public lands.” As Wise says, “he concurred in every proposition except that of dismissing the then existing Cabinet. His disposition was always for conciliation, and he dreaded to offend anybody.” On April 19, Tyler issued an address to the people, in which he freely used the Whig phraseology about the “complete separation between the purse and the sword,” about subjecting the power of removal to “just restraint,” and ending the “war between the government and the currency.” He promised promptly to give his “sanction to any constitutional measure” having in view the securing to industry its just rewards, and the “restoration of a sound constitutional medium;” and as to the question of expediency as well as constitutionality, he would “resort to the fathers of the great Republican school for advice and instruction.” This could be interpreted as meaning that he favored a protective tariff, and that he would follow either those Republican fathers who, like Madison and Gallatin, put aside all constitutional scruples on account of public expediency in accepting a United States Bank, or those other Republican fathers who rejected the bank as unconstitutional and dangerous. On the whole, the address was Whiggish in sound, but open to different constructions.
Clay was at Ashland. He had his misgivings, and addressed a letter to Tyler in order to elicit more clearly his views and intentions on the principal subjects. Tyler answered on April 30 that
