strained by the duty
faithfully to execute the office of President of the United States
and to the best of my ability to "preserve, protect, and defend the
Constitution of the United States" to return to the House in which it
originated the bill "to provide for the better collection, safe-keeping,
and disbursement of the public revenue by means of a corporation to be
styled the Fiscal Corporation of the United States," with my written
objections.

In my message sent to the Senate on the 16th day of August last,
returning the bill "to incorporate the subscribers to the Fiscal Bank
of the United States," I distinctly declared that my own opinion had
been uniformly proclaimed to be against the exercise "of the power of
Congress to create a national bank to operate _per se_ over the Union,"
and, entertaining that opinion, my main objection to that bill was based
upon the highest moral and religious obligations of conscience and the
Constitution. I readily admit that whilst the qualified _veto_ with
which the Chief Magistrate is invested should be regarded and was
intended by the wise men who made it a part of the Constitution as a
great conservative principle of our system, without the exercise of
which on important occasions a mere representative majority might urge
the Government in its legislation beyond the limits fixed by its framers
or might exert its just powers too hastily or oppressively, yet it is
a power which ought to be most cautiously exerted, and perhaps never
except in a case eminently involving the public interest or one in which
the oath of the President, acting under his convictions, both mental
and moral, imperiously requires its exercise. In such a case he has no
alternative. He must either exert the negative power intrusted to him
by the Constitution chiefly for its own preservation, protection, and
defense or commit an act of gross moral turpitude. Mere regard to the
will of a majority must not in a constitutional republic like ours
control this sacred and solemn duty of a sworn officer. The Constitution
itself I regard and cherish as the embodied and written will of the
whole people of the United States. It is their fixed and fundamental
law, which they unanimously prescribe to the public functionaries, their
mere trustees and servants. This _their_ will and the law which _they_
have given us as the rule of our action have no guard, no guaranty of
preservation, protection, and defense, but the oaths