e
nature of our population be but temporary in their duration, and if it
were otherwise our course should be the same, for the time is yet, I
hope, far distant when those intrusted with power to be exercised for
the good of the whole will consider it either honest or wise to purchase
local favors at the sacrifice of principle and general good.

So understanding public sentiment, and thoroughly satisfied that the
best interests of our common country imperiously require that the course
which I have recommended in this regard should be adopted, I have, upon
the most mature consideration, determined to pursue it.

It is due to candor, as well as to my own feelings, that I should
express the reluctance and anxiety which I must at all times experience
in exercising the undoubted right of the Executive to withhold his
assent from bills on other grounds than their constitutionality. That
this right should not be exercised on slight occasions all will admit.
It is only in matters of deep interest, when the principle involved may
be justly regarded as next in importance to infractions of the
Constitution itself, that such a step can be expected to meet with the
approbation of the people. Such an occasion do I conscientiously believe
the present to be. In the discharge of this delicate and highly
responsible duty I am sustained by the reflection that the exercise of
this power has been deemed consistent with the obligation of official
duty by several of my predecessors, and by the persuasion, too, that
whatever liberal institutions may have to fear from the encroachments of
Executive power, which has been everywhere the cause of so much strife
and bloody contention, but little danger is to be apprehended from a
precedent by which that authority denies to itself the exercise of
powers that bring in their train influence and patronage of great
extent, and thus excludes the operation of personal interests,
everywhere the bane of official trust. I derive, too, no small degree of
satisfaction from the reflection that if I have mistaken the interests
and wishes of the people the Constitution affords the means of soon
redressing the error by selecting for the place their favor has bestowed
upon me a citizen whose opinions may accord with their own. I trust, in
the meantime, the interests of the nation will be saved from prejudice
by a rigid application of that portion of the public funds which might
otherwise be applied to different obj