OLICY OF PRESIDENT TYLER'S ADMINISTRATION.--ADDRESS
TO THE NORFOLK COUNTY TEMPERANCE SOCIETY.--DISCOURSE ON THE NEW ENGLAND
CONFEDERACY OF 1643.--LETTER TO THE CITIZENS OF BANGOR ON WEST INDIA
EMANCIPATION.--ORATION ON LAYING THE CORNER-STONE OF THE CINCINNATI
OBSERVATORY.

On the 23d of June, 1842, President Tyler announced to the House of
Representatives that he had signed and approved an act for the
apportionment of representatives among the several states, and had
deposited the same in the office of the Secretary of State, accompanied
with his reasons for giving to it his sanction; by which it appeared
that, after having officially "approved" that act, he had declared, in
effect, that _he did not approve of it_, having doubts concerning
both its constitutionality and expediency, and that he had signed it
only in deference to the opinions of both houses of Congress. Mr. Adams,
from the committee to whom these proceedings of the President had been
referred, in a report to the House severely scrutinizes the course of
the President in this respect. He declares that the duty of the
President, in exercising the authority given him by the constitution to
sign and approve acts of Congress, is prescribed in terms equally
concise and precise; and that it has given him no power to alter, amend,
comment upon, or assign his reasons for the performance of his duty.
These views he illustrates by a minute examination of the language of
that instrument, and shows that what the President had done was a
departure not only from the language but from the substance of the law
prescribing to him his duties in that respect. Mr. Adams then, in behalf
of the committee, after showing that the proceeding of the President in
this instance is without precedent or example, and imminently dangerous
in its tendencies, proceeds to remark:

"The entry upon the bill is, 'Approved: John Tyler;' and that entry
makes it the law of the land; and then, by a private note deposited
with the law in the Department of State, the same hand which, under
the sacred obligation of an official oath, has written the word
'_approved_,' and added the sign-manual of his name, feels it due
to himself to declare that the bill is not approved, and that he
doubts both its constitutionality and its policy, and that he signs
it only in deference to the declared _will_ of both houses of
Congress; not from assent to their reasons, but in su