It appears that within the period specified in the resolution of the House certificates were given by my immediate predecessor, upon which settlements have been made at the Treasury, amounting to $5,460.  He has solemnly determined that the objects and items of these expenditures should not be made public, and has given his certificates to that effect, which are placed upon the records of the country.  Under the direct authority of an existing law, he has exercised the power of placing these expenditures under the seal of confidence, and the whole matter was terminated before I came into office.  An important question arises, whether a subsequent President, either voluntarily or at the request of one branch of Congress, can without a violation of the spirit of the law revise the acts of his predecessor and expose to public view that which he had determined should not be “made public.”  If not a matter of strict duty, it would certainly be a safe general rule that this should not be done.  Indeed, it may well happen, and probably would happen, that the President for the time being would not be in possession of the information upon which his predecessor acted, and could not, therefore, have the means of judging whether he had exercised his discretion wisely or not.  The law requires no other voucher but the President’s certificate, and there is nothing in its provisions which requires any “entries, receipts, letters, vouchers, memorandums, or other evidence of such payments” to be preserved in the executive department.  The President who makes the “certificate” may, if he chooses, keep all the information and evidence upon which he acts in his own possession.  If, for the information of his successors, he shall leave the evidence on which he acts and the items of the expenditures which make up the sum for which he has given his “certificate” on the confidential files of one of the Executive Departments, they do not in any proper sense become thereby public records.  They are never seen or examined by the accounting officers of the Treasury when they settle an account on the “President’s certificate.”  The First Congress of the United States on the 1st of July, 1790, passed an act “providing the means of intercourse between the United States and foreign nations,” by which a similar provision to that which now exists was made for the settlement of such expenditures as in the judgment of the President ought not to be made public.  This act was limited in its duration.  It was continued for a limited term in 1793, and between that time and the date of the act of May 1, 1810, which is now in force, the same provision was revived and continued.  Expenditures were made and settled under Presidential certificates in pursuance of these laws.