functions; that the reasons
given by President Tyler are a running commentary against the law,
against its execution according to the intention of the legislature, and
forestalling the appropriate action of the judicial tribunals in
expounding it. These and consentaneous views the report largely
illustrates, and concludes with a resolution declaring the proceedings
of the President in this case to have been unwarranted by the
constitution and laws of the United States, injurious to the public
interest, and of evil example in future; solemnly protesting against its
ever being repeated, or adduced as a precedent hereafter.

On the 9th of August, 1842, President Tyler returned to the House of
Representatives the bill to provide a revenue from imports, and changing
the existing laws imposing duties on them, accompanied with his
objections to it. The house referred the subject to a select committee,
of which Mr. Adams was chairman. On the 16th of August he reported that
the message was the last of a series of executive measures, the result
of which had been to defeat and nullify the whole action of the
legislative authority of the Union upon the most important interests of
the nation;--that, at the accession of the late President Harrison, the
revenue and the credit of the country were so completely disordered,
that a suffering people had commanded a change in the administration;
and the elections throughout the Union had placed in both houses of
Congress majorities, the natural exponents of the principles which it
was the will of the people should be substituted instead of those which
had brought the country to a condition of such wretchedness and
shame;--that there was a perfect harmony between the chosen President of
the people and this majority; but that, by an inscrutable decree of
Providence, the chief of the people's choice, in harmony with whose
principles the majorities of both houses had been constituted, was laid
low in death. A successor to the office had assumed the title, with
totally different principles, who, though professing to harmonize with
the principles of his immediate predecessor, and with the majorities in
both houses of Congress, soon disclosed his diametrical opposition to
them.

The report then proceeds to show the several developments of this new
and most unfortunate condition of the general government, effected by "a
system of continual and unrelenting exercise of executive legislation,"--by
t