peculiarly and
appropriately the guardians of the public money. Perhaps it was an
oversight. But as the President presumes that the charter to the bank is
to be considered as a contract on the part of the Government, it is not
now in the power of Congress to disregard its stipulations; and by the
terms of that contract the public money is to be deposited in the bank
during the continuance of its charter unless the Secretary of the
Treasury shall otherwise direct. Unless, therefore, the Secretary of the
Treasury first acts, Congress have no power over the subject, for they
can not add a new clause to the charter or strike one out of it without
the consent of the bank, and consequently the public money must remain
in that institution to the last hour of its existence unless the
Secretary of the Treasury shall remove it at an earlier day. The
responsibility is thus thrown upon the executive branch of the
Government of deciding how long before the expiration of the charter the
public interest will require the deposits to be placed elsewhere; and
although according to the frame and principle of our Government this
decision would seem more properly to belong to the legislative power,
yet as the law has imposed it upon the executive department the duty
ought to be faithfully and firmly met, and the decision made and
executed upon the best lights that can be obtained and the best judgment
that can be formed. It would ill become the executive branch of the
Government to shrink from any duty which the law imposes on it, to fix
upon others the responsibility which justly belongs to itself. And while
the President anxiously wishes to abstain from the exercise of doubtful
powers and to avoid all interference with the rights and duties
of others, he must yet with unshaken constancy discharge his own
obligations, and can not allow himself to turn aside in order to avoid
any responsibility which the high trust with which he has been honored
requires him to encounter; and it being the duty of one of the Executive
Departments to decide in the first instance, subject to the future
action of the legislative power, whether the public deposits shall
remain in the Bank of the United States until the end of its existence
or be withdrawn some time before, the President has felt himself bound
to examine the question carefully and deliberately in order to make up
his judgment on the subject, and in his opinion the near approach of
the termination