Mr. Speaker, our Democratic friends seem to be in a great distress because they think our candidate for the Presidency don’t suit us.  Most of them cannot find out that General Taylor has any principles at all; some, however, have discovered that he has one, but that one is entirely wrong.  This one principle is his position on the veto power.  The gentleman from Tennessee [Mr. Stanton] who has just taken his seat, indeed, has said there is very little, if any, difference on this question between General Taylor and all the Presidents; and he seems to think it sufficient detraction from General Taylor’s position on it that it has nothing new in it.  But all others whom I have heard speak assail it furiously.  A new member from Kentucky [Mr. Clark], of very considerable ability, was in particular concerned about it.  He thought it altogether novel and unprecedented for a President or a Presidential candidate to think of approving bills whose constitutionality may not be entirely clear to his own mind.  He thinks the ark of our safety is gone unless Presidents shall always veto such bills as in their judgment may be of doubtful constitutionality.  However clear Congress may be on their authority to pass any particular act, the gentleman from Kentucky thinks the President must veto it if he has doubts about it.  Now I have neither time nor inclination to argue with the gentleman on the veto power as an original question; but I wish to show that General Taylor, and not he, agrees with the earlier statesmen on this question.  When the bill chartering the first Bank of the United States passed Congress, its constitutionality was questioned.  Mr. Madison, then in the House of Representatives, as well as others, had opposed it on that ground.  General Washington, as President, was called on to approve or reject it.  He sought and obtained on the constitutionality question the separate written opinions of Jefferson, Hamilton, and Edmund Randolph,—­they then being respectively Secretary of State, Secretary of the Treasury, and Attorney general.  Hamilton’s opinion was for the power; while Randolph’s and Jefferson’s were both against it.  Mr. Jefferson, after giving his opinion deciding only against the constitutionality of the bill, closes his letter with the paragraph which I now read: 

“It must be admitted, however, that unless the President’s mind, on a view of everything which is urged for and against this bill, is tolerably clear that it is unauthorized by the Constitution,—­if the pro and con hang so even as to balance his judgment, a just respect for the wisdom of the legislature would naturally decide the balance in favor of their opinion.  It is chiefly for cases where they are clearly misled by error, ambition, or interest, that the Constitution has placed a check in the negative of the President.

“Thomas Jefferson.

“February 15, 1791.”

General Taylor’s opinion, as expressed in his Allison letter, is as I now read: