THE ADVENTURES OF CUPID SMITH. BY HARRY FRANCO. 339 MR. SECRETARY WALKER'S AGRICULTURAL REPORT. BY THE AU WILEY AND PUTNAM, 6 WATERLOO PLACE, REGENT ST., LONDON. Edward O. Jenkins, Printer, 114 Nassau street. THE VETO POWER: OUR INLAND TRADE. THE Veto of President Polk on the bill making appropriations for rivers and harbors, has renewed the discussion as to the proper extent of the qualified negative upon the proceedings of Congress, granted to the President by the Constitution, and sharpened the interest and desire of the people, that this power, which modern experience has proved to be of such elastic construction, should be more rigidly defined, and abstemiously exercised. The peculiar circumstances un. der which the President thought it advisable to return the River and Harbor bill, with his objections, have added poignancy to the regret and to the indignation which that act has occasioned, and we cannot, therefore, better appropriate some space in this number of the Review, than to the exposition of what we deem the true limits, in such cases, of the Executive Veto, and the extravagant disregard and overstepping of those limits by Mr. Polk. To all who have studied the origin of the Constitution, and who are familiar with the discussions, which, in the General Convention, in the Conventions of the several States, and in the public press, preceded, and ultimately secured, its formation-it is well known that an Executive negative upon the acts of the Legislature was vehemently resisted, and it was only in the qualified shape in which it now exists, that it could find favor at all. It was most especially resisted by those who, even at that early day, claimed to be the special friends of the people, and sticklers for their rights -as of monarchical origin, and as proceeding on the assumption that one man would possess more virtue and wisdom than a number of men collected in Legislative bodies. Dr. Franklin, Mr. Madison, Mr. Mason, of Virginia, and Mr. Bedford, of Delaware, were among the members of the Convention that framed the Constitution, who opposed an unqualified Executive veto-not all indeed for the same nor for analagous reasonsbut Mr. Mason put his opposition expressly on the ground that such a provision "did not accord with the genius of the people." The limited or qualified veto was finally adopted with a view mainly to enable the Executive to defend himself against the encroachments of the Legislature. This was avowedly the primary inducement to the grant of this power-that of protecting the country against the chance of bad laws, passed through inadvertence or design, being secondary, and quite subordinate; the presumption naturally being, that the Legislature would not designedly, and were not likely through haste or inadvertence, to pass such laws. But it was nowhere intimated, nor in the primitive and purer days of the republic would it have been tolerated, that on a plea of Expe diency the Executive might put his negative on any bill passed by Congress. That the chief motive for investing the President with a qualified negative upon the acts of Congress, was purely with a view to self-defence, is thus explicitly set forth in No. Ixxiii. of the Federalist, from the pen of Alexander Hamilton: "The propensity of the Legislative Department to intrude upon the rights, and to absorb the powers, of other departments, has been already more than once suggested; the insufficiency of a mere parliamentary delineation of boundaries of each, has also been remarked upon; and the necessity of furnishing each with constitutional arms for its own defence, has been inferred and proved. From these clear and indubitable principles, results the propriety of a negative, either absolute or qualified, in the Executive, upon the acts of the legislative branches. Without the one or the other, the former would be absolutely unable to defend himself against the depredations of the latter. He might gradually be stripped of his authority by successive resolutions, or annihilated by a single vote; and in the one mode or the other, the executive and legislative power might speedily come to be blended in the same hands. If even no propensity had ever discovered itself in the Legislative body to invade the rights of the Executive, the rules of just reasoning and theoretic propriety would, of themselves, teach us, that the one ought not to be left at the inercy of the other, but ought to possess a constitutional and effective power of self-defence." Nothing can be more explicit than this language-nothing more clear than that this exceptional power was granted to the President, under our system, mainly from an apprehension, that in its practical working, the Executive would prove feebler than the Legislative Department, and therefore be subject to injurious encroachments from the latter. The men who framed the Constitution were pure as they were wise. They were of the race which, through every sort of self-sacrifice and abnegation, had carried the country through the perilous war of the revolution-and who, having founded a free government, were now met to devise a system which should maintain it free, and render it efficient and powerful. But their very purity misled them. They reasoned and acted, as though the men of other days, for whom they were about to prepare the organic law, would be-like themselves pure, patriotic, and self-denying. They little dreamed of the impurities, or of the fruits of "progressive democracy;" and, wise and foreseeing as they were, they did not realize the prodigious growth in power and multiplication in number and in territories, of the people, whose lawgivers it was their privilege to be. In their view the executive power, as defined and designed by the Constitution, was, as compared with the legislative power, weak and liable to encroachments. As developed by the "genius of demoof increase of patronage, it has become cracy," and sustained by the undreamed overshadowingly great, and now gives the law alike to the Legislation of Congress, and the sovereignty of the separate States. The President of the United States, with his enormous appointing power, reaching through every part of the country, and holding out prizes to every sort of ambition or cupidity, with the unrestricted power of peremptory removal from office, and with his qualified veto on the acts of Congress, possesses and exercises more despotic authority than the monarch who occupies the throne of England or of France. The chief consideration, therefore, upon which the original grant of a qualified negative to the President of the United States was made-that of his comparative helplessness-fails entirely. His authority, on the contrary, like Joseph's sheaf, has erected itself in the midst of all the other powers of the Constitution, and these all bow down and make obeisance to it. Practically, therefore, this provision of the Constitution is proved to be unsound. But the same eminent expounder of the Constitution, to whom we have already referred for explanation of the chief motives for engrafting upon a republican Executive this kingly prerogative, thus goes on to explain the secondary use of the conceded power: "It not only serves as a shield to the Executive, but it furnishes an additional security against the enaction of improper laws. It establishes a salutary check upon the legis nity against the effects of faction, precipilative body, calculated to guard the commutancy, or of any impulses uufriendly to the public good, which may happen to influence a majority of that body." Let our readers attentively consider the cases to which Hamilton, himself one of the framers of the Constitution, and who had supported the propriety of this very prerogative, restricts its exercise, "faction, precipitancy, or impulses unfriendly to the public good," and then contrast therewith, the pretensions and the sophistry of Mr. Polk's message on returning the Harbor bill. |