I utterly repudiate the idea, in terms as emphatic as I can employ, that those laws are not to be enforced or those guaranties complied with because the President may believe that the right of suffrage or any other great popular right is either too restricted or too broadly enlarged.
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I also with equal strength resist the idea that it falls within the Executive competency to decide in controversies of the nature of that which existed in Rhode Island on which side is the majority of the people or as to the extent of the rights of a mere numerical majority.
I have to perform the melancholy duty of announcing to the two Houses of Congress the death of the Hon. Abel P. Upshur, late Secretary of State, and the Hon. Thomas W. Gilmer, late Secretary of the Navy.
No reason is perceived for the discrimination recognized by the existing Law, and none why the provisions of the acts of Congress referred to should not be extended to the commerce of the islands in question.
I communicate to the Senate a report, with the documents accompanying it, from the Secretary of State, in answer to a resolution of that body of the 25th of January, 1844.
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