WASHINGTON, _September 9, 1841_.
_To the House of Representatives of the United States_:
It is with extreme regret that I feel myself constrained by the duty
faithfully to execute the office of President of the United States
and to the best of my ability to "preserve, protect, and defend the
Constitution of the United States" to return to the House in which it
originated the bill "to provide for the better collection, safe-keeping,
and disbursement of the public revenue by means of a corporation to be
styled the Fiscal Corporation of the United States," with my written
objections.
In my message sent to the Senate on the 16th day of August last,
returning the bill "to incorporate the subscribers to the Fiscal Bank
of the United States," I distinctly declared that my own opinion had
been uniformly proclaimed to be against the exercise "of the power of
Congress to create a national bank to operate _per se_ over the Union,"
and, entertaining that opinion, my main objection to that bill was based
upon the highest moral and religious obligations of conscience and the
Constitution. I readily admit that whilst the qualified _veto_ with
which the Chief Magistrate is invested should be regarded and was
intended by the wise men who made it a part of the Constitution as a
great conservative principle of our system, without the exercise of
which on important occasions a mere representative majority might urge
the Government in its legislation beyond the limits fixed by its framers
or might exert its just powers too hastily or oppressively, yet it is
a power which ought to be most cautiously exerted, and perhaps never
except in a case eminently involving the public interest or one in which
the oath of the President, acting under his convictions, both mental
and moral, imperiously requires its exercise. In such a case he has no
alternative. He must either exert the negative power intrusted to him
by the Constitution chiefly for its own preservation, protection, and
defense or commit an act of gross moral turpitude. Mere regard to the
will of a majority must not in a constitutional republic like ours
control this sacred and solemn duty of a sworn officer. The Constitution
itself I regard and cherish as the embodied and written will of the
whole people of the United States. It is their fixed and fundamental
law, which they unanimously prescribe to the public functionaries, their
mere trustees and servants. This _their_ will and the law which _they_
have given us as the rule of our action have no guard, no guaranty of
preservation, protection, and defense, but the oaths which it prescribes
to the public officers, the sanctity with which they shall religiously
observe those oaths, and the patriotism with which the people shall
shield it by their own sovereign will, which has made the Constitution
supreme. It must be exerted against the will of a mere representative
majority or not at all. It is alone in pursuance of that will that any
measure can reach the President, and to say that because a majority
in Congress have passed a bill he should therefore sanction it is
to abrogate the power altogether and to render its insertion in the
Constitution a work of absolute supererogation. The duty is to guard the
fundamental will of the people themselves from (in this case; I admit,
unintentional) change or infraction by a majority in Congress; and in
that light alone do I regard the constitutional duty which I now most
reluctantly discharge. Is this bill now presented for my approval or
disapproval such a bill as I have already declared could not receive my
sanction? Is it such a bill as calls for the exercise of the negative
power under the Constitution? Does it violate the Constitution by
creating a national bank to operate _per se_ over the Union? Its title,
in the first place, describes its general character. It is "an act to
provide for the better collection, safe-keeping, and disbursement of the
_public_ revenue by means of a _corporation_ to be styled the _Fiscal
Corporation_ of the _United States_." In style, then, it is plainly
national in its character. Its powers, functions, and duties are those
which pertain to the _collecting, keeping_, and _disbursing_ the
_public_ revenue. The means by which these are to be exerted is a
_corporation_ to be styled the _Fiscal_ Corporation of the United
States. It is a corporation created by the Congress of the United
States, in its character of a national legislature for the whole
Union, to perform the _fiscal_ purposes, meet the _fiscal_ wants and
exigencies, supply the _fiscal_ uses, and exert the _fiscal_ agencies
of the Treasury of the United States. Such is its own description of
itself. Do its provisions contradict its title? They do not. It is true
that by its first section it provides that it shall be established in
the District of Columbia; but the amount of its capital, the manner
in which its stock is to be subscribed for and held, the persons and
bodies, corporate and politic, by whom its stock may be held, the
appointment of its directors and their powers and duties, its
fundamental articles, especially that to establish agencies in any part
of the Union, the corporate powers and business of such agencies, the
prohibition of Congress to establish any other corporation with similar
powers for twenty years, with express reservation in the same clause
to modify or create any bank for the District of Columbia, so that the
aggregate capital shall not exceed five millions, without enumerating
other features which are equally distinctive and characteristic, clearly
show that it can not be regarded as other than a bank of the United
States, with powers seemingly more limited than have heretofore been
granted to such an institution. It operates _per se_ over the Union by
virtue of the unaided and, in my view, assumed authority of Congress
as a national legislature, as distinguishable from a bank created by
Congress for the District of Columbia as the local legislature of the
District. Every United States bank heretofore created has had power to
deal in bills of exchange as well as local discounts. Both were trading
privileges conferred, and both were exercised by virtue of the aforesaid
power of Congress over the whole Union. The question of power remains
unchanged without reference to the extent of privilege granted. If this
proposed corporation is to be regarded as a local bank of the District
of Columbia, invested by Congress with general powers to operate over
the Union, it is obnoxious to still stronger objections. It assumes that
Congress may invest a local institution with general or national powers.
With the same propriety that it may do this in regard to a bank of the
District of Columbia it may as to a State bank. Yet who can indulge the
idea that this Government can rightfully, by making a State bank its
fiscal agent, invest it with the absolute and unqualified powers
conferred by this bill? When I come to look at the details of the bill,
they do not recommend it strongly to my adoption. A brief notice of some
of its provisions will suffice.
First. It may justify substantially a system of discounts of the most
objectionable character. It is to deal in bills of exchange drawn in one
State and payable in another without any restraint. The bill of exchange
may have an unlimited time to run, and its renewability is nowhere
guarded against. It may, in fact, assume the most objectionable form of
accommodation paper. It is not required to rest on any actual, real, or
substantial exchange basis. A drawer in one place becomes the accepter
in another, and so in turn the accepter may become the drawer upon a
mutual understanding. It may at the same time indulge in mere local
discounts under the name of bills of exchange. A bill drawn at
Philadelphia on Camden, N.J., at New York on a border town in New
Jersey, at Cincinnati on Newport, in Kentucky, not to multiply other
examples, might, for anything in this bill to restrain it, become a mere
matter of local accommodation. Cities thus relatively situated would
possess advantages over cities otherwise situated of so decided a
character as most justly to excite dissatisfaction.
Second. There is no limit prescribed to the premium in the purchase
of bills of exchange, thereby correcting none of the evils under which
the community now labors, and operating most injuriously upon the
agricultural States, in which the irregularities in the rates of
exchange are most severely felt. Nor are these the only consequences.
A resumption of specie payments by the banks of those States would be
liable to indefinite postponement; for as the operation of the agencies
of the interior would chiefly consist in selling bills of exchange, and
the purchases could only be made in specie or the notes of banks paying
specie, the State banks would either have to continue with their doors
closed or exist at the mercy of this national monopoly of brokerage.
Nor can it be passed over without remark that whilst the District of
Columbia is made the seat of the principal bank, its citizens are
excluded from all participation in any benefit it might afford by
a positive prohibition on the bank from all discounting within the
District.
These are some of the objections which prominently exist against the
details of the bill. Others might be urged of much force, but it would
be unprofitable to dwell upon them. Suffice it to add that this charter
is designed to continue for twenty years without a competitor; that the
defects to which I have alluded, being founded on the fundamental law of
the corporation, are irrevocable, and that if the objections be well
founded it would be overhazardous to pass the bill into a law.
In conclusion I take leave most respectfully to say that I have felt the
most anxious solicitude to meet the wishes of Congress in the adoption
of a fiscal agent which, avoiding all constitutional objections, should
harmonize conflicting opinions. Actuated by this feeling, I have been
ready to yield much in a spirit of conciliation to the opinions of
others; and it is with great pain that I now feel compelled to differ
from Congress a second time in the same session. At the commencement of
this session, inclined from choice to defer to the legislative will, I
submitted to Congress the propriety of adopting a fiscal agent which,
without violating the Constitution, would separate the public money from
the Executive control and perform the operations of the Treasury without
being burdensome to the people or inconvenient or expensive to the
Government. It is deeply to be regretted that this department of the
Government can not upon constitutional and other grounds concur with the
legislative department in this last measure proposed to attain these
desirable objects. Owing to the brief space between the period of the
death of my lamented predecessor and my own installation into office,
I was, in fact, not left time to prepare and submit a definitive
recommendation of my own in my regular message, and since my mind has
been wholly occupied in a most anxious attempt to conform my action
to the legislative will. In this communication I am confined by the
Constitution to my objections simply to this bill, but the period of the
regular session will soon arrive, when it will be my duty, under another
clause of the Constitution, "to give to Congress information of the
state of the Union and recommend to their consideration such measures
as" I "shall judge necessary and expedient." And I most respectfully
submit, in a spirit of harmony, whether the present differences of
opinion should be pressed further at this time, and whether the
peculiarity of my situation does not entitle me to a postponement of
this subject to a more auspicious period for deliberation. The two
Houses of Congress have distinguished themselves at this extraordinary
session by the performance of an immense mass of labor at a season very
unfavorable both to health and action, and have passed many laws which
I trust will prove highly beneficial to the interests of the country
and fully answer its just expectations. It has been my good fortune
and pleasure to concur with them in all measures except this. And why
should our difference on this alone be pushed to extremes? It is my
anxious desire that it should not be. I too have been burdened with
extraordinary labors of late, and I sincerely desire time for deep
and deliberate reflection on this the greatest difficulty of my
Administration. May we not now pause until a more favorable time, when,
with the most anxious hope that the Executive and Congress may cordially
unite, some measure of finance may be deliberately adopted promotive of
the good of our common country?
I will take this occasion to declare that the conclusions to which
I have brought myself are those of a settled conviction, founded, in
my opinion, on a just view of the Constitution; that in arriving at it
I have been actuated by no other motive or desire than to uphold the
institutions of the country as they have come down to us from the hands
of our godlike ancestors, and that I shall esteem my efforts to sustain
them, even though I perish, more honorable than to win the applause of
men by a sacrifice of my duty and my conscience.