There is also another objection that I must suggest.  In section 12, from line 14 to line 24, it is provided:  “Before such vessel shall be cleared or may lawfully depart,” etc., “the master of said vessel shall furnish,” etc., “a correct list of all passengers who have been or are intended to be taken on board the vessel, and shall specify,” etc.  This provision would prevent the clearing of the vessel.  Steam vessels start at an appointed hour and with punctuality.  Down almost to the very hour of their departure new passengers, other than those who have engaged their passage, constantly come on board.  If this provision is to be the law; they must be rejected, for the ship can not, without incurring heavy penalties, take passengers whose names are not set forth on the list required before such vessel shall be cleared.  They should be allowed to take such new passengers upon condition that they would furnish an additional list containing such persons’ names.  There are other points of objection of a minor character that might be presented for consideration if the bill could be reconsidered and amended, but the three that I have recited are conspicuous defects in a bill that ought to be a code for such a purpose, clear and explicit, free from all such objections.  The practical result of this law would be to subject all of the competing lines of large ocean steamers to great losses.  By restricting their carrying accommodations it would also stay the current of emigration that it is our policy to encourage as well as to protect.  A good bill, correctly phrased, and expressing and naming in plain, well-known technical terms the proper and usual places and decks where passengers are and ought to be placed and carried, will receive my prompt and immediate assent as a public necessity and blessing.

CHESTER A. ARTHUR.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, August 1, 1882.

To the House of Representatives: 

Having watched with much interest the progress of House bill No. 6242, entitled “An act making appropriations for the construction, repair, and preservation of certain works on rivers and harbors, and for other purposes,” and having since it was received carefully examined it, after mature consideration I am constrained to return it herewith to the House of Representatives, in which it originated, without my signature and with my objections to its passage.

Many of the appropriations in the bill are clearly for the general welfare and most beneficent in their character.  Two of the objects for which provision is made were by me considered so important that I felt it my duty to direct to them the attention of Congress.  In my annual message in December last I urged the vital importance of legislation for the reclamation of the marshes and for the establishment of the harbor lines along the Potomac front.  In April last, by special message, I recommended an appropriation for the improvement of the Mississippi River.  It is not necessary that I say that when my signature would make the bill appropriating for these and other valuable national objects a law it is with great reluctance and only under a sense of duty that I withhold it.