[THE charter of the bank of the United States, incorporated in
1816, expired by its limitation, in 1836. An act extending the
charter, having passed the senate, by a vote of twenty-eight
to twenty, and the house of representatives, by a vote of one
hundred and five to eighty-three, was returned to the senate
on the tenth of July, 1832, by president Jackson, with his
objections at length, against signing the bill, and less than
two thirds voting for its passage, it was rejected. On the
twelfth, the veto message being under consideration, Mr. Clay
delivered his sentiments in the following words.]
I HAVE some observations to submit on this question, which I would not
trespass on the senate in offering, but that it has some command of
leisure, in consequence of the conference which has been agreed upon,
in respect to the tariff.
A bill to recharter the bank, has recently passed congress, after
much deliberation. In this body, we know that there are members enough
who entertain no constitutional scruples, to make, with the vote by
which the bill was passed, a majority of two thirds. In the house of
representatives, also, it is believed, there is a like majority in
favor of the bill. Notwithstanding this state of things, the president
has rejected the bill, and transmitted to the senate an elaborate
message, communicating at large his objections. The constitution
requires that we should reconsider the bill, and that the question of
its passage, the president’s objections notwithstanding, shall be taken
by ays and noes. Respect to him, as well as the injunctions of the
constitution, require that we should deliberately examine his reasons,
and reconsider the question.
The veto is an extraordinary power, which, though tolerated by
the constitution, was not expected, by the convention, to be used
in ordinary cases. It was designed for instances of precipitate
legislation, in unguarded moments. Thus restricted, and it has been
thus restricted by all former presidents, it might not be mischievous.
During Mr. Madison’s administration of eight years, there occurred but
two or three cases of its exercise. During the last administration,
I do not now recollect that it was once. In a period little upwards
of three years, the present chief magistrate has employed the veto
four times. We now hear quite frequently, in the progress of measures
through congress, the statement that the president will veto them,
urged as an objection to their passage.
The veto is hardly reconcilable with the genius of representative
government. It is totally irreconcilable with it, if it is to be
frequently employed in respect to the expediency of measures, as well
as their constitutionality. It is a feature of our government, borrowed
from a prerogative of the British king. And it is remarkable, that in
England it has grown obsolete, not having been used for upwards of a
century. At the commencement of the French revolution, in discussing
the principles of their constitution, in national convention, the
veto held a conspicuous figure. The gay, laughing population of Paris,
bestowed on the king the appellation of monsieur Veto, and on the queen,
that of madame Veto. The convention finally decreed, that if a measure
rejected by the king, should obtain the sanction of two concurring
legislatures, it should be a law, notwithstanding the veto. In the
constitution of Kentucky, and perhaps in some other of the state
constitutions, it is provided that if, after the rejection of a bill
by the governor, it shall be passed by a majority of _all_ the members
elected to _both_ houses, it shall become a law, notwithstanding the
governor’s objections. As a coördinate branch of the government, the
chief magistrate has great weight. If, after a respectful consideration
of his objections urged against a bill, a majority of all the members
elected to the legislature, shall still pass it, notwithstanding
his official influence, and the force of his reasons, ought it not
to become a law? Ought the opinion of one man to overrule that of
a legislative body, twice deliberately expressed?
It cannot be imagined that the convention contemplated the application
of the veto, to a question which has been so long, so often, and so
thoroughly scrutinized, as that of the bank of the United States,
by every department of the government, in almost every stage of its
existence, and by the people, and by the state legislatures. Of all the
controverted questions which have sprung up under our government, not
one has been so fully investigated as that of its power to establish
a bank of the United States. More than seventeen years ago, in January,
1815, Mr. Madison then said, in a message to the senate of the United
States:
‘Waiving the question of the constitutional authority of
the legislature to establish an incorporated bank, as being
precluded, in my judgment, by repeated recognitions, under
varied circumstances, of the validity of such an institution,
in acts of the legislative, executive, and judicial branches of
the government, accompanied by indications, in different modes,
of a concurrence of the general will of the nation.’
Mr. Madison, himself opposed to the first bank of the United States,
yielded his own convictions to those of the nation, and all the
departments of the government thus often expressed. Subsequently to
this true but strong statement of the case, the present bank of the
United States was established, and numerous other acts, of all the
departments of government, manifesting their settled sense of the
power, have been added to those which existed prior to the date of
Mr. Madison’s message.
No question has been more generally discussed, within the last two
years, by the people at large, and in state legislatures, than that
of the bank. And this consideration of it has been prompted by the
president himself. In his first message to congress, (in December,
1829,) he brought the subject to the view of that body and the nation,
and expressly declared, that it could not, for the interest of all
concerned, be ‘too soon’ settled. In each of his subsequent annual
messages, in 1830 and 1831, he again invited the attention of congress
to the subject. Thus, after an interval of two years, and after
the intervention of the election of a new congress, the president
deliberately renews the chartering of the bank of the United States.
And yet his friends now declare the agitation of the question to be
premature! It was not premature in 1829 to present the question, but
it is premature in 1832 to consider and decide it!
After the president had directed public attention to this question, it
became not only a topic of popular conversation, but was discussed in
the press, and employed as a theme in popular elections. I was myself
interrogated, on more occasions than one, to make a public expression
of my sentiments; and a friend of mine in Kentucky, a candidate for the
state legislature, told me nearly two years ago, that he was surprised,
in an obscure part of his county, (the hills of Benson,) where there
was but little occasion for banks, to find himself questioned on
the stump, as to the recharter of the bank of the United States. It
seemed as if a sort of general order had gone out, from head-quarters,
to the partisans of the administration, every where, to agitate and
make the most of the question. They have done so, and their condition
now reminds me of the fable invented by Dr. Franklin, of the eagle
and the cat, to demonstrate that Æsop had not exhausted invention,
in the construction of his memorable fables. The eagle, you know,
Mr. President, pounced from his lofty flight in the air upon a cat,
taking it to be a pig. Having borne off his prize, he quickly felt most
painfully the paws of the cat, thrust deeply into his sides and body.
Whilst flying, he held a parley with the supposed pig, and proposed to
let go his hold, if the other would let him alone. No, says puss, you
brought me from yonder earth below, and I will hold fast to you until
you carry me back――a condition to which the eagle readily assented.
The friends of the president, who have been for nearly three years
agitating this question, now turn round upon their opponents, who have
supposed the president quite serious and in earnest, in presenting it
for public consideration, and charge them with prematurely agitating
it. And that for electioneering purposes! The other side understands
perfectly, the policy of preferring an unjust charge, in order to avoid
a well-founded accusation.
If there be an electioneering motive in the matter, who have been
actuated by it? Those who have taken the president at his word, and
deliberated on a measure which he has repeatedly recommended to their
consideration; or those who have resorted to all sorts of means to
elude the question――by alternately coaxing and threatening the bank;
by an extraordinary investigation into the administration of the bank;
and by every species of postponement and procrastination, during the
progress of the bill?
Notwithstanding all these dilatory expedients, a majority of congress,
prompted by the will and the best interests of the nation, passed the
bill. And I shall now proceed, with great respect and deference, to
examine some of the objections to its becoming a law, contained in the
president’s message, avoiding, as much as I can, a repetition of what
gentlemen have said who preceded me.
The president thinks that the precedents, drawn from the proceedings
of congress, as to the constitutional power to establish a bank, are
neutralized, by there being two for and two against the authority.
He supposes that one congress, in 1811, and another in 1815, decided
against the power. Let us examine both of these cases. The house of
representatives in 1811, passed the bill to recharter the bank, and,
consequently, affirmed the power. The senate, during the same year,
were divided, seventeen and seventeen, and the vice-president gave
the casting vote. Of the seventeen who voted against the bank, we know
from the declaration of the senator from Maryland, (general Smith,) now
present, that he entertained no doubt whatever of the constitutional
power of congress to establish a bank, and that he voted on totally
distinct ground. Taking away his vote and adding it to the seventeen
who voted for the bank, the number would have stood eighteen for, and
sixteen against the power. But we know further, that Mr. Gaillard,
Mr. Anderson, and Mr. Robinson, made a part of that sixteen; and that
in 1815, all three of them voted for the bank. Take those three votes
from the sixteen, and add them to the eighteen, and the vote of 1811,
as to the question of constitutional power, would have been twenty-one
and thirteen. And of these thirteen there might have been others still,
who were not governed in their votes by any doubts of the power.
In regard to the congress of 1815, so far from their having entertained
any scruples in respect to the power to establish a bank, they actually
passed a bank bill, and thereby affirmed the power. It is true that,
by the casting vote of the speaker of the house of representatives,
(Mr. Cheves,) they rejected another bank bill, not on grounds of want
of power, but upon considerations of expediency in the particular
structure of that bank.
Both the adverse precedents therefore, relied upon in the message,
operate directly against the argument which they were brought forward
to maintain. Congress, by various other acts, in relation to the bank
of the United States, has again and again sanctioned the power. And
I believe it may be truly affirmed, that from the commencement of the
government to this day, there has not been a congress opposed to the
bank of the United States upon the distinct ground of a want of power
to establish it.
And here, Mr. President, I must request the indulgence of the senate,
whilst I express a few words in relation of myself.
I voted, in 1811, against the old bank of the United States, and I
delivered on that occasion, a speech, in which, among other reasons,
I assigned that of its being unconstitutional. My speech has been read
to the senate, during the progress of this bill, but the reading of
it excited no other regret than that it was read in such a wretched,
bungling, mangling manner.[20] During a long public life, (I mention
the fact not as claiming any merit for it,) the only great question in
which I have ever changed my opinion, is that of the bank of the United
States. If the researches of the senator had carried him a little
further, he would, by turning over a few more leaves of the same book
from which he read my speech, have found that which I made in 1816,
in support of the present bank. By the reasons assigned in it for
the change of my opinion, I am ready to abide in the judgment of the
present generation and of posterity. In 1816, being speaker of the
house of representatives, it was perfectly in my power to have said
nothing and done nothing, and thus have concealed the change of opinion
which my mind had undergone. But I did not choose to remain silent and
escape responsibility. I chose publicly to avow my actual conversion.
The war and the fatal experience of its disastrous events, had changed
me. Mr. Madison, governor Pleasants, and almost all the public men
around me, my political friends, had changed their opinions from the
same causes.
The power to establish a bank is deduced from that clause of the
constitution which confers on congress all powers necessary and proper
to carry into effect the enumerated powers. In 1811, I believed a bank
of the United States not necessary, and that a safe reliance might be
placed on the local banks, in the administration of the fiscal affairs
of the government. The war taught us many lessons, and among others
demonstrated the necessity of the bank of the United States, to the
successful operations of the government. I will not trouble the senate
with a perusal of my speech in 1816, but ask its permission to read a
few extracts:
‘But how stood the case in 1816, when he was called upon to
examine the powers of the general government to incorporate
a national bank? A total change of circumstances was
presented――events of the utmost magnitude had intervened.
‘A general suspension of specie payments had taken place, and
this had led to a train of circumstances of the most alarming
nature. He beheld, dispersed over the immense extent of the
United States, about three hundred banking institutions,
enjoying, in different degrees, the confidence of the public,
shaken as to them all, under no direct control of the general
government, and subject to no actual responsibility to the
state authorities. These institutions were emitting the actual
currency of the United States――a currency consisting of paper,
on which they neither paid interest nor principal, whilst it
was exchanged for the paper of the community, on which both were
paid. We saw these institutions, in fact, exercising what had
been considered, at all times, and in all countries, one of the
highest attributes of sovereignty――the regulation of the current
medium of the country. They were no longer competent to assist
the treasury, in either of the great operations of collection,
deposit or distribution of the public revenues. In fact, the
paper which they emitted, and which the treasury, from the force
of events, found itself constrained to receive, was constantly
obstructing the operations of that department; for it would
accumulate where it was not wanted, and could not be used where
it was wanted, for the purposes of government, without a ruinous
and arbitrary brokerage. Every man who paid to or received from
the government, paid or received as much less than he ought to
have done, as was the difference between the medium in which the
payment was effected and specie. Taxes were no longer uniform.
In New England, where specie payments had not been suspended,
the people were called upon to pay larger contributions than
where they were suspended. In Kentucky as much more was paid by
the people, in their taxes, than was paid, for example, in the
state of Ohio, as Kentucky paper was worth more than Ohio paper.
* * * * *
‘Considering, then, that the state of the currency was such that
no thinking man could contemplate it without the most serious
alarm; that it threatened general distress, if it did not
ultimately lead to convulsion and subversion of the government;
it appeared to him to be the duty of congress to apply a remedy,
if a remedy could be devised. A national bank, with other
auxiliary measures, was proposed as that remedy. Mr. Clay said
he determined to examine the question with as little prejudice
as possible, arising from his former opinion; he knew that the
safest course to him, if he pursued a cold, calculating prudence,
was to adhere to that opinion, right or wrong. He was perfectly
aware that if he changed, or seemed to change it, he should
expose himself to some censure; but, looking at the subject
with the light shed upon it, by events happening since the
commencement of the war, he could no longer doubt. * * * He
preferred to the suggestions of the pride of consistency the
evident interests of the community, and determined to throw
himself upon their justice and candor.’
The interest which foreigners hold in the existing bank of the United
States, is dwelt upon in the message as a serious objection to the
recharter. But this interest is the result of the assignable nature
of the stock; and if the objection be well founded, it applies to
government stock, to the stock in local banks, in canal and other
companies, created for internal improvements, and every species of
money or movables in which foreigners may acquire an interest. The
assignable character of the stock is a quality conferred not for the
benefit of foreigners, but for that of our own citizens. And the fact
of its being transferred to them is the effect of the balance of trade
being against us――an evil, if it be one, which the American system
will correct. All governments wanting capital, resort to foreign
nations possessing it in superabundance, to obtain it. Sometimes the
resort is even made by one to another belligerant nation. During our
revolutionary war we obtained foreign capital (Dutch and French) to
aid us. During the late war American stock was sent to Europe to sell;
and if I am not misinformed, to Liverpool. The question does not depend
upon the place whence the capital is obtained, but the advantageous use
of it. The confidence of foreigners in our stocks, is a proof of the
solidity of our credit. Foreigners have no voice in the administration
of this bank; and if they buy its stock, they are obliged to submit to
citizens of the United States to manage it. The senator from Tennessee,
(Mr. White,) asks what would have been the condition of this country,
if, during the late war, this bank had existed, with such an interest
in it as foreigners now hold? I will tell him. We should have avoided
many of the disasters of that war, perhaps those of Detroit and at
this place. The government would have possessed ample means for its
vigorous prosecution; and the interest of foreigners, British subjects
especially, would have operated upon them, not upon us. Will it not be
a serious evil to be obliged to remit in specie to foreigners the eight
millions which they now have in this bank, instead of retaining that
capital within the country to stimulate its industry and enterprise?
The president assigns in his message a conspicuous place to the alleged
injurious operation of the bank on the interests of the western people.
They ought to be much indebted to him for his kindness manifested
towards them; although, I think, they have much reason to deprecate
it. The people of all the west owe to this bank about thirty millions,
which have been borrowed from it; and the president thinks that the
payments for the interest, and other facilities which they derive from
the operation of the bank, are so onerous as to produce ‘a drain of
their currency, which no country can bear without inconvenience and
occasional distress.’ His remedy is to compel them to pay the whole of
the debt which they have contracted in a period short of four years.
Now, Mr. President, if they cannot pay the interest without distress,
how are they to pay the principal? If they cannot pay a part, how are
they to pay the whole? Whether the payment of the interest be or be not
a burden to them, is a question for themselves to decide, respecting
which they might be disposed to dispense with the kindness of the
president. If, instead of borrowing thirty millions from the bank, they
had borrowed a like sum from a Girard, John Jacob Astor, or any other
banker, what would they think of one who should come to them and say,
‘gentlemen of the west, it will ruin you to pay the interest on that
debt, and therefore I will oblige you to pay the whole of the principal
in less than four years.’ Would they not reply, ‘we know what we are
about; mind your own business; we are satisfied that in ours we can
make not only the interest on what we loan, but a fair profit besides.’
A great mistake exists about the western operation of the bank. It
is not the bank, but the business, the commerce of the west, and the
operations of government, that occasion the transfer, annually, of
money from the west to the Atlantic states. What is the actual course
of things? The business and commerce of the west are carried on with
New Orleans, with the southern and southwestern states and with the
Atlantic cities. We transport our dead or inanimate produce to New
Orleans, and receive in return checks or drafts of the bank of the
United States at a premium of a half per centum. We send by our drovers
our live stock to the south and southwest, and receive similar checks
in return. With these drafts or checks our merchants proceed to the
Atlantic cities, and purchase domestic or foreign goods for western
consumption. The lead and fur trade of Missouri and Illinois is also
carried on principally through the bank of the United States. The
government also transfers to places where it is wanted, through that
bank, the sums accumulated at the different land-offices, for purchases
of the public lands.
Now all these varied operations must go on; all these remittances
must be made, bank of the United States or no bank. The bank does not
create, but facilitates them. The bank is a mere vehicle; just as much
so as the steamboat is the vehicle which transports our produce to the
great mart of New Orleans, and not the grower of that produce. It is
to confound cause and effect, to attribute to the bank the transfer
of money from the west to the east. Annihilate the bank to-morrow,
and similar transfers of capital, the same description of pecuniary
operations, must be continued; not so well, it is true, but performed
they must be, ill or well, under any state of circumstances.
The true questions are, how are they now performed? how were they
conducted prior to the existence of the bank? how would they be after
it ceased? I can tell you what was our condition before the bank was
established; and, as I reason from the past to future experience, under
analogous circumstances, I can venture to predict what it will probably
be without the bank.
Before the establishment of the bank of the United States, the exchange
business of the west was carried on by a premium, which was generally
paid on all remittances to the east of two and a half per centum. The
aggregate amount of all remittances, throughout the whole circle of
the year, was very great, and instead of the sum then paid, we now pay
half per centum, or nothing, if notes of the bank of the United States
be used. Prior to the bank, we were without the capital of the thirty
millions which that institution now supplies, stimulating our industry
and invigorating our enterprise. In Kentucky we have no specie-paying
bank, scarcely any currency other than that of paper of the bank of the
United States and its branches.
How is the west to pay this enormous debt of thirty millions of
dollars? It is impossible. It cannot be done. General distress, certain,
wide-spread, inevitable ruin, must be the consequences of an attempt to
enforce the payment. Depression in the value of all property, sheriffs’
sales and sacrifices, bankruptcy, must necessarily ensue, and, with
them, relief laws, paper money, a prostration of the courts of justice,
evils from which we have just emerged, must again, with all their train
of afflictions, revisit our country. But it is argued by the gentleman
from Tennessee, (Mr. White,) that similar predictions were made,
without being realized, from the downfall of the old bank of the United
States. It is, however, to be recollected, that the old bank did not
possess one third of the capital of the present; that it had but one
office west of the mountains, whilst the present has nine; and that
it had little or no debt due to it in that quarter, whilst the present
bank has thirty millions. The war, too, which shortly followed the
downfall of the old bank, and the suspension of specie payments,
which soon followed the war, prevented the injury apprehended from
the discontinuance of the old bank.
The same gentleman further argues, that the day of payment must
come; and he asks when, better than now? It is to be indefinitely
postponed; is the charter of the present bank to be perpetual? Why,
Mr. President, all things――governments, republics, empires, laws, human
life――doubtless are to have an end; but shall we therefore accelerate
their termination? The west is now young, wants capital, and its vast
resources, needing nourishment, are daily developing. By and by, it
will accumulate wealth from its industry and enterprise, and possess
its surplus capital. The charter is not made perpetual, because it is
wrong to bind posterity perpetually. At the end of the term limited for
its renewal, posterity will have the power of determining for itself,
whether the bank shall then be wound up, or prolonged another term. And
that question may be decided, as it now ought to be, by a consideration
of the interests of all parts of the union, the west among the rest.
Sufficient for the day is the evil thereof.
The president tells us, that if the executive had been called upon
to furnish the project of a bank, the duty would have been cheerfully
performed; and he states that a bank, competent to all the duties
which maybe required by the government, might be so organized, as not
to infringe on our own delegated powers, or the reserved rights of
the states. The president is a coördinate branch of the legislative
department. As such, bills which have passed both houses of congress,
are presented to him for his approval or rejection. The idea of going
to the president for the project of a law, is totally new in the
practice, and utterly contrary to the theory of the government. What
should we think of the senate calling upon the house, or the house upon
the senate, for the _project_ of a law?
In France, the king possessed the initiative of all laws, and none
could pass without its having been previously presented to one of the
chambers by the crown, through the ministers. Does the president wish
to introduce the initiative here? Are the powers of recommendation, and
that of veto, not sufficient? Must all legislation, in its commencement
and in its termination concentrate in the president? When we shall
have reached that state of things, the election and annual sessions
of congress will be a useless charge upon the people, and the whole
business of government may be economically conducted by ukases and
decrees.
Congress does sometimes receive the suggestions and opinions of the
heads of department, as to new laws. And, at the commencement of this
session, in his annual report, the secretary of the treasury stated his
reasons at large, not merely in favor of a bank, but in support of the
renewal of the charter of the existing bank. Who could have believed
that that responsible officer was communicating to congress opinions
directly adverse to those entertained by the president himself? When
before has it happened, that the head of a department recommended the
passage of a law which, being accordingly passed and presented to the
president, is subjected to his veto? What sort of a bank it is, with a
project of which the president would have designed to furnish congress,
if they had applied to him, he has not stated. In the absence of such
statement, we can only conjecture that it is his famous treasury bank,
formerly recommended by him, from which the people have recoiled with
the instinctive horror, excited by the approach of the cholera.
The message states, that ‘an investigation _unwillingly_ conceded,
and so _restricted_ in time as necessarily to make it _incomplete_
and _unsatisfactory_, disclose enough to excite suspicion and alarm.’
As there is no prospect of the passage of this bill, the president’s
objections notwithstanding, by a constitutional majority of two thirds,
it can never reach the house of representatives. The members of that
house, and especially its distinguished chairman of the committee of
ways and means, who reported the bill, are, therefore, cut off from all
opportunity of defending themselves. Under these circumstances, allow
me to ask how the president has ascertained that the investigation was
_unwillingly_ conceded? I have understood directly the contrary; and
that the chairman, already referred to, as well as other members in
favor of the renewal of the charter, promptly consented to and voted
for the investigation. And we all know that those in support of the
renewal could have prevented the investigation, and that they did not.
But suspicion and alarm have been excited! SUSPICION AND ALARM! Against
whom is this suspicion? The house, or the bank, or both?
Mr. President, I protest against the right of any chief magistrate to
come into either house of congress, and scrutinize the motives of its
members; to examine whether a measure has been passed with promptitude
or repugnance; and to pronounce upon the willingness or unwillingness
with which it has been adopted or rejected. It is an interference
in concerns which partake of a domestic nature. The official and
constitutional relations between the president and the two houses of
congress subsist with them as organized bodies. His action is confined
to their consummated proceedings, and does not extend to measures in
their incipient stages, during their progress through the houses, nor
to the motives by which they are actuated. There are some parts of this
message that ought to excite deep alarm; and that especially in which
the president announces that each public officer may interpret the
constitution as he pleases. His language is, ‘each public officer, who
takes an oath to support the constitution, swears that he will support
it as he understands it, and not as it is understood by others.’ * * *
‘The opinion of the judges has no more authority over congress than
the opinion of congress has over the judges; and _on that point the
president is independent of both_.’ Now, Mr. President, I conceive,
with great deference, that the president has mistaken the purport
of the oath to support the constitution of the United States. No one
swears to support it _as he understands it_, but to support it simply
as it is in truth. All men are bound to obey the laws, of which the
constitution is the supreme; but must they obey them as they are, or
_as they understand them_? If the obligation of obedience is limited
and controlled by the measure of information; in other words, if the
party is bound to obey the constitution only as he understands it; what
would be the consequence? The judge of an inferior court would disobey
the mandate of a superior tribunal, because it was not in conformity to
the constitution, _as he understands it_; a custom-house officer would
disobey a circular from the treasury department, because contrary to
the constitution, _as he understands it_; an American minister would
disregard an instruction from the president, communicated through the
department of state, because not agreeable to the constitution, _as he
understands it_; and a subordinate officer in the army or navy, would
violate the orders of his superior, because they were not in accordance
with the constitution, _as he understands it_. We should have nothing
settled, nothing stable, nothing fixed. There would be general disorder
and confusion throughout every branch of administration, from the
highest to the lowest officers――universal nullification. For what
is the doctrine of the president but that of South Carolina applied
throughout the union? The president independent both of congress and
the supreme court! only bound to execute the laws of the one and the
decisions of the other, as far as they conform to the constitution of
the United States, _as far as he understands it_! Then it should be the
duty of every president, on his installation into office, to carefully
examine all the acts in the statute book, approved by his predecessors,
and mark out those which he was resolved not to execute, and to which
he meant to apply this new species of veto, because they were repugnant
to the constitution _as he understands it_. And, after the expiration
of every term of the supreme court, he should send for the record of
its decisions, and discriminate between those which he would, and those
which he would not, execute, because they were or were not agreeable to
the constitution, _as he understands it_.
There is another constitutional doctrine contained in the message,
which is entirely new to me. It asserts that ‘the government of the
United States have no constitutional power to purchase lands within
the states,’ except ‘for the erection of forts, magazines, arsenals,
dockyards, and other needful buildings;’ and even for these objects,
only ‘by the consent of the legislature of the state in which the
same shall be.’ Now sir, I had supposed that the right of congress
to purchase lands in any state was incontestable; and, in point of
fact, it probably at this moment owns land in every state of the union,
purchased for taxes, or as a judgment or mortgage creditor. And there
are various acts of congress which regulate the purchase and transfer
of such lands. The advisers of the president have confounded the
faculty of purchasing lands with the exercise of exclusive jurisdiction,
which is restricted by the constitution to the forts and other
buildings described.
The message presents some striking instances of discrepancy. First, it
contests the right to establish one bank, and objects to the bill that
it limits and restrains the power of congress to establish several.
Second, it urges that the bill does not recognise the power of state
taxation generally; and complains that facilities are afforded to the
exercise of that power in respect to the stock held by individuals.
Third, it objects that any bonus is taken, and insists that not
enough is demanded. And fourth, it complains that foreigners have
too much influence, and that stock transferred loses the privilege
of representation in the elections of the bank, which, if it were
retained, would give them more.
Mr. President, we are about to close one of the longest and most
arduous sessions of congress under the present constitution; and
when we return among our constituents, what account of the operations
of their government shall we be bound to communicate? We shall
be compelled to say, that the supreme court is paralysed, and the
missionaries retained in prison in contempt of its authority, and in
defiance of numerous treaties and laws of the United States; that the
executive, through the secretary of the treasury, sent to congress
a tariff bill which would have destroyed numerous branches of our
domestic industry, and to the final destruction of all; that the veto
has been applied to the bank of the United States, our only reliance
for a sound and uniform currency; that the senate has been violently
attacked for the exercise of a clear constitutional power; that the
house of representatives have been unnecessarily assailed; and that the
president has promulgated a rule of action for those who have taken the
oath to support the constitution of the United States, that must, if
there be practical conformity to it, introduce general nullification,
and end in the absolute subversion of the government.