PRINCIPAL EVENTS.- Death of Harrison one month after his inauguration. John Tyler, as Vice-President, inaugurated President. Sub-treasury Law repealed Aug. 9, 1841. A general Bankrupt Law passed. "The Fiscal Bank of the United States" Bill vetoed Aug. 16. "The Fiscal Corporation of the United States" Bill vetoed Sept. 9. Whig party furious. General dissolution of the cabinet. Daniel Webster the last to resign. Lord Ashburton Treaty signed. Rhode-Island Dorr Rebellion, resulting in a new constitution in place of the Charles II. charter. Oregon question introduced. Liberty party organized. Treaty arranged with China by Caleb Cushing. The Mormon Joe Smith and his brother murdered by a mob. Resolution of Congress for the annexation of Texas signed by Pres. Tyler, March 1, 1845; also bills admitting Florida and Iowa. Emigration westward constantly increasing. James K. Polk elected President.

1841. March 4. Extracts from the Inaugural Address of William Henry Harrison: "Called

from a retirement, which I had supposed was to continue for the residue of my life, to fill the chief executive office of this great and free nation, I appear before you, fellow-citizens, to take the oath which the Constitution prescribes as a necessary qualification for the performance of its duties. . . . However strong may be my present purpose to realize the expectations of a magnanimous and confiding people, I too well understand the infirmities of human nature, and the dangers and temptations to which I shall be exposed, not to place my chief confidence upon the aid of that Almighty Power which has hitherto protected me, and enabled me to bring to favorable issues other important but still greatlyinferior trusts heretofore confided to me by my country. . . . We admit of no government by divine right; believing that, so far as power is concerned, the beneficent Creator has made no distinction among men; that all are upon an equality; and that the only legitimate right to govern is an express grant of power from the governed, The Constitution of the United States is the instrument containing the grant of power

ments.

to the several departments composing the government. . . . The great danger to our institutions does not appear to me to be in a usurpation by the government of power not granted by the people, but by the accumulation in one of the departments of that which was assigned to others. Limited as are powers which have been granted, still enough have been granted to constitute a despotism, if concentrated in one of the departOf the eligibility of the same individual to a second term of the presidency, the sagacious mind of Mr. Jefferson early saw and lamented the error; and attempts have been made, hitherto without success, to apply the amendatory power of the States to its correction. As, however, one mode of correction is in the power of every President, and consequently in mine, it would be useless, and perhaps invidious, to enumerate the evils, of which, in the opinion of many of our fellow-citizens, this error of the sages who framed the Constitution may have been the source, and the bitter fruits which we are still to gather from it if it continues to disfigure our system. It may be observed, however,

as a general remark, that republics can commit no greater error than to adopt or continue any feature in their systems of government which may be calculated to create or increase the love of power in the bosoms of those to whom necessity obliges them to commit the management of their affairs. And surely nothing is more likely to produce such a state of mind than the long continuance of an office of high trust; nothing can be more corrupting, nothing more destructive of all those noble feelings which belong to the character of a devoted republican patriot. When this corrupting passion once takes possession of the human mind, like the love of gold, it becomes insatiable: it is the never-dying worm in his bosom; grows with his growth, and strengthens with the declining years of its victim. If this is true, it is the part of wisdom for a republic to limit the service of that officer, at least, to whom she has intrusted the management of her foreign relations, the execution of her laws, and the command of her armies and navies, to a period so short as to prevent his forgetting that he is the accountable agent, not the principal; the servant, not the

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master. Until an amendment of the Constitution can be effected, public opinion may secure the desired object. I give my aid to it by renewing the pledge heretofore given, that under no circumstances will I consent to serve a second There is no part of the means placed in the hands of the Executive 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 mothercountry, that the freedom of the press is the great bulwark of civil and religious liberty,' is one of the most precious legacies which they 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 pretence, 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 crimes.' 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