presented to him during the last ten days of the session; if he may refuse assent to them all, without being called upon to assign any reasons whatever, it will certainly be a great practical augmentation of his power. Any one who looks at a volume of the statutes, will see that a great portion of the laws are actually passed within the last ten days of each session. If the President is at liberty to negative any, or all, of these laws, at pleasure, or rather, to refuse to render the bills laws, by approving them, and still may neglect to return them to Congress, for renewed action, he will hold a very important control over the legislation untry. The day of adjournof U. " ment is usually fixed, some weeks in advance. This being fixed, a little activity and perseverance may easily, in most cases, and perhaps in all, where no alarm has been excited, postpone important pending measures to a period within ten days of the close of the session: and this operation leaves all such measures at the pleasure of the President, to sign the bills or not, without being obliged to state his reasons publicly.

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A silent VETO, on the Bank Bill, would have been the inevitable fate of that Bill, if its friends had not refused to fix on any term for adjournment before the President should have had the bill so long as to be required, by constitutional provisions, to sign it, or to send it back with his reasons for not signing it. The two Houses did not agree, and would not agree, to fix a day for adjournment, until the Bill was sent to the President, and then care was taken to fix on such a day as should allow him the whole constitutional period. This seasonable presentment rescued the bill from the power of the silent negative.

This practical innovation on the mode of administering the Government, so much at variance with its general principles, and so capable of defeating the most useful acts, deserves public consideration. Its tendency is, to disturb the harmony, which ought always to exist between Congress and the Executive, and to turn that, which the Constitution intended only as an extraordinary remedy, for extraordinary cases, into a common means of making Executive discretion paramount to the discretion of Congress, in the enactment of laws.

Mr. President,-the Executive has not only used these unaccustomed means, to prevent the passage of laws, but

it has also refused to enforce the execution of laws actually passed. An eminent instance of this, is found in the course adopted relative to the Indian Intercourse Law of 1802. Upon being applied to, in behalf of the MISSIONARIES, to execute that law, for their relief and protection, the President replied, that the State of Georgia having extended her laws over the Indian territory, the laws of Congress had thereby been superseded. This is the substance of his answer, as communicated through the Secretary of War. He holds, then, that the law of the State is paramount to the law of Congress. The Supreme Court has adjudged this act of Georgia to be void, as being repugnant to a constitutional law of the United States. But the President pays no more regard to this decision, than to the act of Congress itself. The MISSIONARIES remain in prison, held there by a condemnation, under a law of a State, which the Supreme Judicial Tribunal has pronounced to be null and void. The Supreme Court have decided that the act of Congress is constitutional, that it is a binding statute, that it has the same force as other laws, and is as much entitled to be obeyed and executed as other laws. The President, on the contrary, declares that the law of Congress has been superseded, by the law of the State, and therefore he will not carry its provisions into effect. Now we know, sir, that the Constitution of the United States declares, that that Constitution, and all acts of Congress passed in pursuance of it, shall be the supreme law of the land, any thing in any State law to the contrary notwithstanding. This would seem to be a plain case, then, in which the law should be executed. It has been solemnly decided to be in actual force, by the highest judicial authority; its execution is demanded for the relief of free citizens, now suffering the pains of unjust and unlawful imprisonment; yet the President refuses to execute it.

In the case of the Chicago Road, some sessions ago, the President approved the Bill, but accompanied his approval by a Message, saying how far he deemed it a proper law, and how far, therefore, it ought to be carried into execution.

In the case of the Harbor Bill of the late session, being applied to, by a member of Congress for directions for carrying parts of the law into effect, he declined giving them, and made a distinction between such parts of the law as he

should cause to be executed, and such as he should not; and his right to make this distinction has been openly maintained, by those who habitually defend his measures. Indeed, sir, these, and other instances of liberties taken with plain statute laws, flow, naturally, from the principles expressly avowed by the President, under his own hand. In that important document, sir, upon which it seems to be his fate to stand, or to fall, before the American People, the VETO Message, he holds the following language: "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." Mr. President, the general adoption of the sentiments, expressed in this sentence, would dissolve our Government. It would raise every man's private opinions into a standard for his own conduct; and there certainly is, there can be, no government, where every man is to judge, for himself, of his own rights, and his own obligations. Where every one is his own arbiter, force, and not law, is the governing power. He who may judge for himself, and decide for himself, must execute his own decisions; and this is the law of force. I confess, sir, it strikes me with astonishment, that so wild, so disorganizing a sentiment should be uttered by a President of the United States. I should think it must have escaped from its author, through want of reflection, or from the habit of little reflection, on such subjects, if I could suppose it possible, that on a question exciting so much public attention, and of so much national importance, any such extraordinary doctrine could find its way through inadvertence, into a formal and solemn public act. Standing as it does, it affirms a proposition which would effectually repeal all Constitutional and all legal obligations. The Constitution declares, that every public officer, in the State Government, as well as in the General Government, shall take an oath to support the Constitution of the United States. This is all. Would it not have cast an air of ridicule on the whole provision, if the Constitution had gone on to add the words, 66 as he understands it?" What could come nearer to a solemn farce, than to bind a man, by oath, and still leave him to be his own interpreter of his own obligation? Sir, those who are to execute the laws have no more a license to construe them, for themselves, than those whose only duty is to obey

them. Public officers are bound to support the Constitution; private citizens are bound to obey it; and there is no more indulgence granted to the public officer, to support the Constitution only as he understands it, than to a private citizen to obey it only as he understands it; and what is true of the Constitution, in this respect, is equally true of any law. Laws are to be executed, and to be obeyed, not as individuals may interpret them, but according to public, authoritative interpretation and adjudication. The sentiment of the message would abrogate the obligation of the whole criminal code. If every man is to judge of the Constitution and the laws for himself, if he is to obey, and support them, only as he may say he understands them, a revolution, I think, would take place in the administration of justice; and discussions about the law of treason, murder and arson, should be addressed, not to the judicial bench, but to those who might stand charged with such offences. The object of discussion should be, if we run out this notion to its natural extent, to convince the culprit himself how he ought to understand the law.

Mr. President, how is it possible, that a sentiment so wild, and so dangerous, so encouraging to all who feel a desire to oppose the laws, and to impair the Constitution, should have been uttered by the President of the United States, at this eventful and critical moment? Are we not threatened with dissolution of the Union? Are we not told that the laws of the Government shall be openly and directly resisted? Is not the whole country looking, with the utmost anxiety, to what may be the result of these threatened courses? And, at this very moment, so full of peril to the State, the Chief Magistrate puts forth opinions and sentiments as truly subversive of all Government, as absolutely in conflict with the authority of the Constitution, as the wildest theories of Nullification. Mr. President, I have very little regard for the law, or the logic, of Nullification. But there is not an individual in its ranks, capable of putting two ideas together, who, if you will grant him the principles of the Veto Message, cannot defend all that Nullification has ever threatened. To make this assertion good, sir, let us see how the case stands. The Legislature of South-Carolina, it is said, will nullify the late Revenue, or Tariff law, because, they say, it is not warranted by the Constitution of the United States, as they understand the Constitution. They, as well as the President of the United

States, have sworn to support the Constitution. Both he and they have taken the same oath, in the same words.

Now, sir, since he claims the right to interpret the Constitution as he pleases, how can he deny the same right to them? Is his oath less stringent than theirs? Has he a prerogative of dispensation, which they do not possess? How can he answer them, when they tell him, that the Revenue laws are unconstitutional, as they understand the Constitution, and that, therefore, they will nullify them? Will he reply to them, according to the doctrines of his annual Message in 1830, that precedent has settled the question, if it was ever doubtful? They will answer him in his own words, in the Veto Message, that in such a case precedent is not binding. Will he say to them, that the Revenue law is a law of Congress, which must be executed, until it shall be declared void? They will answer him, that, in other cases, he has himself refused to execute laws of Congress which had not been declared void, but which had been, on the contrary, declared valid. Will he urge the force of judicial decision? They will answer, that he himself does not admit the binding obligation of such decisions. Sir, the President of the United States is of opinion, that an individual, called on to execute a law, may, himself, judge of its constitutional validity. Has Nullification any thing more revolutionary than that? The Presiden: is of opinion that judicial interpretations of the Constitution and the laws, do not bind the consciences, and ought not to bind the conduct, of men. Has Nullification any thing more disorganizing than that? The President is of opinion, that every officer is bound to support the Constitution only according to what ought to be, in his private opinion, its construction. Has Nullification, in its widest flight, ever reached to an extravagance like that? No, sir, never. The doctrine of Nullification, in my judgment a most false, dangerous, and revolutionary doctrine, is this; that the State, or a State, may declare the extent of the obligations which its citizens are under to the United States; in other words, that a State, by State laws, and State judicatures, may conclusively construe the Constitution, for its own citizens. But that every individual may construe it for himself, is a refinement on the theory of resistance to constitutional power, a sublimation of the right of being disloyal to the Union, a free charter for the elevation of private opinion above the authority of the fundamental law