to rest on a constructive necessity and propriety, and nothing more.

I regard the bill as asserting for Congress the right to incorporate a United States Bank, with power and right to establish offices of discount and deposit in the several states of this Union, with or without their consent a principle to which I have always heretofore been opposed, and which can never obtain my sanction. And waiving all other considerations growing out of its other provisions, I return it to the house in which it originated with these my objections to its approval.

TYLER'S SECOND BANK VETO.

SEPTEMBER 9, 1841.

To the House of Representatives of the United States : It is with extreme regret that I feel myself constrained, by the duty faithfully to execute the office of President of the United States, and to the best of my ability "to preserve, protect, and defend the constitution of the United States," to return to that house in which it originated the bill to provide for the better collection, safe-keeping, and disbursement of the public revenue by means of a corporation to be styled the Fiscal Corporation of the United States," with my written objections.

In my message sent to the Senate on the 16th day of August last, returning the bill "to incorporate the subscribers to the Fiscal Bank of the United States," I distinctly declared that "my own opinion has been uniformly proclaimed to be against the exercise of the power of Congress to create a national bank, to operate per se over the Union;" and entertaining that opinion, my main objection to that bill was based upon the highest moral and religious obligations of conscience and the constitution.

I readily admit, that, whilst the qualified Veto with which the chief magistrate is invested, should be regarded, and was intended by the wise men who made it a part of the constitution, as a great conservative principle

of our system, without the exercise of which, on important occasions, a mere representative majority might urge the government, in its legislation, beyond the limits fixed by its framers, or might exert its just powers too hastily or oppressively, yet it is a power which ought to be most cautiously exerted, and perhaps never, except in a case eminently involving the public interest, or one in which the oath of the President, acting under his convictions, both mental and moral, imperiously requires its exercise. In such a case, he has no alternative. He must either exert the negative power intrusted to him by the constitution chiefly for its own preservation, protection, and defence, or commit an act of gross moral turpitude. Mere regard to the will of a majority, must not, in a constitutional republic like ours, control this sacred and solemn duty of a sworn officer. The constitution itself I regard and cherish as the imbodied and written will of the whole people of the United States. It is their fixed and fundamental law, which they unanimously prescribe to the public functionaries, their mere trustees and servants. This their will, and the law which they have given us as the rule of our action, has no guard, no guaranty of preservation, protection, and defence, but the oaths which it prescribes to public officers, the sanctity with which they shall religiously observe those oaths, and the patriotism with which the people shall shield it by their own sovereignty, which has made the constitution supreme. It must be exerted against the will of a mere representative majority, or not at all. It is alone in pursuance of that will that any measure can ever reach the President; and to say, because a majority in Congress have passed a bill, the President should therefore sanction it, is to abrogate the power altogether, and to render its insertion in the constitution a work of absolute supererogation. The duty is to guard the fundamental will of the people themselves from in this case I admit unintentional - change or infraction by a majority in Congress; and in that light alone do I regard the constitutional duty which I now most reluctantly discharge.

Is this bill, now presented for my approval, such a bill as I have already declared could not receive my sanction? Is it such a bill as calls for the exercise of the negative

power under the constitution? Does it violate the consti tution by creating a national bank to operate per se over the Union? Its title, in the first place, describes its general character. It is "An act to provide for the better collection, safe-keeping, and disbursement of the public revenue by means of a corporation, to be styled the Fiscal Corporation of the United States." In style, then, it is plainly national in its character. Its powers, functions, and duties, are those pertaining to the collecting, keeping, and disbursing the public revenue. The means by which these are to be exerted, is a corporation, to be styled the Fiscal Corporation of the United States. It is a corporation created by the Congress of the United States, in its character of a national legislature for the whole Union, to perform the fiscal purposes, meet the fiscal wants and exigencies, supply the fiscal uses, and exert the fiscal agencies of the treasury of the United States. Such is its own de

the per

scription of itself. Do its provisions contradict its own title? They do not. It is true, that by its first section it provides that it shall be established in the District of Columbia, but the amount of its capital· the manner in which its stock is to be subscribed for and heldsons and bodies corporate and politic by whom its stock may be held the appointment of its directors, and their powers and duties its fundamental articles, especially that to establish agencies in any part of the Union-the corporate powers and business of such agencies -the prohibition of Congress to establish any other corporation, with similar powers, for twenty years, with express reservation, in the same clause, to modify or create any bank for the District of Columbia so that the aggregate capital shall not exceed five millions-without enumerating other features which are equally distinctive and characteristic clearly show that it cannot be regarded as other than a Bank of the United States, with powers seemingly more limited than have heretofore been granted by such an institution. It operates per se over the Union, by virtue of the unaided, and, in my view, assumed authority of Congress as a national legislature, as distinguished from a bank created by Congress for the District of Columbia, as the local legislature of the District. Every United States

Bank heretofore created has had power to deal in bills of exchange as well as local discounts. Both were trading privileges conferred, and both exercised by virtue of the aforesaid power of Congress, over the whole Union. The question of power remains unchanged, without reference to the extent of privilege granted. If this proposed corporation is to be regarded as a local bank of the District of Columbia, invested by Congress with general powers to operate over the Union, it is obnoxious to still stronger objections. It assumes that Congress may invest a local institution with general or national powers. With the same propriety that it may do this in regard to a bank of the District of Columbia, it may as to a state bank. who can indulge the idea that this government can rightfully, by making a state bank its fiscal agent, invest it with the absolute and unqualified powers conferred by this bill? When I come to look to the details of the bill, they do not recommend it strongly to my adoption. A brief notice of some of its provisions will suffice:.

Yet

1st. It may justify substantially a system of discounts of the most objectionable character. It is to deal in bills of exchange drawn in one state and payable in another, without any restraint. The bill of exchange may have an unlimited term to run, and its renewability is nowhere guarded against. It may, in fact, assume the most objectionable form of accommodation. It is not required to rest on any actual, real, or substantial exchange basis. Α drawer in one place becomes the acceptor in another, and so in turn the acceptor may become the drawer upon a mutual understanding. It may at the same time indulge in mere local discounts under the name of bills of exchange. A bill drawn at Philadelphia on Camden, New Jersey-at New York on Bordentown in New Jersey at Cincinnati on Newport, Kentucky, not to multiply other examples, might for any thing in this bill to restrain it, become a mere matter of local accommodation. Cities thus relatively situated would possess advantages over cities otherwise situated, of so decided a character as most justly to excite dissatisfaction.

2d. There is no limit prescribed to the premium in the purchase of bills of exchange, thereby correcting none of

the evils under which the community now labors, and operating most injuriously upon the agricultural states, in which the inequalities in the rates of exchange are most severely felt. Nor are these the only consequences: a resumption of specie payments by the banks of those states would be liable to indefinite postponement; for, as the operation of the agencies of the interior would chiefly consist in selling bills of exchange, and the purchases could only be made in specie or the notes of banks paying specie, the state banks would either have to continue with their doors closed, or exist at the mercy of this national monopoly of brokerage. Nor can it be passed over without remark, that, whilst the District of Columbia is made the seat of the principal bank, its citizens are excluded from all participation in any benefit it might afford, by a positive prohibition on the bank from all discounting within the District.

These are some of the objections which prominently exist against the details of the bill; others might be urged of much force; but it would be unprofitable to dwell upon them. Suffice it to add, that this charter is designed to continue for twenty years without a competitor that the defects to which I have alluded, being founded in the fundamental law of the corporation, are irrevocable — and that if the objections be well founded, it would be overhazardous to pass the bill into a law.

In conclusion, I take leave most respectfully to say, that I have felt the most anxious solicitude to meet the wishes of Congress in the adoption of a fiscal agent which, avoiding all constitutional objections, should harmonize conflicting opinions. Actuated by this feeling, I have been ready to yield much, in a spirit of conciliation, to the opinions of others. And it is with great pain that I now feel compelled to differ from Congress a second time in the same session. At the commencement of this session, inclined from choice to defer to the legislative will, I submitted to Congress the propriety of adopting a fiscal agent which, without violating the constitution, would separate the public money from the executive control, perform the operations of the treasury without being burdensome to the people, or inconvenient, or expensive