SE OF REPRESENTATIVES, JULY 27, 1848.

Mr. SPEAKER, our Democratic friends seem to be in a great distress because
they think our candidate for the Presidency don't suit us. Most of them
cannot find out that General Taylor has any principles at all; some,
however, have discovered that he has one, but that one is entirely wrong.
This one principle is his position on the veto power. The gentleman from
Tennessee [Mr. Stanton] who has just taken his seat, indeed, has said
there is very little, if any, difference on this question between General
Taylor and all the Presidents; and he seems to think it sufficient
detraction from General Taylor's position on it that it has nothing new
in it. But all others whom I have heard speak assail it furiously. A new
member from Kentucky [Mr. Clark], of very considerable ability, was
in particular concerned about it. He thought it altogether novel and
unprecedented for a President or a Presidential candidate to think of
approving bills whose constitutionality may not be entirely clear to his
own mind. He thinks the ark of our safety is gone unless Presidents
shall always veto such bills as in their judgment may be of doubtful
constitutionality. However clear Congress may be on their authority to
pass any particular act, the gentleman from Kentucky thinks the President
must veto it if he has doubts about it. Now I have neither time nor
inclination to argue with the gentleman on the veto power as an original
question; but I wish to show that General Taylor, and not he, agrees with
the earlier statesmen on this question. When the bill chartering the
first Bank of the United States passed Congress, its constitutionality was
questioned. Mr. Madison, then in the House of Representatives, as well as
others, had opposed it on that ground. General Washington, as President,
was called on to approve or reject it. He sought and obtained on the
constitutionality question the separate written opinions of Jefferson,
Hamilton, and Edmund Randolph,--they then being respectively Secretary of
State, Secretary of the Treasury, and Attorney general. Hamilton's opinion
was for the power; while Randolph's and Jefferson's were both against
it. Mr. Jefferson, after giving his opinion deciding only against the
constitutionality of the bill, closes his letter with the paragraph which
I now read:

"It must be admitted, however, that unless the President's mind, on a view
of everything which is urged for and against t