It suspends—­in other words, abrogates for the time—­the provision of the act of 1833, commonly called the “compromise act.”  The only ground on which this departure from the solemn adjustment of a great and agitating question seems to have been regarded as expedient is the alleged necessity of establishing by legislative enactments rules and regulations for assessing the duties to be levied on imports after the 30th June according to the home valuation, and yet the bill expressly provides that “if before the 1st of August there be no further legislation upon the subject, the laws for laying and collecting duties shall be the same as though this act had not been passed.”  In other words, that the act of 1833, imperfect as it is considered, shall in that case continue to be and to be executed under such rules and regulations as previous statutes had prescribed or had enabled the executive department to prescribe for that purpose, leaving the supposed chasm in the revenue laws just as it was before.

I am certainly far from being disposed to deny that additional legislation upon the subject is very desirable; on the contrary, the necessity, as well as difficulty, of establishing uniformity in the appraisements to be made in conformity with the true intention of that act was brought to the notice of Congress in my message to Congress at the opening of its present session.  But however sensible I may be of the embarrassments to which the Executive, in the absence of all aid from the superior wisdom of the Legislature, will be liable in the enforcement of the existing laws, I have not, with the sincerest wish to acquiesce in its expressed will, been able to persuade myself that the exigency of the occasion is so great as to justify me in signing the bill in question with my present views of its character and effects.  The existing laws, as I am advised, are sufficient to authorize and enable the collecting officers, under the directions of the Secretary of the Treasury, to levy the duties imposed by the act of 1833.

That act was passed under peculiar circumstances, to which it is not necessary that I should do more than barely allude.  Whatever maybe, in theory, its character, I have always regarded it as importing the highest moral obligation.  It has now existed for nine years unchanged in any essential particular, with as general acquiescence, it is believed, of the whole country as that country has ever manifested for any of her wisely established institutions.  It has insured to it the repose which always flows from truly wise and moderate counsels—­a repose the more striking because of the long and angry agitations which preceded it.  This salutary law proclaims in express terms the principle which, while it led to the abandonment of a scheme of indirect taxation founded on a false basis and pushed to dangerous excess, justifies any enlargement of duties that may be called for by the real exigencies of the public service.