University of Virginia Library

TO HENRY CLAY.

Dear Sir, Your letter of May 28, was duly received.[151]
In it you ask my opinion on the retention
of the Land bill by the President.

It is obvious that the Constitution meant to allow
the President an adequate time to consider the Bills
&c presented to him, and to make his objections to
them; and on the other hand that Congs. should
have time to consider and overrule the objections. A
disregard on either side of what it owes to the other,
must be an abuse, for which it would be responsible
under the forms of the Constitution. An abuse on
the part of the President, with a view sufficiently
manifest, in a case of sufficient magnitude to deprive
Congs. of the opportunity of overruling objections
to their bills, might doubtless be a ground for impeachment.
But nothing short of the signature of
the President, or a lapse of ten days without a return
of his objections, or an overruling of the objections
by 2/3 of each House of Congs., can give legal validity
to a Bill. In order to qualify (in the French sense
of the term) the retention of the Land bill by the
President, the first inquiry is, whether a sufficient
time was allowed him to decide on its merits; the
next whether with a sufficient time to prepare his
objections, he unnecessarily put it out of the power
of Congs. to decide on them. How far an anticipated
passage of the Bill ought to enter into the sufficiency

of the time for Executive deliberation, is another
point for consideration. A minor one may be
whether a silent retention or an assignment to
Congs. of the reasons for it, be the mode most suitable,
to such occasions.

I hope with you that the compromizing tariff will
have a course & effect avoiding a renewal of the
contest between the S. and the North; and that a
lapse of nine or ten years will enable the manufacturers
to swim without the bladders which have
supported them. Many considerations favor such
a prospect. They will be saved in future much of
the expence in fixtures, which they had to encounter,
and in many instances unnecessarily incurred. They
will be continually improving in the management
of their business. They will not fail to improve
occasionally on the machinery abroad. The reduction
of duties on imported articles consumed by
them will be equivalent to a direct bounty. There
will probably be an increasing cheapness of food
from the increasing redundancy of agricultural labour.
There will within the experimental period
be an addition of 4 or 5 millions to our population,
no part or little of which will be needed for agricultural
labour, and which will consequently be an
extensive fund of manufacturing recruits. The current
experience makes it probable, that not less than
50 or 60 thousand or more, of emigrants will annually
reach the U. S. a large portion of whom will have
been trained to manufactures and be ready for that
employment.

With respect to Virga., it is quite probable from
the progress already made in the Western Culture of
Tobo., and the rapid exhaustion of her virgin soil
in which alone it can be cultivated with a chance of
profit, that of the 40 or 50 thousand labourers on
Tobo., the greater part will be released from that
employment, and be applicable to that of manufactures.
It is well known that the farming system
requires much fewer hands than Tobo. fields.

Should a war break out in Europe involving the
manufacturing nations the rise of the wages there
will be another brace to the manufacturing establishments
here. It will do more; it will prove to the
"absolutists" for free trade that there is in the
contingency of war, one exception at least to their
Theory.

It is painful to observe the unceasing efforts to
alarm the South by imputations agst the North of
unconstitutional designs on the subject of the
slaves. You are right, I have no doubt in believing
that no such intermeddling disposition exists in the
Body of our Northern brethren. Their good faith
is sufficiently guarantied by the interest they have,
as merchants, as Ship owners, and as manufacturers,
in preserving a Union with the slaveholding States.
On the other hand, what madness in the South, to
look for greater safety in disunion. It would be
worse than jumping out of the Frying-pan into the
fire: it wd. be jumping into the fire for fear of the
Frying-pan. The danger from the alarm is that
the pride & resentment exerted by them may be an

overmatch for the dictates of prudence and favor
the project of a Southern Convention insidiously
revived, as promising by its Councils the best securities
agst. grievances of every sort from the North.

The case of the Tariff & Land bills cannot fail
of an influence on the question of your return to the
next session of Congs. They are both closely connected
with the public repose.