r, and this bill invests
them with full authority to do so. If the legislature of New York or
Pennsylvania or any other State should be found to be in such condition
as I have supposed, could there be any security furnished against such a
step on the part of the directors? Nay, is it not fairly to be presumed
that this proviso was introduced for the sole purpose of meeting the
contingency referred to? Why else should it have been introduced? And
I submit to the Senate whether it can be believed that any State would
be likely to sit quietly down under such a state of things. In a great
measure of public interest their patriotism may be successfully appealed
to, but to infer their assent from circumstances at war with such
inference I can not but regard as calculated to excite a feeling at
fatal enmity with the peace and harmony of the country. I must therefore
regard this clause as asserting the power to be in Congress to establish
offices of discount in a State not only without its assent, but against
its dissent, and so regarding it I can not sanction it. On general
principles the right in Congress to prescribe terms to any State implies
a superiority of power and control, deprives the transaction of all
pretense to compact between them, and terminates, as we have seen, in
the total abrogation of freedom of action on the part of the States.
But, further, the State may express, after the most solemn form of
legislation, its dissent, which may from time to time thereafter be
repeated in full view of its own interest, which can never be separated
from the wise and beneficent operation of this Government, and yet
Congress may by virtue of the last proviso overrule its law, and upon
grounds which to such State will appear to rest on a constructive
necessity and propriety and nothing more. I regard the bill as asserting
for Congress the right to incorporate a United States bank with power
and right to establish offices of discount and deposit in the several
States of this Union with or without their consent--a principle to which
I have always heretofore been opposed and which can never obtain my
sanction; and waiving all other considerations growing out of its other
provisions, I return it to the House in which it originated with these
my objections to its approval.

JOHN TYLER.

WASHINGTON, _September 9, 1841_.

_To the House of Representatives of the United States_:

It is with extreme regret that I feel myself con