A Biography of Henry Clay, the Senator from Kentucky / Containing Also, a Complete Report of All His Speeches; Selections From His Private Correspondence; Eulogies in the Senate and House; and a Poem, by George D. Prentice, Esq.

by Unknown

Mr. Benton said he would wish to make a remark; and, if he was precluded by the pressing of this question, he would find some other opportunity of making it.

The question was then taken on the motion to lay the bill upon the table, and decided in the affirmative—ays nineteen.

Mr. Benton then moved to take up the message for consideration.

After further discussion, Mr. Clay said, he did not rise to reply to any one who had felt himself called upon to rise in the senate to vindicate the president. If there were any such member, he did not wish to disturb him in his office of vindicator of the president, or to affect the complacency with which he might regard his vindication.But he (Mr. Clay) stood here to sustain his own course, to vindicate the constitution, and to vindicate the rights of congress under it. And he must repeat, that the withholding of the land bill, at the last session, under the circumstances of the case, was a violation of the constitution, and disrespectful to the senate. What were the circumstances?

At two different sessions of congress, the land subject was before it. At that which preceded the last, a bill had been introduced to distribute among the states the proceeds of the public lands. The whole subject, by the bill and by reports of committees, was laid before congress and spread before the country. A copy of the bill, when it was first introduced, according to the constant practice of congress, was sent to the president. He was thus, as well as the country generally, put in entire possession of the matter. It attracted great public attention. It engaged that of the president. And, accordingly, at the commencement of the last session, in his annual message, he adverted to it, in a manner which evidently showed that the writer of the message fully understood it, and all the views which had been developed about it.

[Here Mr. Clay read the message of the last session, so far as it related to the public lands, to show that the president had himself invited the attention of congress to it, as one of urgent and pressing importance; that the discretion of congress to make any disposition of the public lands, which they might deem best for the harmony, union, and interest of the United States, was uncontrolled; that the question ought speedily to be settled; and that the president had considered, but objected to the bill of the previous session, proposing, as a substitute, a plan of his own, which, while the message on the table argued that the public lands belonged to all the states, proposed to give the unsold lands to some of them.]

Thus was congress, at the commencement of the last session, officially invited to act, and to act speedily, respecting the public lands; and thus did the president manifest his knowledge of the provisions of the bill of the previous session. Well, sir, congress again took up the question. The identical bill of the previous session was again introduced, and again, prior to its passage, placed before the president, along with the other printed documents, according to standing usage. And it was passed by both houses, substantially in the shape in which at the previous session it was passed by the senate, except that the restriction as to the power of the states to apply the sum to be distributed among the several states, after the deduction of the twelve and a half per centum first set apart for the new states, was stricken out.

In this form, the bill was laid before the president on the second day of March last. It was no stranger, but an old acquaintance. He had seen it repeatedly before; and he must have been well informed as to its progress in congress. He had commented on the very project contained in the bill, when he had brought forward his own in his message, at the opening of the session. Without deigning to communicate to congress what disposition he had made,or meant to make of it, he permitted the body to rise, in utter ignorance of his intentions.

It may be true, that there was a great press of business on the president on the second of March, and that he may have acted upon some ninety or one hundred bills. But this is what occurs with every president on the day before the termination of the short session of congress. With most of those bills the president must have been less acquainted than he was with the land bill. Of some of them he probably had never heard at all. Not one of them possessed the importance of the land bill. How did it happen that the president could find time to decide on so many new bills, and yet had not time to examine and dispose of one which had long been before him and the public; one embracing a subject which he thought the union, harmony, and interests of the states required should be speedily adjusted; one which he himself had pronounced his judgment upon at the commencement of the session? By withholding the bill, the president took upon himself a responsibility beyond the exercise of the veto. He deprived congress altogether of its constitutional right to act upon the bill, and to pass it, his negative notwithstanding.

The president is, by the constitution, secured time to consider bills which shall have passed both branches of congress. But so is congress equally secured the right to act upon bills which they have passed, and which the president may have thought proper to reject. If he exercises his veto, and returns the bill, two thirds may pass it. But if he withholds the bill, it cannot become a law, even although the two houses should be unanimously in its favor.