If there is any exaggeration, the President is in fault,--since, knowing the discreditable allegations, he has not hastened to furnish the precise facts, or at least his partisans have failed in not calling for the official information.

In the mood which they have shown in this Chamber, it is evident that any resolution calling for it, moved by a Senator not known to be for his reëlection, would meet with opposition, and an effort to vindicate republican institutions…

But the newspapers have placed enough beyond question for judgment on this extraordinary case, although thus far there has been no attempt to appreciate it, especially in the light of history.

Pray, Sir, what words would Jefferson use, if he were here to speak on the open and multifarious nepotism of our President?

The Presidential pretension is so important in every aspect, and the character of republican institutions is so absolutely compromised by its toleration, that it cannot be treated in any perfunctory way.

These good Popes were short-lived,--their reigns for the most part counting by days only; but they opened happy glimpses of an administration where the powers of government were not treated as a personal perquisite.

Conspicuous among nepotists was Alexander the Sixth, whose family name of Borgia is damned to fame.

With him nepotism assumed its most brutal and barbarous development, reflecting the character of its pontifical author, who was without the smallest ray of good.

Not even a Pope can justly neglect his own blood; but help and charity must be at his own expense, and not at the expense of his country.

In appointments to office, merit and not blood is the only just recommendation.

The nepotism of Rome was little known in our country, and I do not doubt that Washington, when declining to make the Presidential office a personal perquisite, was governed by that instinct of duty and patriotism which rendered him so…

Through all the perils of a seven years’ war he had battled with that kingly rule which elevates a whole family without regard to merit, fastening all upon the nation, and he had learned that this royal system could find no place in a…

Jefferson developed and explained the true principles in a manner worthy of republican institutions.

The public will never be made to believe that an appointment of a relative is made on the ground of merit alone, uninfluenced by family views; nor can they ever see with approbation offices, the disposal of which they intrust to their…

Adams degraded himself infinitely by his conduct on this subject, as General Washington had done himself the greatest honor.

This can be only by an example of unselfish devotion to the public weal which shall be above suspicion.

A President suspected of weakness for his relations is already shorn of strength.

To Jefferson’s sense of public duty John Quincy Adams added the sense of personal delicacy, both strong against such appointment of relations.

Let John Adams, who did not hesitate to bestow office upon a few relations of unquestioned merit, judge this pretension.

But no such merit is attributed to the beneficiaries of our President, some of whom have done little but bring scandal upon the public service.

Here I leave for the present this enormous unrepublican pretension, waiting to hear if it can again find an apologist.

From a dropsical Nepotism swollen to elephantiasis, which nobody can defend, I pass to Gift-Taking, which with our President has assumed an unprecedented form.

Sometimes public men even in our country have taken gifts, but it is not known that any President before has repaid the patron with office.

For a public man to take gifts is reprehensible; for a President to select Cabinet councillors and other officers among those from whom he has taken gifts is an anomaly in republican annals.

The country will judge it, and blot it out as an example.