this, I presume,
is a sufficient reason for neither signing the bill nor returning it
with my objections.

The seventeenth joint rule of the two Houses of Congress declares
that "no bill or resolution that shall have passed the House of
Representatives and the Senate shall be presented to the President of
the United States for his approbation on the last day of the session."

This rule was evidently designed to give to the President a reasonable
opportunity of perusing important acts of Congress and giving them some
degree of consideration before signing or returning the same.

It is true that the two Houses have been in the habit of suspending this
rule toward the close of the session in relation to particular bills,
and it appears by the printed Journal that by concurrent votes of the
two Houses passed on the last day of the session the rule was agreed to
be suspended so far as the same should relate to all such bills as
should have been passed by the two Houses at 1 o'clock on that day. It
is exceedingly to be regretted that a necessity should ever exist for
such suspension in the case of bills of great importance, and therefore
demanding careful consideration.

As the bill has failed under the provisions of the Constitution to
become a law, I abstain from expressing any opinions upon its several
provisions, keeping myself wholly uncommitted as to my ultimate action
on any similar measure should the House think proper to originate it
_de novo_, except so far as my opinion of the unqualified power of
each House to decide for itself upon the elections, returns, and
qualifications of its own members has been expressed by me in a paper
lodged in the Department of State at the time of signing an act entitled
"An act for the apportionment of Representatives among the several
States according to the Sixth Census," approved June 22, 1842, a copy
of which is in possession of the House.

JOHN TYLER.

THIRD ANNUAL MESSAGE.

WASHINGTON, _December, 1843_.

_To the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States_:

If any people ever had cause to render up thanks to the Supreme Being
for parental care and protection extended to them in all the trials
and difficulties to which they have been from time to time exposed, we
certainly are that people. From the first settlement of our forefathers
on this continent, through the dangers attendant upon the occupation
of a savage wilderness, through a long period