This is a very grave charge certainly amounting as it does, in the one instance to gross inconsistency, and in the other to deliberate treachery-and, therefore, we subjoin the evidence. In his Annual Message, on 2d of Dec. last, the President refers to the Report of the Secretary of War, which accompanied the Message, for information concerning the state of the army, of the defences of the country, and the condition of the public works, and says: "I invite your attention to the suggestions contained in that report, in relation to the prominent objects of public

interest."

The Report thus emphatically commended to the attention of Congress, has these observations on the Report from the Bureau of Topograpical Engineers, within whose charge and care are all the improvements of our harbors and rivers:

"The report from the Chief of the Corps of Topographical Engineers, hereto ap. pended, has been prepared with care and industry; it embraces objects of great public concern, and furnishes most desirable information, in regard not only to the works upon which expenditures have been made during the last season, but to those which are likely to be prosecuted during the ensuing year. The details of the operations and the results of the past year furnish satisfactory proof of the advantages of confiding the executing, as well as the planning, of works of this character to men of scientific acquirements, professional skill, and practical experience. Such duties are properly assigned to those who, by education, constant study, and long laborious practice, have acquired the requisite qualifications to superintend and properly execute them. The objects brought into view in the report of the Topographical Bureau are not of exclusively military char acter, but many of them, however, have an intimate relation to the defence of the country, and all are regarded as public works directly connected with, and essential to, our external or internal commerce. Most of these works were authorized or undertaken some years ago; but little was done upon them during the past year, in consequence of the failure of the appropriations for that purpose.

"The Lakes are almost entirely destitute of natural harbors. Navigation upon them was exposed to immediate perils, and not unfrequently attended with frightful loss of life and property. With the settlement and growth of the Western country, the commerce upon these inland seas has rapidly increased, and its estimated annual amount now exceeds in value the entire exports of the products and manufactures of

the United States to all foreign countries. An interest of this magnitude, daily augmenting, in which so many States and so large a portion of our citizens participated, naturally commanded the attention of Congress, and properly received its fostering care. Safe harbors were much needed, and a system of improvements, with a view to provide them, was commenced in 1824. The total amount expended upon these harbors is $2,861,964. The objects to which these appropriations have been applied, and the amounts of them from 1824 to the present time, are specified in the annexed report, together with an estimate of the further sums required for the ensuing fiscal year. The works, so far as

they have been prosecuted, give abundant will in the end be realized to the fullest assurance that the anticipated advantages extent. It may be proper to remark that these improvements are not without benefit in a military point of view. Should it ever become necessary to have a naval force upon these Lakes, the numerous and commodious harbors thus provided by the aid of the Government will contribute to its safety and successful operations. Besides, there are now employed in the commerce of these Lakes a great number of large-sized and stoutly-built steamers, which would not have been placed there by individual enterprise but for the safety and accommodation afforded by these harbors. In case of a public emergency, these steamers can be expeditiously converted into effective vessels of war and rendered subservient to military operations. Nor are the economy and facility of transporting troops, munitions of war, and supplies, to be overlooked in estimating the public advantages of the Lake improvements. It is also said that our best seamen are those who have been trained in the navigation of our Lakes.

"The number of lake harbor improvements authorized by law is twenty-six. Good harbors have been made where none existed before, and the expenses of construction have not, in the whole, exceeded the estimates prospectively presented. These results give assurance that the plans were judiciously conceived, and the work economically and skillfully executed.

"The public usefulness of these improvements will be better appreciated, when it is considered that by means of them a most dangerous navigation has been rendered comparatively safe, a large shipping interest has been created upon our Lakes, and facilities and shelter afforded to a commerce now estimated at a hundred millions of dollars annually, and increasing with surprising rapidity, in which six States are directly and all sections of the country incidentally, interested."

After thus showing the importance of

the lake navigation and of improving their harbors, he then goes on to show the necessity of improving the great rivers of the West, and also the Hudson river.

Here are the strongest recommendations by the cabinet officer having in special charge the whole subject, that the government should prosecute various works for the promotion and protection of Lake and River commerce, and to these recommendations the President himself invites the attention of Congress, as "concerning prominent objects of national interest." Is it possible to exonerate the President, in view of his subsequent course on the River and Harbor bill, from the charge of deliberately setting at nought his own recommendations, and of leading Congress into appropriations for the purposes set forth in the Secretary of War's report, under the belief that the President desired and approved themwhen he was all the while opposed on constitutional grounds, to the whole scheme. What could be the motive for such duplicity? Possibly some clue to the difficulty may be found in the facts we are now to relate and comment upon. When the bill was returned to the House with the President's objections, one of the partisans of the President-Mr. Brinckerhoff is thus reported in the

Union:

"I am anxious, and long have been anxious, that it should become a law. I have entertained apprehensions, however, that it would not; I have been apprehensive that it would be defeated by an Executive veto; and had my humble advice been taken by my friends, I believe it would have been saved from this fate. I am not at all disposed to play the croaker, or the prophet of the past,' but had my friends postponed the vote on the tariff bill for one week, as I advised them to do,

this bill would have become a law. I am satisfied of it, sir."

Here it is distinctly intimated of the President by one of his own supporters, that his apparent favor to the Harbor bill was only to catch votes for the Tariff bill, and it is charged, that if the latter had been held in suspense until after a decision upon the former, there would have

"The reminiscences connected with this veto were of a very unpleasant character. Why was no notice, not the slightest intimation, given that the President could not, consistently with his views of duty, approve the appropriations in the bill? When he knew the house to be earnestly engaged in discussing the recommendations of these appropriations by one of his Secretaries, and the estimate for them submitted by himself, why had he abstained from saying a syllable about any doubt of their constitutionality in his own mind? Mr. T. would here call on the gentleman at the head of the Committee on Commerce, (Mr. McClelland,) and on the gentleman from Maryland, (Mr. Constable,) a member of that Committee, to declare

here in their places whether they had not in person called upon the President and shown him the bill, and whether he had intimated any objection to the items it contained? He asked the chairman to say whether the President was not fully aware of everything this committee had inserted in the bill?

"[Mr. McClelland observed a profound silence.]

"Mr.T. would call on the gentleman from Maryland to say whether the President had expressed any doubts or objections as to the items in the bill?

"Mr. Constable replied, but in too low a voice to be distinctly heard by the Reporter, especially as there was a crowd of members

in the aisle near his seat, and some restlessness and movement in the hall; but he was understood to say that the President had objected to but one of the items.

"Mr. Thompson resumed. Had this been a plan laid for the purpose of affecting other legislation of the House? Was it a soothing song to lull the friends of this River and Harbor bill to sleep until after a certain vote should have been given? Mr. T. would mention a fact that was astonish

ing and startling. The day before the vote on the tariff the government organ came out IN FAVOR of this Harbor bill, and the very day after that vote it came out as strongly AGAINST IT. He heard it said by some gentleman near him that that was easily explained. No doubt of it. A man must be poor indeed in invention who could not get up some sort of apology, however lame, to help a political associate out of a scrape. But it would not do for the old editor to say that he did not know what went in his own paper; it was his duty to know.

"Mr. T. said that all the House must have witnessed the expressive silence of the chairman of the Committee on Commerce when interrogated on a plain matter of fact. Colonel Abert, of the Topographical Bureau, had told Mr. T. that the President was shown all the items in the bill, and had intimated no constitutional objection to any of them, but had only cut down the amount of appropriations which had been at first proposed.

"Mr. Payne here interposed, and asked Mr. T. whether he meant to say that the chairman of the Committee on Commerce (Mr. McClelland), and the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Constable), had showed the President the items in the Harbor bill, and that the President had assented to them?

"Mr. Thompson replied that the gentleman from Maryland had said that, with a solitary exception as to one of the items, such was the fact.

"Mr. Thurman suggested to the Chair that it was out of order to refer to conversations held with the President.

that's

[Many voices: Out of order!' a pretty story;' must not tell, eh ?'] "Mr. McClelland was understood to say he had not heard or had not understood Mr. Thompson's inquiry. The gentleman from Alabama (Mr. Payne) had asked him whether he had said that he had presented the Harbor bill to the President with its different items. He did not consider himself bound to state, nor was it proper for him to state any conversation he might have had with the President; he considered all such conversations as confidential; yet he would state that in any consultation he might have had with the President, he had not submitted the bill to him nor conversed about the particular items it contained.

"Mr. Constable said that he had never seen the bill till it came to this House. He had had a conversation with the President about one item of it only. In that conversation the President expressed a general opinion only.

"Mr. Thompson said the chairman of the

Committee on Commerce had now given a limited answer to his inquiry.

"Mr. McClelland said he hoped the gentleman from Pennsylvania had no desire to injure him. He had positively and unequivocally declined answering the inquiry. "Mr. Thompson emphatically declined all purpose to injure Mr. McClelland, of whom he spoke in terms of the highest respect.

Mr. T. went on to say that what had not been proved by his inquiry remained unproved, for there was no other witness. Mr. T. had made no charges; he had simply asked a question as to a fact, and he would leave it with the House to say whether the answer he had received disproved

anything of what he had said. He had said that the answer was a strong fact; but a much stronger was the recommendation of the President's own officers, sent to the House by himself, without the slightest intimation of disapproval. No such a word was to be found when these estimates and recommendations were referred to; yet in these estimates and recommendations all those rivers and harbors were included which the Committee had subsequently inserted in the bill, and which the President now thought so entirely unconstitutional. Mr. T. was as loth as any other member of that House to say anything against the President; perhaps his habitual caution had prevented him from sooner expressing his opinion, and perhaps not. But be that as it might, Mr. T. looked upon this veto as the commencement of a revolution in the principles and practice of this Government. The tariff had been overthrown. Mr. T. had stood it all; his own State stood trembling on the verge of ruin; still he had not complained of the President. Surely, if he had any constitutional scruples in his mind, frankness and candor would have required him to communicate them before this late hour; but had there been a word like it? Mr. T. said he saw indications of warmth in some quarters around him. He cared little for warmth; but he warned gentlemen that he did not wish his words misrepresented; he did not practice misrepresentations of others, and, if attempted towards himself, he should not submit to it. He had called upon a witness, but that witness refused to testify; the House was certainly at liberty to draw its own infe

rence."

If there be any approach to accuracy in these representations thus made on the floor of Congress, it follows that Mr. Polk had permitted his friends to believe-1st, while the Tariff bill was yet in suspense, that he was not opposed to the Harbor mostly for objects presented by Mr. bill; 2d, that its appropriations were Polk's own cabinet; and lastly, that he himself had been consulted about them, and had not made any objection on principle, but contented himself with reducing some of the estimates.

In the face, nevertheless, of such inconsistency and such duplicity, the favor of an honest people is still claimed for a chief magistrate who, under such circumstances, exercised one of the extremest prerogatives vested in him for special purposes by the Constitution, to defeat one of the great ends for which that Constitution was ordained-the promotion of the general welfare.

"If no constitutional objection existed to the bill, there are others of a serious nature which deserve some consideration. It appropriates between one and two millions of dollars for objects which are of no pressing necessity; and this is proposed at a time when the country is engaged in a foreign war, and when Congress at its present session has authorized a loan, or the issue of treasury notes, to defray the expenses of the war, to be resorted to if the 'exigencies of the government shall require it.' It would seem to be the dictate of wisdom, under such circumstances, to husband our means and not to waste them on comparatively unimportant objects, so that we may reduce the loan or issue of treasury notes which may become necessary to the smallest practicable sum. It would seem to be wise too, to abstain from such expenditures with a view to avoid the accumula

tion of a large public debt, the existence of which would be opposed to the interests of our people, as well as to the genius of our free institutions."

Mr. Polk here treats the protection and security of the hundreds of millions of dollars, and the hundreds of thousands of lives, annually put at hazard upon our great lakes and upon the great rivers, which are the outlets of the internal commerce of the country-as objects of no "pressing necessity" and comparatively unimportant." An executive war, unnecessarily and wantonly provoked, entered into in defiance of constitutional restrictions for which, on the subject of internal improvement, he professes so much respect and carried on with most wasteful prodigality-a war undertaken for the extension of slavery, and of the political power derived from slavery-is, in the judgment of Mr. Polk, of far high er importance than the protection of the growing commerce or the priceless lives of the freemen of the great States bordering on our inland seas; and while tens of millions are lavished upon the waste and destruction of war, millions irrevocacably squandered, and which bring no return, the proposal to invest less than

two millions in public works, which, if completed, would in one year save to them more than their whole cost, is rejected. Here, again, it cannot be misplaced to reiterate the remark that in thus assuming to decide upon the propriety and expediency of money expenditures, the President palpably invades the exclusive province of the legislature, and violates, without peradventure, the very Constitution for the inviolability of which the measure is adopted.

But what, in fact, are the interests, what the claims, which Mr. Polk treats as secondary, and of less urgency than the demands of an aggressive executive war? It is Mr. Polk who invokes this test of the wisdom and constitutionality of the Veto, and by it, therefore, let him be tried and judged.

Let us begin with the Mississippi and its great navigable tributaries. So miraculous has been the increase in population, wealth, and improvement of the great valleys drained by these waters that, to quote the language of Mr. Calhoun, in the report made by him in the Senate, on the memorial of the Memphis Convention-"What 60 years ago was one vast region, with little exception, of forest and prairies, over which a few hundred thousand savages wandered, has now a population but little less than nine millions, with great and flourishing cities, abounding in opulence, refined in manners, and possessed of all the comforts and even elegance of old and polished communities." But great as this increase is, it is nothing, according to Mr. Calhoun's calculations, to what may be anticipated in the next 60 years. According to the first census in 1790, the population of the whole region drained bythe Mississippi did not exceed 200,000. In 1840 it exceeded 6,300,000, and at this moment, taking the same ratio of increase as that between 1830 and 1840, it falls little short of nine millions of people. In sixty years hence, unless some shock should occur, which would convulse or overthrow our institutions," Mr. Calhoun estimates that the population of the valley will reach sixty millions. Its commerce has increased even more rapidly than its population. According to a memorial presented to Congress by the citizens of Cincinnati relative to the improvement of the navigation of the Mississippi and Ohio rivers, so late as 1817, "the whole commerce from New Orleans to the upper country was transported in

about 20 barges of 100 tons each, making only one trip a year. The number of boats employed on the upper Ohio could not have exceeded 150, of 30 tons each, making the trip from Pittsburg to Louisville, and back, in about two months, and about thrice in the season-the tonnage of all the boats ascending the Ohio and the lower Mississippi was about 6,500." Upon the same authority it is stated that the number of steamboats employed in 1843 in navigating the Mississippi and its tributaries, was 450, of the average tonnage of 200 tons, making an aggregate of 90,000 tons, and the value per ton was about $80, making an aggregate value of seven millions two hundred thousand dollars, employing 15,750 persons in their navigation, and the expense of navigation at twelve millions two hundred and fifty thousand dollars-the number of flat boats engaged in the same navigation is estimated at 4,000, employing 20,000 persons, at an annual expenditure of $1,380,000. The annual value of the products of the valley borne on that river and its tributaries, is estimated at $120,000,000-and that of foreign products at $100,000,000, making the enormous total of 220 millions of dollars.

These were the estimates, and this the condition, of the navigation and commerce of the Mississippi and its tributaries in 1843. The growth of both have since been very great. According to the last Annual Report of the Treasury Department, on the Commerce and Navigation of the United States, the steamboat tonnage on the western waters, on 1st June, 1845, is 158,713 tons-the number of boats is now estimated at 900, at an average tonnage of 173 tons, making in all an aggregate of 161,787 tons.

"Estimating then," says Mr. Calhoun, "that the number of persons employed in navigating the Mississippi and its tributaries, and the expense of navigation, and the value of boats and cargoes to be what the Cincinnati Committee make them, the present annual value of the commerce of the river and its tributaries, would exceed three hundred millions."

"But (adds Mr. Calhoun) however great it may be, it is but the beginning. If the commerce of the valley shall increase in proportion with its population, and nothing should occur to impede that, it will in a short time be more than quadrupled. Looking beyond, to a not very distant future, when this immense valley, containing within its limits 1,200,000 square miles; lying, in its whole extent,

in the temperate zone, and occupying a position midway between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans; unequaled in fertility and the diversity of its productions; intersected in every direction by this mighty stream, including its tributaries, by which it is drained, and which supply a continuous navigation of upwards of 10,000 miles, with a coast, including both banks, of twice that length, shall be crowded with population, and its resources fully developed, imagination itself is taxed in the attempt to realize the magnitude of its commerce. Such is the present state of the commerce of the Mississippi, including its tributaries, according to the best data that can be obtained, and such its future prospects." And yet this enormous commerce, and the precious lives employed in carrying it on, are to remain exposed to annual losses of great extent and severity, because Mr. Polk considers them as of secondary importance to the conquest of some barren coast on the Pacific, or some extension of the area of Slavery on the Gulf of Mexico.

What their annual losses are may be partly gathered from the following statement: A Report of the Secretary of the Treasury, (House Doc. 170, 3d. Ses. 27th Congress,) transmitting the copy of a letter from the Collector of St. Louis, states that, of 126 steamboats enrolled at St. Louis, and trading with that port in 1841-2, 29 were lost. Of these 29, 20 were lost by snags or rocks, which could be removed. The money loss was estimated at $876,700; and 42 human beings perished. Assuming the accuracy of these statements, and that the loss of the St. Louis boats during the period specified is a fair annual average, and that the average loss on all the Mississippi boats is in the same proportion-the annual loss of all the boats employed in this navigation, estimating them at 900, would be 107; and if the damage to cargo be put at the same

rate as that to the boats, it would make an annual aggregate loss of $2,601,200

of which two-thirds would be occasioned by snags, logs and rocks, in other words, by causes susceptible of being removed. An additional fact, showing the dangers of this navigation, mentioned by the Cincinnati memorial, is very significant, viz.: that many Insurance Companies refuse to take risks that on the best of them the premium on the steamboats on these waters, and charged is from 12 to 18 per cent. Experience having established the practicability of removing the obstructions and