Chapter XII (3)

The writer has had occasion to treat of this occurrence more at length
in his Life of Mr. Webster. He has there expressed the opinion that if
the friends of the President, when they obtained a majority in the
Senate, had contented themselves with adopting a resolution
exonerating him from the censure passed in 1834, no one could have
complained. Probably they would have done so, if the circumstances
attending the adoption of Mr. Clay’s resolution had not provoked them
to devise what they regarded as an imposing form of stigmatizing that
act. All that is of any consequence now, in relation to this
proceeding, turns upon the contradiction between the constitutional
requirement to “keep” a legislative journal, and a subsequent
obliteration or cancellation of any part of it, by any means whatever.
On this subject, see the protest read in the Senate by Mr. Webster, in
his Life, by the present writer, vol. I, p. 545, _et seq._

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