giving Congress power to make or alter regulations prescribed by state authority for elections of Senators and Representatives; the other is a clause relative to state imposts on imports or exports, providing that "all such laws shall be subject to the revision and control of Congress."

The veto power, as attached to the presidential office, had a different experience in passing through the constitutional convention. Although the debates were carried on by taking up in their order the propositions of the Virginia plan, the committee of detail seems to have used the draught of a constitution submitted by Charles Pinckney of South Carolina as a skeleton which was gradually filled out according to the resolves of the convention. Pinckney's original draught gave the President power to veto bills substantially as was eventually provided in Article I, Section 7, of the constitution, the only new matter added by the convention being the clauses requiring the vote to be taken by ayes and nays, and entered upon the journals of the two Houses. The veto power, in the shape it finally assumed as regards bills, closely resembles the corresponding section in the constitution of Massachusetts, adopted in 1780. In "The Federalist," Hamilton remarks that this power is "precisely the same with that of the governor of Massachusetts whose constitution, as to this article, seems to have been the original from which the convention has copied." The

clause of the constitution of the United States, conferring also a veto power over "every order, resolution, or vote to which the concurrence of the Senate and House of Representatives may be necessary," however, stands alone. In the Massachusetts constitution, "bills" and "resolves" are coupled as subjects of the veto power. The added provision in the constitution of the United States has peculiar force. It was put in towards the latter part of the proceedings, when the convention was reviewing its work to see where any weak points were to be found. Among a number of resolutions adopted for the guidance of the committee of detail was the following: "Resolved, that the national executive shall have a right to negative any legislative act; which shall not be afterwards passed, unless by two-third parts of each branch of the national legislature." In satisfaction of this resolution, the committee draughted the constitutional provisions as they now stand, making the President a party to every legislative proceeding requiring the concurrence of the two Houses. This was perfectly well understood at the time. When the phraseology of the enacting clause of the laws was under consideration, at the. first session of the Senate, Ellsworth of Connecticut, who had been a member of the convention, argued that the President should be named as a party to the enactment, because of "the conspicuous part he would act in the field of legislation,

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as all laws must pass in review before him, and were subject to his revision and correction." 1

In thus reviving royal prerogative as an attribute of the presidential office, there was considerable uneasiness among the founders of the national government as to the success of the attempt. In "The Federalist," great pains were taken to reconcile public sentiment to so autocratic an authority. Hamilton explained that such a power is necessary to protect the executive from encroachments by the other departments of government. The fear that it might enable the executive to encroach upon congressional authority was treated as chimerical. He said:

"The superior weight and influence of the legislative body in a free government, and the hazard to the executive in a trial of strength with that body, afford a satisfactory security that the negative would generally be employed with great caution; and that, in its exercise, there would oftener be room for a charge of timidity than of rashness. A king of Great Britain, with all his train of sovereign attributes, and with all the influence he draws from a thousand sources, would at this day hesitate to put a negative upon the joint resolutions of the two houses of Parliament. . . . If a magistrate, so powerful and well fortified as a British monarch, would have scrupled about the exercise of the power under consideration, how 1 Maclay's Diary, p. 19.

much greater caution may be reasonably expected in a President of the United States, clothed for a short period of four years with the executive authority of a government wholly and purely republican."1

It was a fortunate circumstance that the first veto, which was exercised upon an apportionment bill, fell in with the interests of the South and received the support of Mr. Jefferson and his political connection, so that in this case there was an overpowering concentration of political influence in support of the President. Jefferson remarks in his "Anas" that "a few of the hottest friends of the bill expressed passion, but the majority were satisfied, and both in and out of doors it gave pleasure to have at length an instance of the negative being exercised." Up to Jackson's time it was exercised sparingly and cautiously, rather in the way of counsel than of opposition. Neither Jefferson nor the Adamses used the veto power at all. Madison and Monroe used it to express their dissent from the broad doctrines which, under the lead of Clay and Calhoun in his liberal early period, Congress was adopting in regard to internal improvements; but there was no settled resistance to the deliberate purposes of Congress. There were in all nine instances only of the exercise of the veto power up to the time Jackson became President. In his hands it ceased to be a mere advisory function, as with Madison and Monroe.

1 The Federalist, No. 73.

It developed a terrible power. His twelve vetoes descended upon Congress like the blows of an iron flail.

The parliamentary leaders raged against a power which could be put to such use. Henry Clay pointed out that "it is a feature of our government borrowed from a prerogative of the British king." He declared: "The veto is hardly reconcilable with the genius of representative government. It is totally irreconcilable with it if it is to be employed in respect to the expediency of measures, as well as their constitutionality." If such behavior should be tolerated, "the government will have been transformed into an elective monarchy." Webster devoted some of his strongest speeches to an exhibition of the dangers to the constitution from executive encroachments. "The President carries on the government; all the rest are subcontractors. . . . A Briareus sits in the centre of our system, and with his hundred hands touches everything, moves everything, controls everything.' Calhoun denounced the arrogance of the President's attitude. "He claims to be not only the representative, but the immediate representative, of the American people! What effrontery! What boldness of assertion! The immediate representative? Why, he never received a vote from the American people. He was elected by electors-the colleges." Outside of Congress, the agitation against the President's vetoes was carried on with vehemence.