[Footnote 29: Pocket veto. This message was never sent to Congress, but
was deposited in the Department of State.]
MARCH 3, 1837--11.45 p.m.
The bill from the Senate entitled "An act designating and limiting the
funds receivable for the revenues of the United States" came to my hands
yesterday at 2 o'clock p. m. On perusing it I found its provisions so
complex and uncertain that I deemed it necessary to obtain the opinion
of the Attorney-General of the United States on several important
questions touching its construction and effect before I could decide
on the disposition to be made of it. The Attorney-General took up the
subject immediately, and his reply was reported to me this day at 5
o'clock p. m., and is hereunto annexed. As this officer, after a careful
and laborious examination of the bill and a distinct expression of his
opinion on the points proposed to him still came to the conclusion
that the construction of the bill, should it become a law, would yet
be a subject of much perplexity and doubt (a view of the bill entirely
coincident with my own), and as I can not think it proper, in a matter
of such vital interest and of such constant application, to approve a
bill so liable to diversity of interpretations, and more especially as
I have not had time, amid the duties constantly pressing on me, to give
the subject that deliberate consideration which its importance demands,
I am constrained to retain the bill, without acting definitively
thereon; and to the end that my reasons for this step may be fully
understood I shall cause this paper, with the opinion of the
Attorney-General and the bill in question, to be deposited in the
Department of State.