money, will occasion us the loss of ten times the amount in other ways. "As to war producing a suspension of interest on a national debt, let the gentleman look back a little to the wars of France. In 1793 France was at war with almost all the countries of Europe, and she immediately confiscated all her debts to them. But what happened thirty years after, when the reäction came? The allies took Paris, and, in the settlement which then took place, they compelled France to pay all her debts, with full interest on the whole period during which payment had been suspended. That was the consequence to France of going to war to extinguish debts. And, if we go to war with Great Britain to-morrow, she will make us, as one of the conditions of peace, pay our whole debt of two hundred millions, with interest. And what shall we gain? Spend millions upon millions every year, as long as the war continues; and, unless it is greatly successful, have to pay our debt at last, principal and interest. This would depend on the chances of war, or the issues of battle. And, as our contests would be chiefly on the ocean, we must first obtain a superiority on the seas before we can put her down and vanquish her; and this to save ourselves from the payment of two hundred millions justly due from our citizens to hers! "There is a second reason given by the gentleman from Virginia in favor of war. He reminds us, with great warmth, that there are some ten or twelve citizens of the United States now prisoners in the city of Mexico, and dragging chains about the streets of that city; that a British subject taken with them has been liberated, while they are kept in bondage. Now, if I am correctly informed, one American citizen, a son of General Coombs, has been liberated on the application of the minister of the United States, who was as fairly a subject of imprisonment as the British subject of whom the gentleman speaks. I certainly have no objections to our minister's making such representations as he can in favor of the release of citizens of the United States, although taken in actual war against Mexico, in association with Texian forces; but I am not prepared to go to war to obtain their liberation. I must first be permitted to ask how it is that these men happen to be in the streets of Mexico. Is it not because they formed part of an expedition got up in Texas against the Mexican city of Santa Fé? Were they not taken flagrante bello, actually engaged in a war they had nothing to do with, to which the United States were no party? In all this great pity and sympathy for American citizens made to travel hundreds of miles barefoot and in chains, the question 'How came they there?' seems never to be asked. And yet, so far as the interposition of this nation for their recovery is concerned, that is the very first question to be asked. "I come now to the third ground for war urged by the gentleman from Virginia, and I hope I do not misrepresent him when I say that I understood him to affirm that if he had the power he would prohibit the invasion of Texas by Mexico; and if Mexico would not submit to such a requirement, and should persist in her invasion, he would go to war. The gentleman stated, as a ground for war, that Santa Anna had avowed his determination to drive slavery beyond the Sabine.' That was what the gentleman from Virginia most apprehended-that slavery would be abolished in Texas; that we should have neighbors at our doors not contaminated by that accursed plague-spot. He would have war with Mexico sooner than slavery should be driven back to the United States, whence it came. If that is to be the avowed opinion of this committee, in God's name let my constituents know it! The sooner it is proclaimed on the house-tops, the better-the house is to go to war with Mexico for the purpose of annexing Texas to this Union!" CHAPTER XIII. REPORT ON REPORT ON PRESIDENT TYLER'S APPROVAL, WITH OBJECTIONS, OF THE ON the 23d of June, 1842, President Tyler announced to the House of Representatives that he had signed and approved an act for the apportionment of representatives among the several states, and had deposited the same in the office of the Secretary of State, accompanied with his reasons for giving to it his sanction; by which it appeared that, after having officially approved" that act, he had declared, in effect, that he did not approve of it, having doubts concerning both its constitutionality and expediency, and that he had signed it only in deference to the opinions of both houses of Congress. Mr. Adams, from the committee to whom these proceedings of the President had been referred, in a report to the House severely scrutinizes the course of the President in this respect. He declares that the duty of the President, in exercising the authority given him by the constitution to sign and approve acts of Congress, is prescribed in terms equally concise and precise; and that it has given him no power to alter, amend, comment upon, or assign his reasons for the performance of his duty. These views he illustrates by a minute examination of the language of that instrument, and shows that what the President had done was a departure not only from the language but from the substance of the law prescribing to him his duties in that respect. Mr. Adams then, in behalf of the committee, after showing that the proceeding of the President in this instance is without precedent or example, and imminently dangerous in its tendencies, proceeds to remark: "The entry upon the bill is, 'Approved: John Tyler;" and that entry makes it the law of the land; and then, by a private note deposited with the law in the Department of State, the same hand which, under the sacred obligation of an official oath, has written the word 'approved,' and added the signmanual of his name, feels it due to himself to declare that the bill is not approved, and that he doubts both its constitutionality and its policy, and that he signs it only in deference to the declared will of both houses of Congress; not from assent to their reasons, but in submission to their will. "And he feels it due to himself to say this, motives for signing it may be rightly understood; secondly, that his opinions may not be liable to be misunderstood, or, thirdly, quoted hereafter erroneously as a precedent. The motives of a President of the United States for signing an act of Congress can be no other than because he approves it; and because, in that event, the constitution enjoins it upon him to first, that his sign it as a duty, which he has sworn to perform, and with which he cannot dispense. "But no; in the present case the President feels it due to himself to say that his motives for signing the bill were not because he approved it, or because it was made by the constitution his duty to sign it, but to prove his submission to the will of Congress. He feels it due also to himself to guard against the liability of his opinions to misconstruction, or to be quoted hereafter erroneously as a precedent. His signature to the bill, preceded by the word 'approved,' taken in connection with the duties prescribed to the President of the United States by the constitution, certainly was liable to the construction that his opinions were favorable to the bill. They were, indeed, liable to no other construction respectful to him, or trustful to his honor and sincerity; nor can there be a doubt that they would have been quoted hereafter as a precedent. No man living could have imagined that the word 'approved' could be construed to mean either doubt or obsequious submission to the will of others; and it is with extreme regret that the committee see, in the President's exposition of his reasons for signing an act of Congress, the open avowal that, in his vocabulary, used in the performance of one of the most solemn and sacred of his duties, the word 'approved' means not approval, but doubt; not the expression of his own opinions, but mere obsequiousness to the will of Congress." The report proceeds to deny that the example of the advice given by the first Secretary of State to the first President of the United States, which the President adduces in his support, and the following that advice by that President, gave any "sanction to such recorded duplicity." It asserts that such an example is of dangerous tendency—an encroachment by the Executive on legislative functions; that the reasons given by President Tyler are a running commentary against the law, against its execution according to the intention of the |