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 alllegislation, 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 betweenthe 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 discriminatebetween 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.