OBSERVATIONS ON THE LATE PRESIDENTIAL VETO, TOGETHER WITH A PLAN FOR A CHANGE OF THE CONSTITUTION RELATIVE TO THIS POWER. BOSTON: JAMES MUNROE AND COMPANY. 1842. 45768,15 B -45-768-13 HARVARD COLLEGE LIBRARY 1862, April 2. Prof. Theophilus Parsons of Cambridge. Entered according to act of Congress, in the year 1842, by JAMES MUNROE & COMPANY, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts. PRESIDENTIAL VETO. THE amendment, which it is the principal object of this pamphlet to propose, of the provision of the Constitution which relates to the Veto power of the President, was first suggested by that proposed by Mr. Clay in the Senate at the present session of Congress. The objects of that provision are at present little understood generally, or rather have been nearly forgotten, — and its effects, if it be literally construed, according to the mode of interpretation which now prevails, little appreciated. The defects of a written Constitution can only be corrected or supplied, in the same manner that a Constitution which is the result of precedent, of custom, and of a consent gradually and occasionally given, is formed; by the effect upon the community of particular examples, bringing home to every man's business and affairs the bearing and the relationship of the diverse interests and institutions, which are the elements of the social system, and suggesting the proper mode of combining and harmonizing them. To create or to alter its fundamental laws, to overcome that instinctive hesitation at change, which is always great in proportion to the importance of that change, requires a general agitation and movement of the whole society, which can only be the result of a grievance universally and strongly felt throughout the community. The question of the United States Bank, which was that on which Mr. Clay relied to produce that state of the public mind, in which it might be impregnated with the proposed change, did not prove on experiment to be of an interest suf |