nstitutionally
conferred on a bank, and having erected the judgment of the President
himself into a standard by which to try the constitutional character of
such powers, and having denounced the authority of the Supreme Court to
decide finally on constitutional questions, the message proceeds to
claim for the President, not the power of approval, but the primary
power, the power of originating laws. The President informs Congress,
that _he_ would have sent them such a charter, if it had been properly
asked for, as they ought to confer. He very plainly intimates, that, in
his opinion, the establishment of all laws, of this nature at least,
belongs to the functions of the executive government; and that Congress
ought to have waited for the manifestation of the executive will, before
it presumed to touch the subject. Such, Mr. President, stripped of their
disguises, are the real pretences set up in behalf of the executive
power in this most extraordinary paper.

Mr. President, we have arrived at a new epoch. We are entering on
experiments, with the government and the Constitution of the country,
hitherto untried, and of fearful and appalling aspect. This message
calls us to the contemplation of a future which little resembles the
past. Its principles are at war with all that public opinion has
sustained, and all which the experience of the government has
sanctioned. It denies first principles; it contradicts truths,
heretofore received as indisputable. It denies to the judiciary the
interpretation of law, and claims to divide with Congress the power of
originating statutes. It extends the grasp of executive pretension over
every power of the government. But this is not all. It presents the
chief magistrate of the Union in the attitude of arguing away the powers
of that government over which he has been chosen to preside; and
adopting for this purpose modes of reasoning which, even under the
influence of all proper feeling towards high official station, it is
difficult to regard as respectable. It appeals to every prejudice which
may betray men into a mistaken view of their own interests, and to every
passion which may lead them to disobey the impulses of their
understanding. It urges all the specious topics of State rights and
national encroachment against that which a great majority of the States
have affirmed to be rightful, and in which all of them have acquiesced.
It sows, in an unsparing manner, the seeds of jealousy