would the scene be changed, by adopting a different policy, even at this late day, and after the losses of 1841 of receipts from lands by not advertising, and the waste by adding then five or six millions to our expenses!

Thus, limit your expenses, as well you may, to twenty millions, and that not so low by two millions as we contemplated and were fast approaching. Add three more to cover contingencies, debt and interest, and the whole expenditure need not exceed twenty-three millions. This result we have yet in our own power, by cutting down the new appropriations, and, if necessary, postponing or lessening some of the old ones. If it be not always too soon or too late, too small or too large a case, too hard or too soft an instance for reduction, the retrenchment can and will go to that extent, and, as I have before shown, will leave all our great national establishments efficient. There is not half so much trouble or danger in facing such measures as many suppose. I have been through similar scenes of reduction, from 1837 and 1838 to 1839 near six millions, and thence to 1840 quite two and a half millions more. All this was before the Presidential election. We have only to imitate this, and go on in a like course as was contemplated in 1841, when retrenchment was to bring down the whole expenditure to twenty or eighteen millions. The task is far easier, because the works and undertakings are finished, and old objects are accomplished yearly. This circumstance alone will lessen, and continue hereafter to lessen, the expenses almost as fast as proposed, if we forbear from running into new and unnecessary expenses. Resolve on it, then, firmly; begin, and the business is at once half done at your hands. How, next, shall we meet the twenty-three millions proposed in the present year?

By twenty millions from customs, as estimated by the chairman (Mr. EVANS) in January last, or nineteen, as estimated by the Secretary, and one million more accruing this year above twenty per cent., which he omitted; add to this the receipts from the lands, if properly advertised, and the whole can be discharged. But now the chairman wishes to correct his former estimates, and make something like three to four millions difference in them in only two or three months. I trust, under this request, he will feel a little more charity hereafter, as well as those who are associated with him, for any errors made by others in estimates. The senator from Kentucky (Mr. CRITTENDEN), has set a good example on this point, since his short experience in executive office, by saying that he now believed no administration - not even one under General Harrison - could get on without some mistakes and wrongs.

But, correcting this error of three millions in their estimates, and putting a tax of only twenty per cent. on tea and coffee, we have an ample supply to discharge all the necessary expenses of the year. As to the treasury notes now out, senators will perceive that many of them would thus be extinguished before the year ends, without any

additional loans. But what are not so disposed of I would cheerfully fund at six per cent. for a few years, on a pledge of ample security. They then come at once to par in value, and remain there; and the whole debt of every kind can and will then, in a few years, be entirely extinguished.

We should thus escape national bankruptcy,- millions on millions would be saved to a naked treasury,- public credit would revive, and escape a brand and degradation, under the terms of this loan, which can never be effaced. No temptation will be held out to repudiation, -dreaded and sincerely deprecated repudiation. A permanent national debt, built up in profound peace, would be most happily avoided. The sacred compromise, as to the tariff, ten years ago, would continue inviolate. The new compromise, solemnly and explicitly enacted at only the last session, will not be profaned. The highlyprized resolution of the distinguished senator (Mr. CLAY) who has just left us, pledging the Senate to raise means enough within the to meet all the expenses of the year, will not be trodden under foot by his friends, as soon as his back is turned. We shall refuse to show real vacillation and mutability, and at the same moment will evince the candor and courage to do right, however different in form from what party influences or party prejudices may countenance. Instead, then, of making bad worse, and trying new and dangerous experiments, we shall return to courses, in matters of finance, sanctioned by the experience of all ages, in public as well as private life. May we decide wisely, then; for thus our "bane and antidote are both before us."

year

IMPORTANCE OF THE VETO POWER.

THERE are a few circumstances, connected with this proposition to lessen or abolish the veto power, which have struck me with some surprise.

If we were now in the midst of a revolution, and such an one as ended in our independence, it would not be unnatural for men who had suffered severely from executive oppression to be prejudiced strongly against all executive power. Especially when these wrongs

A speech in support of the veto power; delivered in the Senate of the United States, Feb. 23, 1842.

had been inflicted by the monarch, rather than the people, of another country, and many of them through the absolute vetoes of his subservient governors, sent here to domineer over us, well might we, in the excitement, denounce such vetoes as arbitrary, and such an executive as tyrannical. Hence, one of the first grounds of grievance detailed in the Declaration of Independence was, that the king had refused his assent to laws the most wholesome and necessary for the public good. He claimed the power to do this, also, from Divine right, and not, as our executive derives it, from the people. He exercised it for his own benefit, and that of his kingly third estate in the realm, and not, as our executive does, for the benefit of the people. He used it himself, or by others, almost as often and capriciously as Queen Elizabeth, who vetoed thirty-four laws in one session; and not merely, as here, on great and grave occasions, occurring but twenty times in half a century.

Circumstances like these made Doctor Franklin averse to any executive chief magistrate, and induced several of the States, in their first constitutions, formed in the heat and struggle of the Revolution, with wounds still bleeding from abuses, to give no veto to their governors, and in other cases to give a less one than that in the present constitution of the General Government. Indeed, it even led them, in other cases, like the old Confederation, either to have no separate executive whatever, or one elected by, and entirely dependent on, the legislature.

But, after the experience of eight years in the great conflict, and four or five more in peace, subsequent to the achievement of independence, the wisest and ablest from all quarters of the country convened, and decided almost unanimously in favor of the propriety of the present veto. They cast aside prejudices. They resorted to reason and experience, and in the very first project of materials for a constitution, submitted in the convention by Mr. Randolph, the present veto power was introduced. It was repeated again in Mr. Pinckney's articles, and in all the numerous changes afterwards made in other matters, this remained unaltered, except in the majority, from three-fourths to twothirds, necessary to overrule its operation. In the end, too, it received the large and almost unanimous vote of ten States out of twelve. The journal and debates are before me, but I will not detain the Senate by quotations or more details. What is equally striking, on this subject, must be the fact, that, in none of the conventions of the people in the different States for adopting the constitution, do we find the veto disagreed to. Numerous, also, as were the amendments proposed in various other particulars, such was the harmony as to this, that not one relates to any further restriction of it; nor has one of the amendments adopted since laid a profane hand upon it. Nor have I been able to discover in a convention of the people, or in a State Legislature, long ago or lately, during the whole lapse of a half-century, a single proposition deliberately introduced to restrict or destroy the veto.

Jealous, and justly so, as our people have always been of executive power, and open as they have ever been to impulses, where so much freedom of opinion and discussion properly exist, nothing has ever shaken their sagacity, intelligence, and firmness, in defence of a power which they know full well now exists for them, and not for a monarch; now lives for their security against errors by their agents, and not as a weapon with which to oppress the people themselves; and which, if dissatisfied, they well know can be overruled by them at any time, quickly, either by electing new members to the legislature, or a new executive, without changing their constitution or removing salutary checks on their representatives.

Under all these circumstances, it certainly must be a matter of some surprise to others, as well as to me, that now, for the first time, and not coming from the people or the States, or the popular branch of the legislature, a proposal originates here, and with a single member, to throw away some of the checks over us which the people and the States so deliberately ordained. Such a proposition can, I admit, be legally made; and, in this instance, doubtless springs from laudable motives. But, in these particulars, it is surely not a little extraordinary.

The mover disclaimed any influence on him from recent events, or the manifesto of a part of the whig members of Congress, in September, 1841. In my opinion, he might well do this so far as regards the manifesto, though others in the debate have considered that as the cause of the present movement. Because, sir, beside all the array, by way of authority, to which I have alluded, in favor of the present veto, it is clear to my mind, on recurring to the manifesto itself, that the signers of it did not believe, before the recent events of the extra session, that the constitution, in respect to the veto, ought in any particular to be altered. Here it is, sir, and the very reverse seems to me to be the truth. The language on that point is, that they had intended to restrain executive power and patronage, in respect to the veto, by voluntary self-denial in its excessive use, and not by any change in the magna charta of our liberties. The constitution was to continue untouched. This idea is forfeited by what was avowed only last March, by another exponent of the principles of gentlemen on the other side, more widely relied on than even the signers of the manifesto. As that exponent was General Harrison, this remark will, of course, not be deemed derogatory to any of these highly respectable signers. Without adverting to what may have been uttered by him. at popular meetings, and misapprehended or misrepresented, I hold here his deliberate official exposé on the veto, in his inaugural; and among other remarks there, which need not be repeated, he says:

The veto power " appears to be highly expedient, and if used only with the forbearance and in the spirit which was intended by its authors, it may be productive of great good, and be found one of the best safeguards to the Union."

He adds that, in his opinion, it was

"To be used only, first, to protect the constitution from violation; secondly, the people from the effects of hasty legislation, where their will has been probably disregarded or not well understood; and, thirdly, to prevent the effects of combinations violative of the rights of minorities."

From the beginning to the end, not a syllable is uttered in favor of lessening the veto by a change of the constitution; but, on the contrary, General Harrison proposed, in these cases, to exercise it as widely as it ever has been exercised from the foundation of the government. So that this motion does not appear to emanate from the whig party as a whole, or even from a portion of it in legislative caucus, unless it has sprung from the eventful negatives of the bank bills, at the late extra session. But, in my view, it was not intended to go as far as this, even at the excited meeting of a portion of the members of Congress in September, smarting under disappointment and rebuked by executive difference in opinion. The manifesto they sent forth does not, could not, and, looking to the intelligence and character embodied in the meeting, I might well add, dared not, propose to do what was tantamount to the entire abolition of the veto power in the constitution. And although they then recommended, generally, some change in it, there was still expressly reserved, and to be left, as much control in the executive as was indispensable to avert hasty or unconstitutional legislation.

That control was all which most of its friends ever designed to effect by the present veto. It is also the only control which ever has been exercised under it, from Washington down to Tyler, either by the Presidents who have been so much denounced, or by others who have been so highly commended.

That control, in my opinion, as will soon be explained more fully, is not left by the proposed amendment; and hence it is not in accordance even with the doctrines of the manifesto, much less with those of the eminent statesmen and jurists of both parties in politics in the long halfcentury which preceded the manifesto, and concurred, in all emergencies, in sustaining its fitness and usefulness. The elder Adams wrote a treatise to illustrate the importance of checks and balances; and Marshall and Jay, as well as hundreds of others of the Hamilton school, no less than Madison, Hancock, Samuel Adams, and a host in the Jefferson school,—defended the qualified veto, as established and perpetuated to the present moment. Both Jew and Gentile in politics have agreed in this.

Though some exceptions have existed, the great masses of both parties have always approved it; and while we reverence the name of one above all parties, and in respect to whose memory we adjourned yesterday, on the anniversary of his birth, we may well, at the head of all the authorities in favor of both the adoption and use of the veto, cite him, him who reigns, and, while the republic lasts, will, I trust,