's reply was,
'Draw up your convention, and I will sign it.' Mr. Rush did so, and
Mr. Canning, without the slightest alteration whatever,--without
varying the dot of an _i_, or the crossing of a _t_,--did affix to
it his signature; thus assenting to our own terms in our own
language.

"The convention came back here for ratification; but, in the mean
time, another spirit came over the feelings of this house, as well
as of the Senate. A party had been formed against the administration
of Mr. Monroe; the course of the administration was no longer
favored, and the house came out in opposition to a convention drawn
in conformity to its own previous views.

"But now, as I do not wish to intrude on the attention of this
committee a single moment longer than is necessary, I will pass over
the rest of what I might say on this subject, and recur, in a few
observations, to the other war-trumpet which we have heard within
the last two days.

"They unite in one purpose, though they seem to be pursuing it by
different means. The gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Wise), confining
his observations to our relations with Mexico, also urges us to war
with the same professions of a disposition for peace as were so
often repeated by the gentleman from Pennsylvania in regard to Great
Britain. He does not immediately connect the questions of war with
Mexico and war with Great Britain, but apparently knows and feels
that they are in substance and in fact but one and the same
question; and that, so surely as we rush into a war with Mexico, we
shall shortly find ourselves in a war with England. The gentleman
appeared entirely conscious of that; and I hope that no member of
this committee will come to the conclusion that it is possible for
us to have a war with Mexico without at the same time going to war
with Great Britain. On that subject I will venture to say that the
minister from England has no instructions. That is not one of the
five points on which the gentleman from Pennsylvania tells us our
controversy with England rests, and the surrendering of which is to
open to that minister so easy a road to an earldom. The war with
Mexico is to be produced by different means, and for different
purposes. I think the gentleman from Virginia, in his speech, rested
the question of the war with Mexico upon three grounds: 1st, That
our citizens had claims against the Mexican government to the amount
of ten or twelve millions; 2d, That some ten or twelve of our
citizens had been treated with great severity, and suffered disgrace
and abuse from the Mexican government, having been made slaves, and
compelled to work at cleansing the streets; that these citizens were
detained in servitude, while one British subject had been promptly
released on the first demand of the British minister there; and, 3d,
That a war with Mexico would accomplish the annexation of Texas to
the Union. The gentleman was in favor of war, not merely for the
abstract purpose of annexing Texas to the Union, but he was for war
by peremptorily prohibiting Santa Anna from invading Texas.

"I will take up these reasons in order. And, first, as to going to
war for the obtaining of these ten or twelve millions of dollars,
being the claims of our own citizens on Mexico. This seems a very
extraordinary reason, when, according to the doctrine of the
gentleman from Pennsylvania, a state of war at once extinguishes all
national debts. If we go to war with Mexico, her debts to our
citizens will be expunged at once, if the doctrine of the gentleman
from Pennsylvania be true. He did, to be sure, qualify the position
by saying that war would at least suspend the payment of interest.
If so, then it would equally suspend interest in the case of Mexico.
The arguments of the two war gentlemen happen to cross each other,
though they are directed to the same end. One of them will have us
go to war with Mexico to recover twelve millions of dollars; the
other would have us go to war with England to wipe out a debt of two
hundred millions. I will not compare the arguments of the two
gentlemen together; but I will say, in regard to the doctrine of the
gentleman from Pennsylvania, that it has quite too much of
repudiation in it for my creed. I do not think that a war with
England would extinguish these two hundred millions, but that, on
the contrary, Great Britain would be likely to say to us, 'We will
go to war to recover the money you owe us,' That is one of the
questions which we must settle if we go to war, but which we might
otherwise, at least for a time, stave off. But, if we go to war,
what must be the effect of the peace that follows? We must pay our
two hundred millions, with the interest. As to our debt from Mexico,
I believe the way to recover it is not to go to war for it; for war,
besides failing to recover the money, will occasion us the loss of
ten times the amount in other ways.

"As to war producing a suspension of interest on a national debt,
let the gentleman look back a little to the wars of France. In 1793
France was at war with almost all the countries of Europe, and she
immediately confiscated all her debts to them. But what happened
thirty years after, when the reaection came? The allies took Paris,
and, in the settlement which then took place, they compelled France
to pay all her debts, with full interest on the whole period during
which payment had been suspended. That was the consequence to France
of going to war to extinguish debts. And, if we go to war with Great
Britain to-morrow, she will make us, as one of the conditions of
peace, pay our whole debt of two hundred millions, with interest.
And what shall we gain? Spend millions upon millions every year, as
long as the war continues; and, unless it is greatly successful,
have to pay our debt at last, principal and interest. This would
depend on the chances of war, or the issues of battle. And, as our
contests would be chiefly on the ocean, we must first obtain a
superiority on the seas before we can put her down and vanquish her;
and this to save ourselves from the payment of two hundred millions
justly due from our citizens to hers!

"There is a second reason given by the gentleman from Virginia in
favor of war. He reminds us, with great warmth, that there are some
ten or twelve citizens of the United States now prisoners in the
city of Mexico, and dragging chains about the streets of that city;
that a British subject taken with them has been liberated, while
they are kept in bondage. Now, if I am correctly informed, one
American citizen, a son of General Coombs, has been liberated on
the application of the minister of the United States, who was as
fairly a subject of imprisonment as the British subject of whom the
gentleman speaks. I certainly have no objections to our minister's
making such representations as he can in favor of the release of
citizens of the United States, although taken in actual war against
Mexico, in association with Texian forces; but I am not prepared to
go to war to obtain their liberation. I must first be permitted to
ask how it is that these men happen to be in the streets of Mexico.
Is it not because they formed part of an expedition got up in Texas
against the Mexican city of Santa Fe? Were they not taken
_flagrante bello_, actually engaged in a war they had nothing to do
with, to which the United States were no party? In all this great
pity and sympathy for American citizens made to travel hundreds of
miles barefoot and in chains, the question 'How came they there?'
seems never to be asked. And yet, so far as the interposition of
this nation for their recovery is concerned, that is the very first
question to be asked.

"I come now to the third ground for war urged by the gentleman from
Virginia, and I hope I do not misrepresent him when I say that I
understood him to affirm that if he had the power he would prohibit
the invasion of Texas by Mexico; and if Mexico would not submit to
such a requirement, and should persist in her invasion, he would go
to war. The gentleman stated, as a ground for war, that Santa Anna
had avowed his determination to 'drive slavery beyond the Sabine.'
That was what the gentleman from Virginia most apprehended--that
slavery would be abolished in Texas; that we should have neighbors
at our doors not contaminated by that accursed plague-spot. He would
have war with Mexico sooner than slavery should be driven back to
the United States, whence it came. If that is to be the avowed
opinion of this committee, in God's name let my constituents know
it! The sooner it is proclaimed on the house-tops, the better--the
house is to go to war with Mexico for the purpose of annexing Texas
to this Union!"




CHAPTER XIII.

REPORT ON PRESIDENT TYLER'S APPROVAL, WITH OBJECTIONS, OF THE BILL FOR
THE APPORTIONMENT OF REPRESENTATIVES.--REPORT ON HIS VETO OF THE BILL
TO PROVIDE A REVENUE FROM IMPORTS.--LECTURE ON THE SOCIAL COMPACT, AND
THE THEORIES OF FILMER, HOBBES, SYDNEY, AND LOCKE.--ADDRESS TO HIS
CONSTITUENTS ON THE POLICY OF PRESIDENT TYLER'S ADMINISTRATION.--ADDRESS
TO THE NORFOLK COUNTY TEMPERANCE SOCIETY.--DISCOURSE ON THE NEW ENGLAND
CONFEDERACY OF 1643.--LETTER TO THE CITIZENS OF BANGOR ON WEST INDIA
EMANCIPATION.--ORATION ON LAYING THE CORNER-STONE OF THE CINCINNATI
OBSERVATORY.


On the 23d of June, 1842, President Tyler announced to the House of
Representatives that he had signed and approved an act for the
apportionment of representatives among the several states, and had
deposited the same in the office of the Secretary of State, accompanied
with his reasons for giving to it his sanction; by which it appeared
that, after having officially "approved" that act, he had declared, in
effect, that _he did not approve of it_, having doubts concerning
both its constitutionality and expediency, and that he had signed it
only in deference to the opinions of both houses of Congress. Mr. Adams,
from the committee to whom these proceedings of the President had been
referred, in a report to the House severely scrutinizes the course of
the President in this respect. He declares that the duty of the
President, in exercising the authority given him by the constitution to
sign and approve acts of Congress, is prescribed in terms equally
concise and precise; and that it has given him no power to alter, amend,
comment upon, or assign his reasons for the performance of his duty.
These views he illustrates by a minute examination of the language of
that instrument, and shows that what the President had done was a
departure not only from the language but from the substance of the law
prescribing to him his duties in that respect. Mr. Adams then, in behalf
of the committee, after showing that the proceeding of the President in
this instance is without precedent or example, and imminently dangerous
in its tendencies, proceeds to remark:

"The entry upon the bill is, 'Approved: John Tyler;' and that entry
makes it the law of the land; and then, by a private note deposited
with the law in the Department of State, the same hand which, under
the sacred obligation of an official oath, has written the word
'_approved_,' and added the sign-manual of his name, feels it due
to himself to declare that the bill is not approved, and that he
doubts both its constitutionality and its policy, and that he signs
it only in deference to the declared _will_ of both houses of
Congress; not from assent to their reasons, but in submission to
their _will_.

"And he feels it due to himself to say this,--first, that his
motives for signing it may be rightly understood; secondly, that his
opinions may not be liable to be misunderstood, or, thirdly, quoted
hereafter erroneously as a precedent. The motives of a President of
the United States for signing an act of Congress can be no other
than because he approves it; and because, in that event, the
constitution enjoins it upon him to sign it as a duty, which he has
sworn to perform, and with which he cannot dispense.

"But no; in the present case the President feels it due to himself
to say that his motives for signing the bill were not because he
approved it, or because it was made by the constitution his duty to
sign it, but to prove his submission to the will of Congress. He
feels it due also to himself to guard against the liability of his
opinions to misconstruction, or to be quoted hereafter erroneously
as a precedent. His signature to the bill, preceded by the word
'_approved_,' taken in connection with the duties prescribed to the
President of the United States by the constitution, certainly was
liable to the construction that his opinions were favorable to the
bill. They were, indeed, liable to no other construction respectful
to him, or trustful to his honor and sincerity; nor can there be a
doubt that they would have been quoted hereafter as a precedent. No
man living could have imagined that the word '_approved_' could be
construed to mean either doubt or obsequious submission to the will
of others; and it is with extreme regret that the committee see, in
the President's exposition of his reasons for signing an act of
Congress, the open avowal that, in his vocabulary, used in the
performance of one of the most solemn and sacred of his duties, the
word '_approved_' means not approval, but doubt; not the expression
of his own opinions, but mere obsequiousness to the will of
Congress."

The report proceeds to deny that the example of the advice given by the
first Secretary of State to the first President of the United States,
which the President adduces in his support, and the following that
advice by that President, gave any "sanction to such recorded
duplicity." It asserts that such an example is of dangerous tendency--an
encroachment by the Executive on legislative functions; that the reasons
given by President Tyler are a running commentary against the law,
against its execution according to the intention of the legislature, and
forestalling the appropriate action of the judicial tribunals in
expounding it. These and consentaneous views the report largely
illustrates, and concludes with a resolution declaring the proceedings
of the President in this case to have been unwarranted by the
constitution and laws of the United States, injurious to the public
interest, and of evil example in future; solemnly protesting against its
ever being repeated, or adduced as a precedent hereafter.

On the 9th of August, 1842, President Tyler returned to the House of
Representatives the bill to provide a revenue from imports, and changing
the existing laws imposing duties on them, accompanied with his
objections to it. The house referred the subject to a select committee,
of which Mr. Adams was chairman. On the 16th of August he reported that
the message was the last of a series of executive measures, the result
of which had been to defeat and nullify the whole action of the
legislative authority of the Union upon the most important interests of
the nation;--that, at the accession of the late President Harrison, the
revenue and the credit of the country were so completely disordered,
that a suffering people had commanded a change in the administration;
and the elections throughout the Union had placed in both houses of
Congress majorities, the natural exponents of the principles which it
was the will of the people should be substituted instead of those which
had brought the country to a condition of such wretchedness and
shame;--that there was a perfect harmony between the chosen President of
the people and this majority; but that, by an inscrutable decree of
Providence, the chief of the people's choice, in harmony with whose
principles the majorities of both houses had been constituted, was laid
low in death. A successor to the office had assumed the title, with
totally different principles, who, though professing to harmonize with
the principles of his immediate predecessor, and with the majorities in
both houses of Congress, soon disclosed his diametrical opposition to
them.

The report then proceeds to show the several developments of this new
and most unfortunate condition of the general government, effected by "a
system of continual and unrelenting exercise of executive legislation,"--by
the alternate gross abuse of constitutional power, and bold assumption
of powers never vested in him by any law,--resulting in four several
vetoes, which, in the course of fifteen months, had suspended the
legislation of the Union. It then states and comments upon the reasons
assigned by the President for returning this bill to the House of
Representatives, with his objections to it, as specified in the veto
message referred to this committee; and, after a rigid analysis and
course of argument, pronounces them "feeble, inconsistent, and
unsatisfactory;" after which the report proceeds:

"They perceive that the whole legislative power of the Union has
been, for the last fifteen months, with regard to the action of
Congress upon measures of vital importance, in a state of suspended
animation, strangled by the _five_ times repeated stricture of
the executive cord. They observe that, under these unexampled
obstructions to the exercise of their high and legitimate duties,
they have hitherto preserved the most respectful forbearance towards
the Executive Chief; that while he has time after time annulled, by
the mere act of his will, their commission from the people to enact
laws for the common welfare, they have forborne even the expression
of their resentment for these multiplied insults and injuries. They
believed they had a high destiny to fulfil, by administering to the
people, in the form of law, remedies for the sufferings which they
had too long endured. The will of one man has frustrated all their
labors, and prostrated all their powers. The majority of the
committee believe that the case has occurred, in the annals of our
Union, contemplated by the founders of the constitution, by the
grant to the House of Representatives of the power to impeach the
President of the United States; but they are aware that the resort
to that expedient might, in the present condition of public affairs,
prove abortive. They see the irreconcilable difference of opinion
and of action between the legislative and executive departments of
the government is but sympathetic with the same discordant views and
feelings among the people. To them alone the final issue of the
struggle must be left. In sorrow and mortification, under the
failure of all their labors to redeem the honor and prosperity of
their country, it is a cheering consolation to them that the
termination of their own official existence is at hand; that they
are even now about to return to receive the sentence of their
constituents upon themselves; that the legislative power of the
Union, crippled and disabled as it may now be, is about to pass,
renovated and revivified by the will of the people, into other
hands, upon whom will devolve the task of providing that remedy for
the public distempers which their own honest and agonizing energies
have in vain endeavored to supply.

"The power of the present Congress to enact laws essential to the
welfare of the people has been struck with apoplexy by the executive
hand. Submission to his will is the only condition upon which he
will permit them to act. For the enactment of a measure, earnestly
recommended by himself, he forbids their action, unless coupled with
a condition declared by himself to be on a subject so totally
different that he will not suffer them to be coupled in the same
law. With that condition Congress cannot comply. In this state of
things he has assumed, as the committee fully believe, the exercise
of the whole legislative power to himself, and is levying millions
of money upon the people, without any authority of law. But the
final decision of this question depends neither upon legislative nor
executive, but upon judicial authority; nor can the final decision
of the Supreme Court upon it be pronounced before the close of the
present Congress. In the mean time, the abusive exercise of the
constitutional power of the President to arrest the action of
Congress upon measures vital to the welfare of the people has
wrought conviction upon the minds of a majority of the committee
that the veto power itself must be restrained and modified by an
amendment of the constitution itself; a resolution for which they
accordingly herewith respectfully report."

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