Under the first six Presidents, the veto-power had been used but six times in all; unless there should be included some private bills sent back for correction and not in any sense furnishing matter of contest between parties.

The country had thus been educated by the sages of the era of the Constitution in the belief that only an extraordinary occasion justified a resort to what, in the popular dislike of its character, had received the name of "the one-man power." President Jackson, therefore, surprised the country and shocked conservative citizens by his frequent employment of this great prerogative.

During his term he thwarted the wish and the expressed resolve of Congress no less than eleven times on measures of great public consequence.

Seven of these vetoes were of the kind which, during his Presidency, received the name of "pocket-vetoes." In Madison's administration a bill which reached the President during the last ten days of the session failed by accident or inadvertence to receive the President's signature, and did not become a law.

Mr.
Webster is authority for saying that there was not a single instance prior to the administration of General Jackson in which the President by design omitted to sign a bill and yet did not return it to Congress.
"The silent veto," said he, "is the executive adoption of the present administration." There had been instances in which, during a session of Congress, a President, unwilling to approve and yet not prepared to veto a measure, suffered it to become a law by the lapse of the Constitutional period of ten days; but it was an entirely new device, to defeat a bill by permitting the period of less than ten days to expire at the close of the session--defeat it without action, without expression of opinion, without the responsibility which justly attaches to the Executive office.