The final division of the message, according to our arrangement, contains the disquisition upon the relation of the departments of the Government to each other in operating the Constitution, and the relation of the general Government to the Commonwealths in regard to jurisdiction over the business of banking. The President held, upon the first of these points, that "if the opinion of the Supreme Court," in the case of McCulloch and Maryland, "covered the whole ground of this act, it ought not to control the {206} co-ordinate authorities of the Government." "The Congress, the Executive, and the Court," he said, "must each for itself be guided by its own opinion of the Constitution. Each public officer who takes an oath to support the Constitution swears that he will support it as he understands it, and not as it is understood by others. It is as much the duty of the House of Representatives, of the Senate, and of the President, to decide upon the constitutionality of any bill or resolution which may be presented to them for passage or approval, as it is of the Supreme Judges when it may be brought before them for decision. The opinion of the Judges has no more authority over Congress than the opinion of Congress has over the Judges; and, on that point, the President is independent of both. The authority of the Supreme Court must not, therefore, be permitted to control the Congress or the Executive when acting in their legislative capacities, but to have only such influence as the force of their reasoning may deserve." The President also said that he could have furnished a plan for a bank, had it been requested of him, which would have been equal to all the duties required by the Government, a plan which might have been enacted by Congress without straining or overstepping its powers, and without infringing the powers of the Commonwealths; and he complained that the Bank, as an agent of the Executive Department, should be thrust upon the Department without the Department being consulted as to whether it needed or wanted any such agent. [Sidenote: Von Holst's criticism of the veto message.] [Sidenote: The President's real meaning.]