ion than
to be constrained to withhold his assent from an important measure
adopted by the Legislature. Yet he would neither fulfill the high
purposes of his station nor consult the true interests or the solemn
will of the people--the common constituents of both branches of the
Government--by yielding his well-considered, most deeply fixed, and
repeatedly declared opinions on matters of great public concernment to
those of a coordinate department without requesting that department
seriously to reexamine the subject of their difference. The exercise of
some independence of judgment in regard to all acts of legislation is
plainly implied in the responsibility of approving them. At all times
a duty, it becomes a peculiarly solemn and imperative one when the
subjects passed upon by Congress happen to involve, as in the present
instance, the most momentous issues, to affect variously the various
parts of a great country, and to have given rise in all quarters to such
a conflict of opinion as to render it impossible to conjecture with any
certainty on which side the majority really is. Surely if the pause for
reflection intended by the wise authors of the Constitution by referring
the subject back to Congress for reconsideration be ever expedient and
necessary it is precisely such a case as the present.

On the subject of distributing the proceeds of the sales of the public
lands in the existing state of the finances it has been my duty to make
known my settled convictions on various occasions during the present
session of Congress. At the opening of the extra session, upward of
twelve months ago, sharing fully in the general hope of returning
prosperity and credit, I recommended such a distribution, but that
recommendation was even then expressly coupled with the condition that
the duties on imports should not exceed the rate of 20 per cent provided
by the compromise act of 1833. These hopes were not a little encouraged
and these views strengthened by the report of Mr. Ewing, then Secretary
of the Treasury, which was shortly thereafter laid before Congress, in
which he recommended the imposition of duties at the rate of 20 per cent
_ad valorem_ on all free articles, with specified exceptions, and stated
"if this measure be adopted there will be received in the Treasury from
customs in the last quarter of the present year (1841) $5,300,000; in
all of the year 1842, about $22,500,000; and in the year 1843, after the
final redu