ll have my serious
consideration.

JAMES BUCHANAN.

VETO MESSAGES.[13]

[Footnote 13: The messages of February 1 and February 6, 1860, are
pocket vetoes.]

WASHINGTON CITY, _February 1, 1860_.

_To the Senate of the United States_:

On the last day of the last Congress a bill, which had passed both
Houses, entitled "An act making an appropriation for deepening the
channel over the St. Clair flats, in the State of Michigan," was
presented to me for approval.

It is scarcely necessary to observe that during the closing hours of a
session it is impossible for the President on the instant to examine
into the merits or demerits of an important bill, involving, as this
does, grave questions both of expediency and of constitutional power,
with that care and deliberation demanded by his public duty as well as
by the best interests of the country. For this reason the Constitution
has in all cases allowed him ten days for deliberation, because if a
bill be presented to him within the last ten days of the session he is
not required to return it, either with an approval or a veto, but may
retain it, "in which case it shall not be a law." Whilst an occasion can
rarely occur when so long a period as ten days would be required to
enable the President to decide whether he should approve or veto a
bill, yet to deny him even two days on important questions before the
adjournment of each session for this purpose, as recommended by a former
annual message, would not only be unjust to him, but a violation of the
spirit of the Constitution. To require him to approve a bill when it is
impossible he could examine into its merits would be to deprive him of
the exercise of his constitutional discretion and convert him into
a mere register of the decrees of Congress. I therefore deem it a
sufficient reason for having retained the bill in question that it
was not presented to me until the last day of the session.

Since the termination of the last Congress I have made a thorough
examination of the questions involved in the bill to deepen the channel
over the St. Clair flats, and now proceed to express the opinions which I
have formed upon the subject; and

1. Even if this had been a mere question of expediency, it was, to say
the least, extremely doubtful whether the bill ought to have been
approved, because the object which Congress intended to accomplish
by the appropriation which it contains of $55,000 had been already
subs