he alternate gross abuse of constitutional power, and bold assumption
of powers never vested in him by any law,--resulting in four several
vetoes, which, in the course of fifteen months, had suspended the
legislation of the Union. It then states and comments upon the reasons
assigned by the President for returning this bill to the House of
Representatives, with his objections to it, as specified in the veto
message referred to this committee; and, after a rigid analysis and
course of argument, pronounces them "feeble, inconsistent, and
unsatisfactory;" after which the report proceeds:

"They perceive that the whole legislative power of the Union has
been, for the last fifteen months, with regard to the action of
Congress upon measures of vital importance, in a state of suspended
animation, strangled by the _five_ times repeated stricture of
the executive cord. They observe that, under these unexampled
obstructions to the exercise of their high and legitimate duties,
they have hitherto preserved the most respectful forbearance towards
the Executive Chief; that while he has time after time annulled, by
the mere act of his will, their commission from the people to enact
laws for the common welfare, they have forborne even the expression
of their resentment for these multiplied insults and injuries. They
believed they had a high destiny to fulfil, by administering to the
people, in the form of law, remedies for the sufferings which they
had too long endured. The will of one man has frustrated all their
labors, and prostrated all their powers. The majority of the
committee believe that the case has occurred, in the annals of our
Union, contemplated by the founders of the constitution, by the
grant to the House of Representatives of the power to impeach the
President of the United States; but they are aware that the resort
to that expedient might, in the present condition of public affairs,
prove abortive. They see the irreconcilable difference of opinion
and of action between the legislative and executive departments of
the government is but sympathetic with the same discordant views and
feelings among the people. To them alone the final issue of the
struggle must be left. In sorrow and mortification, under the
failure of all their labors to redeem the honor and prosperity of
their country, it is a cheering consolation