It is apparent, therefore, that the circumstances must be extraordinary which would induce the President to withhold approval from a bill involving no violation of the Constitution.  The amount of the claims proposed to be discharged by the bill before me, the nature of the transactions in which those claims are alleged to have originated, the length of time during which they have occupied the attention of Congress and the country, present such an exigency.  Their history renders it impossible that a President who has participated to any considerable degree in public affairs could have failed to form respecting them a decided opinion upon what he would deem satisfactory grounds.  Nevertheless, instead of resting on former opinions, it has seemed to me proper to review and more carefully examine the whole subject, so as satisfactorily to determine the nature and extent of my obligations in the premises.

I feel called upon at the threshold to notice an assertion, often repeated, that the refusal of the United States to satisfy these claims in the manner provided by the present bill rests as a stain on the justice of our country.  If it be so, the imputation on the public honor is aggravated by the consideration that the claims are coeval with the present century, and it has been a persistent wrong during that whole period of time.  The allegation is that private property has been taken for public use without just compensation, in violation of express provision of the Constitution, and that reparation has been withheld and justice denied until the injured parties have for the most part descended to the grave.  But it is not to be forgotten or overlooked that those who represented the people in different capacities at the time when the alleged obligations were incurred, and to whom the charge of injustice attaches in the first instance, have also passed away and borne with them the special information which controlled their decision and, it may be well presumed, constituted the justification of their acts.

If, however, the charge in question be well founded, although its admission would inscribe on our history a page which we might desire most of all to obliterate, and although, if true, it must painfully disturb our confidence in the justice and the high sense of moral and political responsibility of those whose memories we have been taught to cherish with so much reverence and respect, still we have only one course of action left to us, and that is to make the most prompt and ample reparation in our power and consign the wrong as far as may be to forgetfulness.

But no such heavy sentence of condemnation should be lightly passed upon the sagacious and patriotic men who participated in the transactions out of which these claims are supposed to have arisen, and who, from their ample means of knowledge of the general subject in its minute details and from their official position, are peculiarly responsible for whatever there is of wrong or injustice in the decisions of the Government.