From the practice of Congress such an examination of each bill as the Constitution requires has been rendered impossible.  The most important business of each session is generally crowded into its last hours, and the alternative presented to the President is either to violate the constitutional duty which he owes to the people and approve bills which for want of time it is impossible he should have examined, or by his refusal to do this subject the country and individuals to great loss and inconvenience.  Besides, a practice has grown up of late years to legislate in appropriation bills at the last hours of the session on new and important subjects.  This practice constrains the President either to suffer measures to become laws which he does not approve or to incur the risk of stopping the wheels of the Government by vetoing an appropriation bill.  Formerly such bills were confined to specific appropriations for carrying into effect existing laws and the well-established policy of the country, and little time was then required by the President for their examination.

For my own part, I have deliberately determined that I shall approve no bills which I have not examined, and it will be a case of extreme and most urgent necessity which shall ever induce me to depart from this rule.  I therefore respectfully but earnestly recommend that the two Houses would allow the President at least two days previous to the adjournment of each session within which no new bill shall be presented to him for approval.  Under the existing joint rule one day is allowed, but this rule has been hitherto so constantly suspended in practice that important bills continue to be presented to him up till the very last moments of the session.  In a large majority of cases no great public inconvenience can arise from the want of time to examine their provisions, because the Constitution has declared that if a bill be presented to the President within the last ten days of the session he is not required to return it, either with an approval or with a veto, “in which case it shall not be a law.”  It may then lie over and be taken up and passed at the next session.  Great inconvenience would only be experienced in regard to appropriation bills, but, fortunately, under the late excellent law allowing a salary instead of a per diem to members of Congress the expense and inconvenience of a called session will be greatly reduced.

I can not conclude without commending to your favorable consideration the interest of the people of this District.  Without a representative on the floor of Congress, they have for this very reason peculiar claims upon our just regard.  To this I know, from my long acquaintance with them, they are eminently entitled.

JAMES BUCHANAN.

SPECIAL MESSAGES.

WASHINGTON, December 8, 1857.

To the Senate of the United States: 

Herewith I transmit to the Senate, for its consideration with a view to ratification, a convention between the United States and His Majesty the King of Denmark for the discontinuance of the Sound dues, signed in this city on the 11th day of April last.