the subject of their difference.  The exercise of some independence of judgment in regard to all acts of legislation is plainly implied in the responsibility of approving them.  At all times a duty, it becomes a peculiarly solemn and imperative one when the subjects passed upon by Congress happen to involve, as in the present instance, the most momentous issues, to affect variously the various parts of a great country, and to have given rise in all quarters to such a conflict of opinion as to render it impossible to conjecture with any certainty on which side the majority really is.  Surely if the pause for reflection intended by the wise authors of the Constitution by referring the subject back to Congress for reconsideration be ever expedient and necessary it is precisely such a case as the present.

On the subject of distributing the proceeds of the sales of the public lands in the existing state of the finances it has been my duty to make known my settled convictions on various occasions during the present session of Congress.  At the opening of the extra session, upward of twelve months ago, sharing fully in the general hope of returning prosperity and credit, I recommended such a distribution, but that recommendation was even then expressly coupled with the condition that the duties on imports should not exceed the rate of 20 per cent provided by the compromise act of 1833.  These hopes were not a little encouraged and these views strengthened by the report of Mr. Ewing, then Secretary of the Treasury, which was shortly thereafter laid before Congress, in which he recommended the imposition of duties at the rate of 20 per cent ad valorem on all free articles, with specified exceptions, and stated “if this measure be adopted there will be received in the Treasury from customs in the last quarter of the present year (1841) $5,300,000; in all of the year 1842, about $22,500,000; and in the year 1843, after the final reduction under the act of March 2, 1833, about $20,800,000;” and adds: 

It is believed that after the heavy expenditures required by the public service in the present year shall have been provided for, the revenues which will accrue from that or a nearly approximate rate of duty will be sufficient to defray the expenses of the Government and leave a surplus to be annually applied to the gradual payment of the national debt, leaving the proceeds of the public lands to be disposed of as Congress shall see fit.

I was most happy that Congress at the time seemed entirely to concur in the recommendations of the Executive, and, anticipating the correctness of the Secretary’s conclusions, and in view of an actual surplus, passed the distribution act of the 4th September last, wisely limiting its operation by two conditions having reference, both of them, to a possible state of the Treasury different from that which had been anticipated by the Secretary of the Treasury and to the paramount