Annotated and Abridged Artifact
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Franklin Pierce's 1854 Veto
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Abridged Text | ||
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| 1 | To the Senate of the United States: | |
| 2 | The bill entitled "An act making a grant of public lands to the several States for the benefit of indigent insane persons," which was presented to me on the 27th ultimo, [1 »] has been maturely considered, and is returned to the Senate, the House in which it originated, with a statement of the objections which have required me to withhold from it my approval. | |
| 3 | In the performance of this duty, prescribed by the Constitution, I have been compelled to resist the deep sympathies of my own heart in favor of the humane purpose sought to be accomplished and to overcome the reluctance with which I dissent from the conclusions of the two Houses of Congress, and present my own opinions in opposition to the action of a coordinate branch of the Government which possesses so fully my confidence and respect. | |
| 4 | If in presenting my objections to this bill I should say more than strictly belongs to the measure or is required for the discharge of my official obligation, let it be attributed to a sincere desire to justify my act before those whose good opinion I so highly value and to that earnestness which springs from my deliberate conviction that a strict adherence to the terms and purposes of the federal compact [2 »] offers the best, if not the only, security for the preservation of our blessed inheritance of representative liberty. | |
| 5 | The bill provides in substance: | |
| 6 | First. That 10,000,000 acres of land be granted to the several States, to be apportioned among them in the compound ratio of the geographical area and representation of said States in the House of Representatives. [3 »] | |
| 7 | Second. That wherever there are public lands in a State subject to sale at the regular price of private entry, the proportion of said 10,000,000 acres falling to such State shall be selected from such lands within it, and that to the States in which there are no such public lands land scrip [4 »] shall be issued to the amount of their distributive shares, respectively, said scrip not to be entered by said States, but to be sold by them and subject to entry by their assignees: Provided, That none of it shall be sold at less than $1 per acre, under penalty of forfeiture of the same to the United States. | |
| 8 | Third. That the expenses of the management and superintendence of said lands and of the moneys received therefrom shall be paid by the States to which they may belong out of the treasury of said States. | |
| 9 | Fourth. That the gross proceeds of the sales of such lands or land scrip so granted shall be invested by the several States in safe stocks, to constitute a perpetual fund, the principal of which shall remain forever undiminished, and the interest to be appropriated to the maintenance of the indigent insane within the several States. [5 »] | |
| 10 | Fifth. That annual returns of lands or scrip sold shall be made by the States to the Secretary of the Interior, and the whole grant be subject to certain conditions and limitations prescribed in the bill, to be assented to by legislative acts of said States. | |
| 11 | This bill therefore proposes that the Federal Government shall make provision to the amount of the value of 10,000,000 acres of land for an eleemosynary [6 »] object within the several States, to be administered by the political authority of the same; and it presents at the threshold the question whether any such act on the part of the Federal Government is warranted and sanctioned by the Constitution, the provisions and principles of which are to be protected and sustained as a first and paramount duty. | |
| 12 | It cannot be questioned that if Congress has the power to make provision for the indigent insane without the limits of this District it has the same power to provide for the indigent who are not insane, and thus to transfer to the Federal Government the charge of all the poor in all the States. [7 »] It has the same power to provide hospitals and other local establishments for the care and cure of every species of human infirmity, and thus to assume all that duty of either public philanthropy or public necessity to the dependent, the orphan, the sick, or the needy which is now discharged by the States themselves or by corporate institutions or private endowments existing under the legislation of the States. The whole field of public beneficence is thrown open to the care and culture of the Federal Government. Generous impulses no longer encounter the limitations and control of our imperious fundamental law; [8 »] for however worthy may be the present object in itself, it is only one of a class. It is not exclusively worthy of benevolent regard. Whatever considerations dictate sympathy for this particular object apply in like manner, if not in the same degree, to idiocy, to physical disease, to extreme destitution. If Congress may and ought to provide for any one of these objects, it may and ought to provide for them all. And if it be done in this case, what answer shall be given when Congress shall be called upon, as it doubtless will be, to pursue a similar course of legislation in the others? It will obviously be vain to reply that the object is worthy, but that the application has taken a wrong direction. The power will have been deliberately assumed, the general obligation will by this act have been acknowledged, and the question of means and expediency will alone be left for consideration. The decision upon the principle in any one case determines it for the whole class. The question presented, therefore, clearly is upon the constitutionality and propriety of the Federal Government assuming to enter into novel and vast field of legislation, namely, that of providing for the care and support of all those among the people of the United States who by any form become fit objects of public philanthropy. Page 2: | |
| 13 | I readily and, I trust, feelingly acknowledge the duty incumbent on us all as men and citizens, and as among the highest and holiest of our duties, to provide for those who, in the mysterious order of Providence, are subject to want and to disease of body of mind; but I can not find any authority in the Constitution for making the Federal Government the great almoner [9 »] of public charity throughout the United States. To do so would, in my judgement, be contrary to the letter and spirit of the Constitution and subversive of the whole theory upon which the Union of these States is founded. And if it were admissible to contemplate the exercise of this power for any object whatever, I can not avoid the belief that it would in the end be prejudicial rather than beneficial to the noble offices of charity to have the charge of them transferred from the States to the Federal Government. [10 »] | |
| 14 | Are we not too prone to forget that the Federal Union [11 »] is the creature of the States, not they of the Federal Union? We were the inhabitants of colonies distinct in local government from one another before the Revolution. By the Revolution the colonies each became an independent State. They achieved that independence and secured its recognition by the agency of a consulting body, which, from being an assembly of the ministers of distinct sovereignties instructed to agree to no form of government which did not leave the domestic concerns of each State to itself, was appropriately denominated a Congress. When, having tried the experiment of the Confederation, [12 »] they resolved to change that for the present Federal Union, and thus to confer on the Federal Government more ample authority, they scrupulously measured such of the functions of their cherished sovereignty as they chose to delegate to the General Government. With the aim and to this end the fathers of the Republic framed the Constitution, in and by which the independent and sovereign States united themselves for certain specified objects and purposes, and for those only, leaving all powers not therein set forth as conferred on one or another of the great departments -- the legislative, the executive, and the judicial -- indubitably within the States. And when the people of the several States had in their State conventions, and thus alone, given effect and force to the Constitution, not content that any doubt should in the future arise as to the scope and character of this act, they ingrafted thereon the explicit declaration that "the powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution nor prohibited by it to the States are reserved to the States respectively or to the people." [13 »] | |
Annotations
1. In other words, the 27th of last month -– April 27, 1854.
2. The Union.
3. This refers to the formula by which federal lands –- and therefore the money from the sale of those lands -- would be divided between the states for the purpose of supporting indigent insane. A compound ratio would take into account both the area and the representation in the House, mainly population, of the states in dividing the federal lands.
4. Land scrip was paper money backed up by the value of public lands. This would be provided to states, mainly in the east, that had no federally controlled lands within their borders to sell.
5. Revenues from the sale of public lands would then be used to purchase interest-bearing bonds. The interest would then provide the means by which state-run insane asylums would be financed.
6. Having to do with charity.
7. This is the focal point of Pierce’s argument. The bill would amount to an unacceptable increase in the power of the federal government.
8. That is, the Constitution of the United States and its limitations on governmental power.
9. An almoner is a alms-giver, a provider of charity. Pierce is opposed to the idea of the federal government becoming a source of charity.
10. In other words, letting the federal assume the role of charities would mean that local charities would no longer be allowed to fulfill their purposes.
11. The same argument was made when the South left the Union on the eve of the Civil War. In essence, Pierce is placing sovereignty, ultimate authority, with the states, not the federal government.
12. The government under the Articles of Confederation loosely bound the thirteen states during the 1780s and was replaced when the Constitution was ratified in 1788.
13. The Tenth Amendment to the Constitution, quoted here, leaves to the states any powers not outlined in the Constitution. It is part of the Bill of Rights. A strict interpretation, to which Pierce adheres, would deprive the federal government of many of the powers it exercises today.
