[Footnote 79: The House of Representatives ordered that it be not
entered on the Journal.]
WASHINGTON, _August 30, 1842_.
_To the House of Representatives_:
By the Constitution of the United States it is provided that "every bill
which shall have passed the House of Representatives and the Senate
shall before it become a law be presented to the President of the United
States; _if he approve_, he _shall_ sign it; but if _not_, he _shall_
return it with his objections to that House in which it shall have
originated, who shall enter the objections at large upon the Journal
and proceed to reconsider it."
In strict compliance with the positive obligation thus imposed upon me
by the Constitution, not having been able to bring myself to approve a
bill which originated in the House of Representatives entitled "An act
to provide revenue from imports, and to change and modify existing laws
imposing duties on imports, and for other purposes," I returned the same
to the House with my objections to its becoming a law. These objections,
which had entirely satisfied my own mind of the great impolicy, if not
unconstitutionality, of the measure, were presented in the most
respectful and even deferential terms. I would not have been so far
forgetful of what was due from one department of the Government to
another as to have intentionally employed in my official intercourse
with the House any language that could be in the slightest degree
offensive to those to whom it was addressed. If in assigning my
objections to the bill I had so far forgotten what was due to the
House of Representatives as to impugn its motives in passing the bill,
I should owe, not only to that House, but to the country, the most
profound apology. Such departure from propriety is, however, not
complained of in any proceeding which the House has adopted. It has,
on the contrary, been expressly made a subject of remark, and almost
of complaint, that the language in which my dissent was couched was
studiously guarded and cautious.
Such being the character of the official communication in question,
I confess I was wholly unprepared for the course which has been pursued
in regard to it. In the exercise of its power to regulate its own
proceedings the House for the first time, it is believed, in the history
of the Government thought proper to refer the message to a select
committee of its own body for the purpose, as my respect for the
House would have compelled me to infer, of deliberately weighing the
objections urged against the bill by the Executive with a view to its
own judgment upon the question of the final adoption or rejection of
the measure.
Of the temper and feelings in relation to myself of some of the members
selected for the performance of this duty I have nothing to say.
That was a matter entirely within the discretion of the House of
Representatives. But that committee, taking a different view of its duty
from that which I should have supposed had led to its creation, instead
of confining itself to the objections urged against the bill availed
itself of the occasion formally to arraign the motives of the President
for others of his acts since his induction into office. In the absence
of all proof and, as I am bound to declare, against all law or precedent
in parliamentary proceedings, and at the same time in a manner which
it would be difficult to reconcile with the comity hitherto sacredly
observed in the intercourse between independent and coordinate
departments of the Government, it has assailed my whole official conduct
without the shadow of a pretext for such assault, and, stopping short
of impeachment, has charged me, nevertheless, with offenses declared
to deserve impeachment.
Had the extraordinary report which the committee thus made to the
House been permitted to remain without the sanction of the latter,
I should not have uttered a regret or complaint upon the subject.
But unaccompanied as it is by any particle of testimony to support the
charges it contains, without a deliberate examination, almost without
any discussion, the House of Representatives has been pleased to adopt
it as its own, and thereby to become my accuser before the country and
before the world. The high character of such an accuser, the gravity of
the charges which have been made, and the judgment pronounced against me
by the adoption of the report upon a distinct and separate vote of the
House leave me no alternative but to enter my solemn protest against
this proceeding as unjust to myself as a man, as an invasion of my
constitutional powers as Chief Magistrate of the American people, and as
a violation in my person of rights secured to every citizen by the laws
and the Constitution. That Constitution has intrusted to the House
of Representatives the sole power of impeachment. Such impeachment
is required to be tried before the most august tribunal known to
our institutions. The Senate of the United States, composed of the
representatives of the sovereignty of the States, is converted into a
hall of justice, and in order to insure the strictest observance of the
rules of evidence and of legal procedure the Chief Justice of the United
States, the highest judicial functionary of the land, is required to
preside over its deliberations. In the presence of such a judicatory the
voice of faction is presumed to be silent, and the sentence of guilt or
innocence is pronounced under the most solemn sanctions of religion, of
honor, and of law. To such a tribunal does the Constitution authorize
the House of Representatives to carry up its accusations against any
chief of the executive department whom it may believe to be guilty of
high crimes and misdemeanors. Before that tribunal the accused is
confronted with his accusers, and may demand the privilege, which the
justice of the common law secures to the humblest citizen, of a full,
patient, and impartial inquiry into the facts, upon the testimony of
witnesses rigidly cross-examined and deposing in the face of day.
If such a proceeding had been adopted toward me, unjust as I should
certainly have regarded it, I should, I trust, have met with a becoming
constancy a trial as painful as it would have been undeserved. I would
have manifested by a profound submission to the laws of my country my
perfect faith in her justice, and, relying on the purity of my motives
and the rectitude of my conduct, should have looked forward with
confidence to a triumphant refutation in the presence of that country
and by the solemn judgment of such a tribunal not only of whatever
charges might have been formally preferred against me, but of all the
calumnies of which I have hitherto been the unresisting victim. As
it is, I have been accused without evidence and condemned without a
hearing. As far as such proceedings can accomplish it, I am deprived of
public confidence in the administration of the Government and denied
even the boast of a good name--a name transmitted to me from a patriot
father, prized as my proudest inheritance, and carefully preserved for
those who are to come after me as the most precious of all earthly
possessions. I am not only subjected to imputations affecting my
character as an individual, but am charged with offenses against the
country so grave and so heinous as to deserve public disgrace and
disfranchisement. I am charged with violating pledges which I never
gave, and, because I execute what I believe to be the law, with usurping
powers not conferred by law, and, above all, with using the powers
conferred upon the President by the Constitution from corrupt motives
and for unwarrantable ends. And these charges are made without any
particle of evidence to sustain them, and, as I solemnly affirm,
without any foundation in truth.
Why is a proceeding of this sort adopted at this time? Is the occasion
for it found in the fact that having been elected to the second office
under the Constitution by the free and voluntary suffrages of the
people, I have succeeded to the first according to the express
provisions of the fundamental law of the same people? It is true that
the succession of the Vice-President to the Chief Magistracy has never
occurred before and that all prudent and patriotic minds have looked
on this new trial of the wisdom and stability of our institutions with
a somewhat anxious concern. I have been made to feel too sensibly
the difficulties of my unprecedented position not to know all that is
intended to be conveyed in the reproach cast upon a President without
a party. But I found myself placed in this most responsible station
by no usurpation or contrivance of my own. I was called to it, under
Providence, by the supreme law of the land and the deliberately declared
will of the people. It is by these that I have been clothed with the
high powers which they have seen fit to confide to their Chief Executive
and been charged with the solemn responsibility under which those powers
are to be exercised. It is to them that I hold myself answerable as a
moral agent for a free and conscientious discharge of the duties which
they have imposed upon me. It is not as an individual merely that I am
now called upon to resist the encroachments of unconstitutional power.
I represent the executive authority of the people of the United States,
and it is in their name, whose mere agent and servant I am, and whose
will declared in their fundamental law I dare not, even were I inclined,
to disobey, that I protest against every attempt to break down the
undoubted constitutional power of this department without a solemn
amendment of that fundamental law.
I am determined to uphold the Constitution in this as in other
respects to the utmost of my ability and in defiance of all personal
consequences. What may happen to an individual is of little importance,
but the Constitution of the country, or any one of its great and clear
principles and provisions, is too sacred to be surrendered under any
circumstances whatever by those who are charged with its protection and
defense. Least of all should he be held guiltless who, placed at the
head of one of the great departments of the Government, should shrink
from the exercise of its unquestionable authority on the most important
occasions and should consent without a struggle to efface all the
barriers so carefully erected by the people to control and circumscribe
the powers confided to their various agents. It may be desirable, as the
majority of the House of Representatives has declared it is, that no
such checks upon the will of the Legislature should be suffered to
continue. This is a matter for the people and States to decide, but
until they shall have decided it I shall feel myself bound to execute,
without fear or favor, the law as it has been written by our
predecessors.
I protest against this whole proceeding of the House of Representatives
as _ex parte_ and extrajudicial. I protest against it as subversive of
the common right of all citizens to be condemned only upon a fair and
impartial trial, according to law and evidence, before the country.
I protest against it as destructive of all the comity of intercourse
between the departments of this Government, and destined sooner or
later to lead to conflicts fatal to the peace of the country and the
integrity of the Constitution. I protest against it in the name of that
Constitution which is not only my own shield of protection and defense,
but that of every American citizen. I protest against it in the name of
the people, by whose will I stand where I do, by whose authority I
exercised the power which I am charged with having usurped, and to whom
I am responsible for a firm and faithful discharge according to my own
convictions of duty of the high stewardship confided to me by them.
I protest against it in the name of all regulated liberty and all
limited government as a proceeding tending to the utter destruction
of the checks and balances of the Constitution and the accumulating
in the hands of the House of Representatives, or a bare majority of
Congress for the time being, an uncontrolled and despotic power. And
I respectfully ask that this my protest may be entered upon the Journal
of the House of Representatives as a solemn and formal declaration for
all time to come against the injustice and unconstitutionality of such
a proceeding.