ures as he shall
judge necessary and expedient, his participation in the formal business
of legislation is limited to the single duty, in a certain contingency,
of demanding for a bill a particular form of vote prescribed by the
Constitution before it can become a law. He is not invested with power
to defeat legislation by an absolute veto, but only to restrain it, and
is charged with the duty, in case he disapproves a measure, of invoking
a second and a more deliberate and solemn consideration of it on the
part of Congress. It is not incumbent on the President to sign a bill
as a matter of course, and thus merely to authenticate the action of
Congress, for he must exercise intelligent judgment or be faithless to
the trust reposed in him. If he approve a bill, he shall sign it, but
if not he shall return it with his objections to that House in which
it shall have originated for such further action as the Constitution
demands, which is its enactment, if at all, not by a bare numerical
majority, as in the first instance, but by a constitutional majority
of two-thirds of both Houses.

While the Constitution thus confers on the legislative bodies the
complete power of legislation in all cases, it proceeds, in the spirit
of justice, to provide for the protection of the responsibility of the
President. It does not compel him to affix the signature of approval to
any bill unless it actually have his approbation; for while it requires
him to sign if he approve, it, in my judgment, imposes upon him the duty
of withholding his signature if he do not approve. In the execution of
his official duty in this respect he is not to perform a mere mechanical
part, but is to decide and act according to conscientious convictions of
the rightfulness or wrongfulness of the proposed law. In a matter as to
which he is doubtful in his own mind he may well defer to the majority
of the two Houses. Individual members of the respective Houses, owing to
the nature, variety, and amount of business pending, must necessarily
rely for their guidance in many, perhaps most, cases, when the matters
involved are not of popular interest, upon the investigation of
appropriate committees, or, it may be, that of a single member, whose
attention has been particularly directed to the subject. For similar
reasons, but even to a greater extent, from the number and variety of
subjects daily urged upon his attention, the President naturally relies
much upon the invest