On the argument of the message, the President of the United States holds, under a new pretence and a new name, a dispensing power over the laws as absolute as was claimed by James the Second of England, a month before he was compelled to fly the kingdom.  That which is now claimed by the President is in truth nothing less, and nothing else, than the old dispensing power asserted by the kings of England in the worst of times; the very climax, indeed, of all the preposterous pretensions of the Tudor and the Stuart races.  According to the doctrines put forth by the President, although Congress may have passed a law, and although the Supreme Court may have pronounced it constitutional, yet it is, nevertheless, no law at all, if he, in his good pleasure, sees fit to deny it effect; in other words, to repeal and annul it.  Sir, no President and no public man ever before advanced such doctrines in the face of the nation.  There never before was a moment in which any President would have been tolerated in asserting such a claim to despotic power.  After Congress has passed the law, and after the Supreme Court has pronounced its judgment on the very point in controversy, the President has set up his own private judgment against its constitutional interpretation.  It is to be remembered, Sir, that it is the present law, it is the act of 1816, it is the present charter of the bank, which the President pronounces to be unconstitutional.  It is no bank to be created, it is no law proposed to be passed, which he denounces; it is the law now existing, passed by Congress, approved by President Madison, and sanctioned by a solemn judgment of the Supreme Court, which he now declares unconstitutional, and which, of course, so far as it may depend on him, cannot be executed.  If these opinions of the President be maintained, there is an end of all law and all judicial authority.  Statutes are but recommendations, judgments no more than opinions.  Both are equally destitute of binding force.  Such a universal power as is now claimed for him, a power of judging over the laws and over the decisions of the judiciary, is nothing else but pure despotism.  If conceded to him, it makes him at once what Louis the Fourteenth proclaimed himself to be when he said, “I am the State.”

The Supreme Court has unanimously declared and adjudged that the existing bank is created by a constitutional law of Congress.  As has been before observed, this bank, so far as the present question is concerned, is like that which was established in 1791 by Washington, and sanctioned by the great men of that day.  In every form, therefore, in which the question can be raised, it has been raised and has been settled.  Every process and every mode of trial known to the Constitution and laws have been exhausted, and always and without exception the decision has been in favor of the validity of the law.  But all this practice, all this precedent, all this public approbation, all this solemn adjudication directly on the point, is to be disregarded and rejected, and the constitutional power flatly denied.  And, Sir, if we are startled at this conclusion, our surprise will not be lessened when we examine the argument by which it is maintained.