s. Actuated by this feeling, I have been
ready to yield much in a spirit of conciliation to the opinions of
others; and it is with great pain that I now feel compelled to differ
from Congress a second time in the same session. At the commencement of
this session, inclined from choice to defer to the legislative will, I
submitted to Congress the propriety of adopting a fiscal agent which,
without violating the Constitution, would separate the public money from
the Executive control and perform the operations of the Treasury without
being burdensome to the people or inconvenient or expensive to the
Government. It is deeply to be regretted that this department of the
Government can not upon constitutional and other grounds concur with the
legislative department in this last measure proposed to attain these
desirable objects. Owing to the brief space between the period of the
death of my lamented predecessor and my own installation into office,
I was, in fact, not left time to prepare and submit a definitive
recommendation of my own in my regular message, and since my mind has
been wholly occupied in a most anxious attempt to conform my action
to the legislative will. In this communication I am confined by the
Constitution to my objections simply to this bill, but the period of the
regular session will soon arrive, when it will be my duty, under another
clause of the Constitution, "to give to Congress information of the
state of the Union and recommend to their consideration such measures
as" I "shall judge necessary and expedient." And I most respectfully
submit, in a spirit of harmony, whether the present differences of
opinion should be pressed further at this time, and whether the
peculiarity of my situation does not entitle me to a postponement of
this subject to a more auspicious period for deliberation. The two
Houses of Congress have distinguished themselves at this extraordinary
session by the performance of an immense mass of labor at a season very
unfavorable both to health and action, and have passed many laws which
I trust will prove highly beneficial to the interests of the country
and fully answer its just expectations. It has been my good fortune
and pleasure to concur with them in all measures except this. And why
should our difference on this alone be pushed to extremes? It is my
anxious desire that it should not be. I too have been burdened with
extraordinary labors of late, and I sincerely desire time for