Page:The Presidents of the United States, 1789-1914, v. II.djvu/100

72 LIVES OF THE PRESIDENTS of forbidding discounts and loans and limiting the operations of the fiscal agency exclusively to ex changes. While this project was maturing, the Whig newspapers fulminated with threats against the president in case he should persist in his course ; private letters warned him of plots to assassinate him, and Mr. Clay in the senate referred to his resignation in 1836, and asked why, if constitu tional scruples again hindered him from obeying the will of the people, did he not now resign his lofty position and leave it for those who could be more compliant? To this it was aptly replied by Mr. Rives that "the president was an independent branch of the government as well as congress, and was not called upon to resign because he differed in opinion with them." Some of the Whigs seem really to have hoped that such a storm could be raised as would browbeat the president into resign ing, whereby the government would be temporarily left in the hands of William L. Southard, then president pro tempore of the senate. But Mr. Tyler was neither to be hoodwinked nor bullied. The "fiscal corporation" bill was passed by the senate on Saturday, September 4, 1841 ; on Thurs day, the 9th, the president s veto message was re ceived; on Saturday, the llth, Thomas Ewing, secretary of the treasury, John Bell, secretary of war, George E. Badger, secretary of the navy, John J. Crittenden, attorney-general, and Fran-