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In the same month in which President Cleveland issued his memorable special message to the Senate on the Tenure of Office Act, he began another struggle against congressional practice in which he was not so fortunate. On March 10, 1886, he sent to Congress the first of his pension vetoes.
Congress did not pass the act over the veto, and Grant has been justified by the later judgment of the nation. His action demonstrated what a President may do in resisting by his constitutional authority some transitory wave of popular opinion, and it has proved a precedent of no mean value. Johnson's vetoes became ridiculous. Grant's veto compensates for many of his mistakes.
Adams then proceeds to state that the principles of nullification were never more inflexibly maintained, never more inexorably pursued, than they had been by all that portion of the South which had given them countenance, from the day of the death of William Henry Harrison to the present, and that nullification is the creed of the executive mansion at Washington, the acting President's conscience, and the woof of all his vetoes.
He made an honest, conscientious Governor, but did not work in harmony with the Legislature. He vetoed more bills than any Governor before or since. His vetoes became too common to bear any influence, and a great many of the bills were passed over his veto. I was very much opposed to his renomination.
During the campaign, Democratic candidates had everywhere contended that they were just as good friends of the old soldiers as the Republicans. Now, they felt that to make good this position they must do something to offset the effect of President Cleveland's vetoes.
It enshrines the successful expressions of spirit as well as the shocks and vetoes of circumstance; it enables a man to know himself in knowing the world and to discover his ideal by the very ring, true or false, of fortune's coin. With this brief account we may leave the subject of rational ethics.
But as it happens, there is a very special sense in which materialism has more restrictions than spiritualism. Mr. McCabe thinks me a slave because I am not allowed to believe in determinism. I think Mr. McCabe a slave because he is not allowed to believe in fairies. But if we examine the two vetoes we shall see that his is really much more of a pure veto than mine.
The constituted authorities of the United States are no longer a government, if they be not masters of their own will; they are no longer a government, if an external power may arrest their proceedings; they are no longer a government, if acts passed by both houses, and approved by the President, may be nullified by State vetoes or State ordinances.
The report then proceeds to show the several developments of this new and most unfortunate condition of the general government, effected by "a system of continual and unrelenting exercise of executive legislation," by the alternate gross abuse of constitutional power, and bold assumption of powers never vested in him by any law, resulting in four several vetoes, which, in the course of fifteen months, had suspended the legislation of the Union.
Two days later a committee of the House of Representatives headed by James W. Grimes reported on the Governor's vetoes. They held that the "various Executive vetoes" were not only uncalled for, but were unwarranted by the Organic Act of the Territory. The phrase in the Constitution which reads, "shall approve of all laws," is mandatory and leaves the Executive without discretion.
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