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PAPERS OF MIR.ABE.AU BuoN.AP.ARTE LAM.AR
own continuance as district attorney except in the district including Harrisburg County; Lamar's health: A. L. S. 2 p.
No. 1701 1840 Jan. 28, J\I. B. LAMAR, [AUSTIN, TEXAS]. SUPPLE- J\IENTARY MESSAGE TO [VETO OF BILL TO DETECT FRAUDULENT LAND CERTIFICATES] 48 Executive Chamber January 28th 1840 To the Honorable House of Representatives Gentlemen.- When the communication 49 which I had the honor of submitting to your consideration on yesterday, containing my reason for not approving the bill entitled "An Act 50 to detect Fraudulent Land Certificates, and provide for issuing patents to legal claimants", was prepared, I was not aware of the existence of the joint resolution 51 Tepealing the 8th. section of that bill; which resolution was presented to me by my private secretary at the moment he was about to depart with my message to your honorable body. it was then to late for me to make alterations in that document, or to prepare any other in its stead, for the period allowed the President to approve or return the acts of Congress, it was believed, was about to expire, and no time was to be lost in laying his views before your consideration. Further delay might have caused the bill to pass into a law agaiust his decided con- viction of its constitutionality. And this is one reason for the brevity with which his opinions were laid before you unassisted by those refer- ences to the Land Law which were deemed necessarv to a fair and full elucidation of the subject. · Without discussing the question: whether it be competent for Con- .I gress to repeal by resolution, any portion of a bill whilst it is under 1 the consideration of the Executive, before that bill has become a law, '.l it is sufficient at present to say, that in as much as the resolution does not remove all the objections which impelled the Executive to the course 1 he pursued he would have been constrained to return the bill to the th' House of Representatives, even had the resolution been received at an · earlier day; for if the 8th. section of that bill had never existed, the in constitutional objections which in his opinion the 6th. section presents, it would have still compelled him to withhold his approYal. As those In1 1 objections were rather glanced at than presented with the force with \which they were felt by the Executive, he begs leave in justice to him . self, as well as to the subject, to call the attention of the House to that " part of the Law upon which his dissent to the bill was chiefly predicated By refference of the 12th. section of the Land Law 52 of 1837, it will Ili· f e found that the right of transfering original claims is not only most ..Copy. Original in Texa~ :rchives, House Journal, 4th Texas Congress, [ Seeretary of State Department. ..No. 1699. r, '°See note•• in no. 1699. "Printed in Gammel, H. P. N., Laws of Te{l)(l-s, II, 317. "'Probably the act of' Dec. 14, 1837. See Gammel, H. P. N., Laws of Texas, r, 1404.
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