Legislature were founded in deference to State jeal- || ousy, and a sincere desire to obviate the fears, real or imaginary, that the General Government would obtain an undue preference over the State governments." The gentleman from Vermont [Mr. MORRILL] has shown the views taken by the earlier statesmen, coinciding with this view of Judge Story. I need not recite them. The committee in their report seem not to have anticipated this argument; it is left for the disciples of Hamilton, like the gentleman from Vermont, to defend State rights. Surely, if you magnify and energize the Federal Executive by an unfair aggregation of powers in that office at the expense of the Congress, you begin the work of consolidation. You give to power new material, until upon the ruins of our old system of a just distribution of power, we erect a throne of paramount power whose Sovereign occupant in his supremacy would rob the States of their rights to aggrandize his own splendor. This plan, therefore, tends to create the same laws, the same kind of dependence, consequently the same notions and the same interests, throughout all the country with its diverse interests; for the power it would strengthen is the Executive, which is not like the Senate or the Congress, representative of States and localities, but in a sense more nearly representative of the people of the United States.

Second, the time is unfortunate for such a radical change as that proposed. Herein lies one of its dangers. It is a time of war. The Executive in such a time tends to enlarge its powers. This is not altogether avoidable. It then calls to its aid all the sophistry of necessity. It is the old satanic plea. With an Army of nearly a million, and a patronage of $3,000,000 per diem, and with a corps of ambitious men-placemen and contractors-hanging about the chambers of power, desirous to placate the supreme will and to enjoy its favors, it is not surprising that in time of war the dispensing power should grow colossal, overshadowing all other departments and absorbing all other sovereignties. Yet it is at such a time that the committee proposes a measure which tends to increase the Executive. I know that the committee think that its effect will be otherwise, and give as a reason that power exercised openly in Congress will find its antagonism and barrier in honest deference to public opinion, and be restrained in its own disposition to increase. But is that the effect of the exercise of power by this Executive? In the face of a most earnest protest from every press and public man who had not slavishly bowed to its behests simply because it was power; in spite of a protest of nearly two million people, the power of the President expands boldly, openly, and flagrantly. Patronage is more powerful than logic. Necessity crushes the free press and arrests free speech. Would the habeas corpus be abolished, and all the restraints of personal freedom be annulled, and our prisons groan with victims, except in time of war? The power which, in time of peace, was a toy for a lady's hand, like the tent of the faërie, enlarges in time of war so that great armies repose beneath its folds. When did the executive power in England most overshadow and defy public opinion? The Crown augmented when Pitt defied the people and their Parliament; then king and minister became absolute. The wise commentator, Thomas Erskine May, (Constitutional History, volume one, page 82,) in drawing his picture of this era of English history, draws also à conclusion similar to the one which I now declare, when he says:

"A war is generally favorable to authority by bringing together the people and the Government in a common cause and combined exertions. The French war, notwithstanding its heavy burdens and numerous failures, was popular on account of the principles it was supposed to represent; and the vast expenditure, if it distressed the people, multiplied the patronage of the Crown, afforded a rich harvest for contractors, and made the fortunes of farmers and manufacturers by raising the price of every description of produce. The moneyed class' rallied round the war minister, bought seats in Parliament with their sudden gains, ranged themselves in a strong phalanx behind their leader, cheered his speeches, and voted for him on every division. Their zeal was rewarded with peerages, baronetcies, patronage, and all the good things which an inordinate expenditure enabled him to dispense. For years opposition in Parliament to a minister thus supported was an idle forin; and if beyond its walls the voice of complaint was raised, the arm of the law was strong and swift to silence it. To oppose the minister had become high treason to the State."

To oppose the minister in open Parliament, in

free debate, in time of war, when power found its antagonists and barriers, as it to-day finds them here, was accounted high treason! Yet, say the committee, the rules now recommended-now, in time of most gigantic war-are almost identical with those of the British House of Commons! Identical, sir, with a system which not only made war almost perpetual by filling the Legislature with placemen, pensioners, claquers, and contractors, rewarding them with peerages, baronetcies, patronage, and all the good things which come from an inordinate expenditure, but which made the Opposition a mere form in the Legislature, and stifled it with oppression when raised outside of the Legislature! Is it to this system that the committee would assimilate our own Congress? God forbid !

Third, I now consider the dangers of the intimacy between the Executive and the Legislature. If even the rights of the States were safe, and even if this were a time of peace, still I would, as a Democrat, as a Republican, never allow the Executive to approach any nearer the Legislature than is entirely consistent with the movement of each in their own well-defined circuit. As with nature, so with institutions. Of two plants in the vicinity of each other, the fruit of one will lose its peculiar flavor and be assimilated to the taste of the other, if that other have the stronger fiber, the richer nutriment, and happens to be near by. So in the stellar world the lesser luminary will, unless restrained, fly toward the greater, to be by it absorbed.

The committee truly say that the framers of the Constitution did not intend to establish an absolute separation of the legislative and executive departments. This is true. The separation is not absolute; if it were, they could not subsist in the same system; but I affirm that they endeavored by every guard to allow just as little connection between the parts as would enable the Government in its entirety to perform its functions.

The committee instance the veto power, to show that there is a connection between the lawmaking and law-executing departments. The argument proves too much. The veto of the President is the limit of the presidential interference, and its exercise is allowed only after the law is passed; and even then, after the Executive has exhausted his reasons for the veto, he may be overruled by a vote of two thirds. If the Executive, by his agents of the Cabinet, exert his influence in the making of laws, where is the necessity for the veto? His veto is then an absurdity. So Judge Story regards it. The veto is the Executive arm for the defense of its own powers. The Legislature is presumed to have no desire to favor them. When laws are passed by a Legislature misled by a love of power, a spirit of faction, a political impulse, or a persua sive influence, local or sectional, which may not reach the Executive, he being the representative of the whole nation in the aggregate, then the veto has its use. Says Story, page 32:

"He will have an opportunity soberly to examine the acts and resolutions passed by the Legislature, not having partaken of the feelings or combinations which have procured their passage, and thus to correct what will sometimes be wrong, from interference as well as design."

His responsibility is independent of Congress. To join his duties with law making is to destroy his responsibility and derange the proper distribution of powers. Go one step further. Suppose a law of great value passed, then vetoed; nevertheless two thirds of Congress favor it; but in come the Cabinet, and by threat, bribery, promises of patronage and gifts of honor, the legislative will is subordinated: are not the people robbed of their fair right in the Legislature? Voting is not the only way of making laws. Voting presupposes influences. Voting is but the sign of what has been done. If these influences are reached by Cabinet cajolery or honeyed blandishments from the masters of patronage and fountains of honor, the influence is not less, but rather greater, than if the Cabinet had the right to vote. Indeed, some Governments which allow the ministry to have the entrée to the Legislature expressly and strangely forbid their presence when the vote comes off. This is the case in Brazil, Costa Rica, Portugal, and Spain. But what guard is there in such cases for the influence is exerted generally before and not at the vote? Still, even these guards show

the jealousy of the Legislature against the dominating influences of the Executive even in such monarchical countries.

What, then, are the relations which the three departments of our Government sustain to each other? How are they intended to act in harmony? Mr. Madison has considered this matter in Nos.

47 and 48 of the Federalist. The distinctness and separation of the three departments is by him, as it was by Montesquieu, regarded as an essential precaution in favor of liberty. He was careful to show that the several departments of power were so distributed and blended in our system as at once to preserve symmetry and beauty of form, and to prevent any part of it from being exposed to the danger of being crushed by the disproportionate weight of other parts. He regarded the accumulation of powers, legislative, executive, and judicial, in the same hands, as the very essence of tyranny. Hence, if there is any approach toward such accumulation, my argument is that there is an approach toward tyranny. If there can be no liberty where the Legislature and Executive are one, is not liberty endangered when you absorb an essential function or feature of one by the other. Says Montesquieu:

"There can be no liberty when the legislative and executive powers are united in the same body or person, because apprehensions may arise lest the same monarch or senate may enact tyrannical laws to execute them in a tyrannical manner; or were the power of judging joined with the legislative, the life and liberty of the subjects would be exposed to arbitrary control, for the judge would then be legislator. Were it joined to the executive, the judge might have all the violence of the oppressor."

Mr. Madison draws from the several constitutions of the States as then existing, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, and others, to show that the several departments are inhibited from exercising the powers of either of the other departments. The language of these early constitutions yet remain in our present constitutions. Not a single State of this large Confederacy has ever in its constitution so departed from the model of the Federal Legislature as to allow the membership of the Executive, (Cushing, page 610,) or of his aids in administration, or even their presence for debate or influence. Massachusetts early declared this fundamental article of liberty:

"That the legislative department shall never exercise the executive or judicial powers, or either of them; the executive shall never exercise the legislative and judicial powers, or either of them; the judicial shall never exercise the legislative and executive powers, or either of them."

The jealousy of uniting one department with another has been carried so far that the departments have been only so far connected and blended as to give to each a constitutional control over the other. This is the degree of separation essential to a free Government. Allow this and you will have no despotic Congress with its many heads; no Congress dependent on one head; you will have no irresponsible judiciary; and no arbitrary Executive. If the Executive can use his appliances at will upon a legislature, either by intrigue or debate, then the Legislature becomes the executive tool; and although its own powers may expand yet if used by the Executive the growth of legislative privilege is the increase of the executive prerogative.

If it be proper to call the Cabinet to the lower House why should not some portion of it be called to the Senate? Is it because the model of the British constitution has carried away the committee?

If it be proper to call the Cabinet to the House, why not call in the President? We have no ministry as in England. The President is responsible, and he only. The Cabinet are but the ministers of his will. He can dismiss them at pleasure. They have no policy.

If it be proper to call the Cabinet, why not the Commander-in-Chief? Why not summon General Grant to sit here, and to answer the inquiries of civilians in search of military news and strategy? Why not? For the reason that all military officers are kept without the Senatehouse. Because they are the hands of the Executive, and liberty permits no brute force to overawe or dictate. If the Commander of the Army is the mailed hand of the Executive, is not the Secretary of State also his hand gloved in silk? And is there more danger from the iron hand than the silken glove?

But if it be proper to call in the Cabinet, why

not call in the Supreme Court, or its chief? Do the committee wish to copy the British precedent, where the faw lords can advise, though they do not vote with the legislator? Why not then admit the Chief Justice? Ask him of the legality of confiscation, legal tender, belligerency, and the new questions which this civil war is causing? The committee refer us, with a smile, no doubt, from its complaisant chairman, to Hayti for our guidance. [Laughter] That precedent was intended for the other side of the House. I accept it in all earnestness. In Hayti the secretary of state and the grand judge are by the constitution the orators charged with representing the executive by oral communication to both houses. Why not send for Mr. Chase, along with Mr. Seward, and here let them struggle for the next Presidency before the people's Representatives?

The committee inform us that if the rules be defective, or limit too narrowly the right of a debate, changes can hereafter be made. They take the British House of Commons for their model, and they assert that the "rules now recommended are almost identical." If that be the case, the changes should involve an entirely new system of accountability among the departments of our Government. Indeed, our form of government will need a radical change. Judge Story says (Commentaries, page 329) that

"The whole structure of our Government is so entirely different, and the elements of which it is composed are so dissimilar from that of England, that no arguineut can be drawn from the practice of the latter to assist us in a just arrangement of the executive authority."

In England one branch of Parliament, the Commons, is ostensibly supreme. If not corrupted or made dependent on the Crown by intimidation, it is the ruling power of the realm. Though the Crown may appoint the ministry, it is the Parliament which dethrones them by a vote “of want of confidence." There is no responsibility for any act of administration upon the Crown. The sanctity of the Crown forbids it to be wrong. Ministers are toppled over, but the throne remains; hence the real power, if not corrupted, over the executive is in the Commons. The ministry is the fountain of honor and patronage in fact, though the Crown may be in name; hence the putrescent corruptions which have made the history of English legislation so infamous. Not so in this country. We have no ministry here, no premier. The Cabinet have power and do advise the President, but he, and not Congress, can alone displace them. Hence in our system the President has the power of the Crown and the ministry both, and is above the reach of the Commons or the Congress.

ministration in the House, and for a stronger reason should have forbidden their presence there. They saw, as an old writer says, "the king and his council (Craftsman, No. 440) by means of liveries and retainers, bring the whole kingdom to be of his livery;" or, as Lord Bolingbroke said to Walpole, they made the Parliament like slaves in a galley, united by their chains and tugging the our together at the sound of the ministerial whistle. Seeing this in England, as the very cause of their own troubles with the parent country, they were jealous of such influences here. They may not have distrusted the first Presidents; but they would not allow an opportunity for the invasion of their own privileges or the public liberties. It was not the attack they feared from the first Executives which led them to keep the administration aloof from the Legislature, but they would not allow the breach, however small, in the rampart, through which an attack at some time might be made.

I

This principle, together with the English practice, leads me, Mr. Speaker, to be jealous of our privileges and powers. Indeed, sir, I am not particularly enamored of anything English now. do not like English delight over our troubles; English cannon when found in Fort Fisher; English ships-of-war destroying our commerce under a hostile flag; English recognition of belligerency. All that is admirable in the English manners, literature, and laws I love and cherish, but this system of the committee is neither admirable or desirable.

fluence of the Crown on the elections or on the members of Parliament?" He answers it by saying that a prince may govern according to his arbitrary will, or that of his more arbitrary mistister, as absolutely and much more securely with than without the concurrence of a Parliament. He can do this in two ways: first, by the strain of his prerogative, or by the corruption of the Commons; and the instrument for both means, as shown by English history, has been an obsequious, audacious, or corrupt ministry sitting in Parliament. In the carlier eras of English Parliaments the stretch of the prerogative was the means used to overawe Parliaments. Not alone by the threat upon members, but by acts of imprisonment and decapitation; not alone by the threat but by the act of dishonor and sequestration, were the annals of Parliament sullied. In later times, after the Revolution of 1688, the civil list had increased, and with it the means of corruption; and not alone by indirect bribes in stocks, lotteries, pensions, places, and honors, but by a wanton lavishness of douceurs, directly given to members, the German princes on the English throne, and their ministers, controlled the Commons. This corruption extended then, as it does now, from the House to the hustings, from the Parliament to the people, until the English Parliament reeked, and in spite of all reform bills and bribery acts yet reeks, with the astounding rottenness of its representatives and electors. The only reason why in earlier times, as in the sixteenth century this same corruption did not exist is given by Hallam, (volume three, page 43,) that there did not then exist the means of that splendid corrup tion which has emulated the Crassi and Luculli of Rome. Whereas in 1571, a member bought his seat for Westbury for £4, an election in York in the eighteenth century cost £150,000! The elections were controlled by the officers of the Government. It became necessary, to save the constitution, to reform these abuses, and the English statute-book groans with laws against placemen sitting in Parliament, against revenue officers having the right of suffrage, the disfranchisement of boroughs, and penalty on members for bribery.

If there is one feature in English history more marked than another, it is the constant conflict for centuries between the kingly prerogative and the parliamentary privilege. In the earlier times of the Plantagenets the motto obtained, that to be royal is to be loyal; the will of the king to be the will of the law: "Que veut le roy, ce veut la loy.' And although under the earlier kings, especially those most destitute of principle, the liberty of the people in the Parliament received its most efficacious support; although Magna Charta came in John's rule, and Habeas Corpus in the time of the second Charles, yet the royal prerogatives were broken by their inordinate strain by such monarchs, and liberty gained. It was enough for the king to be the fountain of honor and patronage, of pardon and power, gen-pendent of Parliaments by prerogative, but it suberalissimo of the army, and source of all foreign embassies and treaty. The Commons, therefore, in early times, united with the people and nobility against the power of the Crown; and from having been called from boroughs and towns originally to provide only for the wants of the king, (De Lolme, volume second, page 511,) they became so powerful that ministers fell before their votes and voice. Upon their fiat hung the lives even of the ministers. The king himself was sup

The President represents the aggregate people; Congress represents States in the Senate and the people of the States in the House. He is elected for four years. We take him for better or for worse. We may have a Congress in opposition to his policy for four years; and nothing we can do will prevent it, unless we by usurpation and by a corrupt judiciary intrench on his powers, or he, by intrigue and usurpation and obsequious judges, is enabled to rob Congress of its powers. He may appoint judges, veto laws; that is the limit of his control over the Legislature and the judiciary. If his agents approach the fountain, and there at its source endeavor to influence the making of law, he becomes an intermeddler. Whether he does this by his military force or his cunning management, it amounts to the same thing. Wisely, therefore, our fathers, looking on English history at a time when a corrupt and imbecile ministry were illustrating how easy it was for a stubborn king to rule a subservient Parliament by the presence of a great minister or a strong will, forbade the membership of the Ad

or by representatives; and even he was made liable, on a memorable occasion, to the power of the Commons by impeachment and death. But at last the popular element by the Revolution of 1688 became paramount. At least then began the struggle, which, after great convulsions, fixed the Crown, through the ministers as the instru ments of the Parliament, and amenable to them. But this cannot be so in this Government, for the simple reason that the Congress has no control over the Cabinet. The extent and duration of the Executive, as to time and power, is clearly defined in a written constitution. Therefore no analogy can be drawn from English precedents, except those which show how power tends to increase in the Executive or ministry whenever it has the opportunity to use its appliances, or which show that the temptation to corruption is apt to be embraced when the object is near and the lure enticing. In illustrating this part of my argument, my only embarrassment is in the opulence of the illustrations from English history.

I do not select a few cases because they are so glaring. Nor do I value in an argument a few exceptional cases, non ego paucis offendar maculis. From the very beginning of the English Government until now, laws were passed to regulate elections and prevent the kingly influence upon the Commons. In the time of the Lancaster kings such statutes are common. "What else," asks Bolingbroke, (Craftsman, No. 440) " do all these resolutions, declarations, and acts mean from the time of Richard II to these days, against the in

The Revolution of 1688 prevented the destruction of the English system by the use of the prerogative. It declared against making kings inde

stituted therefor a system which made Parliaments dependent on kings by corruption. Which was the easiest mode to destroy, it is not for us to ask at a time when the executive influence not only has been exceeding its constitutional limit in this country, but when the means of corruption are as a thousand to one in this country compared with England. Indeed, in the time of Walpole it was contended that the Parliament should corruptly depend on the Crown as the expedient to supply the want of power denied to the Crown by the Revolution. Even so good a moralist as Paley justified the use of patronage to influence Parlia

ment.

In glancing at this history I will arrange a few salient illustrations under these heads: first, the attempts by executive intimidation and power to overawe the Commons; second, by corruption of the people and of the Commons to create a dependency on their part upon the Crown.

First, most of the valuable privileges enjoyed by the House of Commons is due, not to the presence of the ministry, nor to the monarchical part of the constitution, but to the vigilant perseverance of tribunes of the people in spite of all the threats and penalties of the Crown. As early as Edward III it was customary to imprison members for freedom of speech; but this, like other grievances, was redressed in time, not because the ministry were present to aid, but because the Commons protested, and accompanied their protests with intimations that if their protests were not heeded, supplies to the king would be wanting.

The first English council was the Witenagemote. It lost its place in the Government by the ambition of the monarch, who designed to make all his vassals, and none his equals, in the powers of the State. After the king began to need military service and taxation he called his Parliament, but used and disused them at pleasure. They were slavishly submissive. When the Tudors ascended to the throne the contest began which has ended, in this reign of Queen Victoria, in the subordination of nearly all executive power to

the ministry, or the Parliament, which can upturn the ministry. Henry VIII occasionally used his Parliaments, but used them through the persona! interference of Cardinal Wolsey in the House of Commons. (Smythe, vol. 1, p. 345.) His son, Edward VI, by the influence of a bad minister seeking control of Parliament, issued a proclamation to influence members of Parliament; a precedent followed afterward by Mary and by James I, and which in this country, if the Executive were more nearly connected with Congress, would follow every two years, and certainly every four years, especially in time of civil war.

Then followed Elizabeth's reign. Great men adorned her court; but around her crouched a submissive Parliament. They were her knights, and not her statesmen. She had her ministry subservient to her female caprices; and they "touched" her Parliament, and it bowed as to an oriental princess. It is a relief to find, what we so rarely find in our own times among the Puritans here, that old Puritan parliamentarian, Peter Wentworth, standing out of this gloom by his conspicuous intrepidity-the forerunner of the Hampdens and Pyms of a later day. When Elizabeth strove to stop legislation by the queen's pleasure, on religious matters, he spoke as follows:

"We are assembled to make, or abrogate, such laws as may be the chiclest surety, safe-keeping, and enrichment of this noble realm of England. I do think it expedient to open the commodities (advantages) that grow to the prince and the whole State by free speech used in this place."

This he proceeded to do on seven different grounds; and he concluded:

"That in this Ilouse, which is termed a place of free speech, there is nothing so necessary for the preservation of the prince and State as free speech; and without this, it is a scorn and mockery to call it a Parliament-house, for in truth it is none, but a very school of flattery and dissimulation, and so a fit place to serve the devil and his angels in, and not to glorify God and to benefit the Commonwealth."

The House, it seems, out of a reverent regard to her Majesty's honor, stopped him before he had fully finished; and "he was sequestered the House for the said speech. Finally he was sent to prison; but we read of him, years afterward, questioning with rare courage the dispensing power which lost James II his crown, and should have lost Mr. Lincoln his-election. It was true of this and subsequent reigns, as Dr. Burnet recorded, that he that will go about to debate her Majesty's prerogative, had "need walk warily."

The reign of the Stuarts is an era of conflicts, signalized by the State craft of the kings, and the protests of the Commons. The first Stuart, James 1, had invaded even the presence of the House, sent its members to the Tower, and contemplated the beheading of others. He had even torn their proceedings from the journals. Prerogative went so far that in the time of the first Charles no Parliament met for twelve years. Irregular levies of money and men, and the severities of the Star Chamber and High Commission, drove the people to exile in America, and to despair of their liberties. These institutions were the subservient Parliaments of the time-all their members being the tools of tyranny. At last a minister proposed the ship-money tax. Hampden opposed; then came the reaction and the revolution. The Parliament conquered; only to be in turn driven from their places by the Protector, because their debates were disagreeable. When the Restoration came, the "healing Parliament" met; and the king was their suitor, but not long a suitor. His ministers were in Parliament. The republican element was weeded out. It would have been worse, but that the profusion of Charles II in his pleasures was so great that "no minister could find sums sufficient to buy a Parliament." He stood, therefore, on his prerogative, strained as far as he durst, and made all the use of it he could." (Craftsman, No. 442.) He even depended on foreign gold to bribe his Parliament and pamper his mistresses. The House continued eighteen years, a large number of members practiced on, and a large number notoriously bribed. When a new Parliament was called their disposition was so sordid, and the flatteries around the throne so detestable that the English historian blushes as he records their slavish submission. Russell and Sydney shine out of this time only by the halo around their martyr-brows. When Charles died his brother, James II, added to this corruption

another strain of the prerogative, and a degree of bigotry which was wholly his own. The Parliament of his time had been managed, both at their election and when they met; and so sucessfully managed, that when James looked over the list of returns he declared there were not more than forty names which he could have wished not there. It sat a year. A few brave words from Coke of Derby, and he was sent to the Tower for undutiful reflection on the king. Then came another reaction. It was sudden, and the Revolution of 1688 was accomplished.

From that time the influence of the Crown upon the Parliament has been most apparent and deleterious by their corrupt dependency on each other. One of the first grievances to be remedied by the new dynasty was the purification of the Commons. A place bill was brought in. By it all members of the House of Commons were incapacitated from holding places of trust and profit. This was the model of our constitutional clause. It was passed in England finally, but rejected by the king's veto. Mr. Hallam (volume three, page 187) says:

"The baneful system of rendering the Parliament subservient to the administration, either by offices and pensions held at pleasure, or by more clandestine corruption, had not ceased with the house of Stuart. William, not long after his accession, fell into the worst part of this inanagement, which it was difficult to prevent, and, according to the practice of Charles's reign, induced by secret bribes the leaders of parliamentary opposition to betray their cause on particular questions."

Secret-service money was proved to have been used among members. Hallam enumerates the facts, and from them it will appear why, even after the place bill failed, a check was still put upon the number and quality of placemen in the lower House. The proper remedy then was the banishment, as our American ancestors provided, of all the servants of the Executive from the legislative councils of the nation. One thing, however, they did establish. In 1694 the board of revenue were incapacitated from sitting in the House. In 1699 the law was extended. In 1700, by the act of settlement, all officers were excluded. In 1706 the law was repealed, and but for this repeal England to-day would exclude the cabinet altogether; but she preserved the principle and limited its extension.

One provision she did establish, which to-day operates against an overwhelming influence of the ministry. (Hallam, volume three, page 191.) Every member accepting an office must vacate and a new election must be had. She excluded pensioners. These provisions, says De Lolme, (volume one, page 476, &c.,) originated from the continued corruption of Parliament. An "act of security" limiting the number of persons in office eligible to Parliament was enacted. I refer to these precautions in favor of liberty now as the argument against the present measure. What was reasonable then is, so long as human nature remains the same, reasonable now. As De Lolme writes:

"It is impossible to question the policy of these enactments, for, as Algernon Sydney observes, Men are naturally propense to corruption; and if he whose will and interest it is to corrupt them be furnished with the means, he will never fail to do it. Power, honors, riches, and the pleasures that attend them, are the baits by which men are drawn to prefer a personal interest before the public good; and the number of those who covet them is so great that he who abounds in them will be able to gain so many to his service as shall be sufficient to subdue the rest. It is hard to find a tyranny in the world that has not been introduced in this way? In truth, he who has tasted the sweets of disbonest and clandestine lucre would, in the words of the poet, be no more capable afterward of abstaining from it than a dog from his greasy offal."

Notwithstanding all these precautions, so long as the ministry remained in the Commons, Parliament was paramount. In the time of Anne in 1712, bills were again brought in still further limiting the number of officers of Government who could sit in Parliament. Fifty was proposed. Even that number failed in the House of Lords. The principle of preserving the influence of the Crown unhappily prevailed. The same arguments now used for this bill were used then. The same indifference to personal probity and political integrity are observable. Well might Queen Anne, therefore, dissolve one of her Parliaments, declaring it was her pleasure to admit of no debate. Out of this right arose the golden dawn of Walpole! The forecast of the wise statesmen of England had been exerted in vain. In vain had place bills been again tried; in vain were elections contested for bribery; in vain were mo

tions to retrench pensions. George II denounced all such bills as " villainous;" and his ministry did not scruple to send Tories to the Tower for contumacious debate. A bishop declared that an independent House of Commons was as inconsistent as an independent king. Truly was it exemplified. For the two powers became dependent on each other, made so by the golden mean of the minister who so long held his tainted sway. Doubtless Walpole had his amiable qualities. Some one says he would have been held worthy of his high station had he never possessed it. The lines applied to him are well known:

"Seen him I have, but in his happier hour Of social converse, ill exchanged for power; Seen him, uncumbered by the venal tribe, Smile without art, and win without a bribe." Doubtless he used the arts of persuasion. His continuance in power is attributable not a little to this resource, but mostly to his mercenary management. He arose from personal merit. He managed the king as well as the Commons. Places, pensions, bribes, were profusely strewn along the aisles of St.Stephen's; and though partially hidden from the eyes of contemporaries by the burning of the papers of the minister, yet as Smollett reveals, (volume two, page 311,) the guilty minister quarreling with a confederate, Mr. Stanhope, revealed their practice of selling places and reversions. A member standing up said, "Since they had by mischance discovered their nakedness, the other members ought, according to the custom of the East, to turn their backs upon them." In his History, Mr. May (page 300) says that the majority of the House of Commons was long retained in subjection to the minister by an organized system of corruption.

This system was continued until the reign of George I; and Lord Bute secured the aid of Walpole's agent to keep up the management of the Commons during the early part of the reign of George III. The war with America never would have been undertaken or upheld but for the purchase of Parliament by Lord North. Shops were opened for members. Some years £41,000 of the secret service were used to purchase votes. | Stock-jobbing and lotteries were substituted for direct bribes. Not until Mr. Pitt came into office was there a stop put on these infamies, and then only for a time. Contractors, nabobs, gold-these are the words upon which the changes were rung by Burke and others pleading for reform in the English Parliament. But Parliament strove in vain; the age was corrupted by war and avarice; it was a time

"When infamous Venality, grown bold, Wrote on its bosom, To be let or sold." It was from this source that good men predicted the ruin of English liberty. Montesquieu said, "It périra lorsque la puissance_legislative sera plus corrompue que l'exécutive." But for the restraints of the press gradually freeing itself from the toils of the time, and the public opinion which was enfranchised by the French Revolution, the admission of the public to the Commons, and the publicity of the debates, the English constitution would either have been destroyed or revolution would have changed its features into something like our own. Of all the instruments of despotism a paid Parliament is the worst, just as the corruption of the best things are the worst. "Tyranny," said Sydney Smith, speaking of this time, "is worst where a majority of a popular assembly are hired, and a few bold and able men by their brave speeches make the people believe they are free." The secret influence of the Crown was at work through the influence of the younger Pitt all through the French wars, and was sapping by its corruption the foundation of English liberty. From that time till the last reform bill of 1860 efforts have been made to lessen the corruption and bribery of the English elections and Parliaments, but in vain. So long as men are moved by their interests, so long will places, honors, emoluments, contracts, and power feed the servile horde of mercenaries who will buy out of the labor of the oppressed and tax-ridden people the very offices of legislation to prostitute them to power.

I do not detain the House with the specific modes by which the Crown or the ministry have ruled England through a subordinated Parliament. Sometimes they made the Speaker; sometimes shut the Opposition members in the Tower; some

to yesterday in debate! What the princes of Lahore, with their Koh-i-noors? A whole casket lies in his glance; for is he not the dispenser of $500,000,000 a year? [Laughter.] What to him the civil list of George III, which the Speaker Norton told the king was great beyond example? Millions hang upon his smile, where only thousands hung upon the smiles of the proud monarchs of England! What to him are the satrapies of the Indies? Whole hecatombs of greenbacks daily are sacrificed by his order! In plain attire, but potential mood, he comes! Faroff his coming shines; in form and seeming but a man, but in imagination like the angel of the pit, floating many a rood on the burning marl of war! About him herd thousands of slaughtered beef. [Laughter.] Around him throng millions of tons of forage; guns and wagons, horses and mules-an innumerable host, too great for the contracted mind of man; and from his brow hang bounties for millions, and honors for all!, Before him fall, as before an oriental throne, the prostrate House. In vain the Speaker calls to order! In vain the Sergeant-at-Arms brandishes the mace! Our symbol falls before the golden wand of this magician of war! At length he, too, deigns to sit. He is flanked by my military colleagues, [Messrs. SCHENCK and GARFIELD,] and the House is ready with their questions! Rare diversion here, Mr. Speaker. The record provided by the Clerk is produced. My colleague, [Mr. SCHENCK,] or rather my colleague, [Mr. GARFIELD,] with that sense of military skill and courage for which he is so distinguished, is the first to rise to inquire of the War minister, and not without embarassment. The House is breathless as he asks-what? Whether the blowing out of the bulkhead of the Dutch Gap canal by Butler has seriously affected the backbone of the rebellion? [Laughter.] If ay, how many vetebra are demolished; and after conference with the Naval Committee, whether the canal, in case of a tempestuous sea, is navigable for double-enders; and whether they cannot go either way therein without turning round? [Laughter.]

The gentleman from Illinois [Mr. WASHBURNE] would call up the head of the Treasury and ask whether it would be best to tax the whisky drank in the last century, with a view to assist Legislatures of States to a patriotic choice of Senators, [laughter,] and if so, what amount should be levied on the spirits of '76? [Laughter.] The chairman of the Ways and Means-ever ready to defend his positions-would inquire, with the gravity of Pluto's iron countenance, whether it would not be wise to enact a law punishing with death all who might sell peanuts and putty on any other than a gold basis. [Laughter.] A chorus of voices would inquire whether the Treasury could not so interpret the five per cent. income tax as to relieve members recently defeated from all tax upon their mileage in the next Congress. [Laughter.]

Then the venerable Secretary of the Navy would be put to his catechism. A member from Massachusetts would inquire what effect the payment of codfish bounties, as a nursery for our seamen, would have upon the navigation of the iron-clads. [Laughter.] I might be tempted myself to ask of the same venerable master of the trident whether the Abyssinian was used by Cleopatra in her naval service; if so, were they at the battle of the Nile; and "were they there all the while." [Laughter.] If so, what Pompey thought of it. [Laughter.)

But the gentleman from Vermont, ever alive to the interests of New England, [Mr. MORRILL,] would inquire triumphantly of Mr. Fessenden whether the tariff should not be so amended as to increase the duty on dyestuffs and paper, so that, on a future issue of $17,000,000,000 of greenbacks, the tariff will be prohibitory, the prices raised, and a satisfactory deficiency be produced in our revenues. [Laughter.] Or whether, by raising the price of dyestuff's and paper, the value of greenbacks in the market might not be made equal to the cost of their manufacture? [Laughter.] But what a stunning blow would be given by a Democratic member, who, rising solemnly, should inquire of the War Department what protection, in case of foreign war, is afforded by the manning of Forts Warren and La Fayette by their present loyal force; if so, how many are there at this time; how long have they been there, and with what prospect of relief. [Laughter.] I think my friend

from Maryland [Mr. HARRIS] would ask that question. [Laughter.]

Nor should the gentleman from Indiana, [Mr. HOLMAN,] the most useful member of this House, ever faithful to the soldier, be omitted from the programme. What, with crushing results, could he inquire of Mr. Stanton, what effect our Democratic efforts here to increase the pay of the soldiers has had on the recent elections. And if not, why not? [Laughter.] Perhaps this, too, interests my colleague in front, [Mr. PENDLETON,] who took some interest in soldier's pay and the last election. [Laughter.] Or, rising to the innocent sublime, the gentleman from Iowa [Mr. GRINNELL] should ask the Navy Department

Mr. EDGERTON. What gentleman from Iowa does the gentleman mean?

Mr. COX. My pastoral friend. [Great laughter.]

Mr. GRINNELL. I simply wish to ask the gentleman from Ohio whether he proposes to revive the church-partnership movement in the State of Ohio.

Mr. COX. I have no doubt the question put by the gentleman from Iowa is very appropriate, and that it should have been addressed to one of the Cabinet ministers; but I did not hear it. [Laughter.]

Mr. GRINNELL. I am opposed to the admission of Cabinet ministers.

Mr. COX. I know you are opposed to it; but if they should come in you would probably like to ask a question about the sheep business. You would naturally, perhaps, ask the question of the Secretary of the Navy, Mr. Welles, whether or not the Argonauticexpedition of Admiral Jason would have had any effect, in case the Golden Fleece had been captured in Australia, either on the gold market or the price of wool. [Laughter.]

I present these fanciful questions as an argumentum ad absurdum. If such questions were put by the veterans of the House, what might we not expect from the awkward squad? [Laughter.] One thing only they are designed to show: that, ridiculous as they seem, they are not more ridiculous than the questions of the English parliamentarians, which are invariably laughed at or avoided. These illustrations of the abuse of the legislative by the executive power are drawn from a country where the Government is parliamentary, and the responsibility ministerial. In our country the Government and responsibility

are distributed between the Executive and the Legislature, and there is no such thing as a ministerial responsibility. The Executive is responsible to the people, on the expiration of his term of office, and no responsibility exists to the people or to the Congress which can, before that time, remove him. But enough is shown to conclude that if the Executive by its Cabinet were in contact with the Legislature, the people would lose, through the aggressions of power and the persuasions of corruption, their share of the Government, and the Legislature, representative of their interests, would become the pliant instrument of the Executive. The democratic element of our institutions would be expunged, and the power which in England reached Parliaments and people to corrupt and enslave would here be used for the same purpose.

The Executive here is not above the motives which have swayed men in high office in other times. There is a constant tendency in the Executive to enlarge his power. The princes of antiquity used to deify themselves. Even the English kings "surrounded their persons with the jus divinum." We find in democratic America a perpetual ascription of glory to power. Even in this House I have heard members say "Adopt this policy, because our rulers have ordained it." Indeed, the committee in this report have transfixed several members of this House on this point of passive obedience to the powers, (see page 15.) The gold bill and loan bill are the acts I refer to, and the gentlemen are from New York, [Mr. MORRIS,] from Massachusetts, [Mr. HOOPER,] and others. When the gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. STEVENS] spoke he gave another voice. "I bow," he says, "to the opinion of the Secretary of the Treasury-if it is right." I might well believe that he would not fall into an unreasoning acquiescence with the judgment or wish of any Department. I read in the debates of the Pennsylvania constitutional convention in 1837,

upon the dangers of Federal and Cabinet influences, that when Walter Forward sought to divorce his State from such dangerous and fatal connection and patronage, he gave his earnest support to Mr. Forward. I reckon upon his vote against this measure, which has similar tenden

cies.

The report dwells upon the practice of other countries besides that of England. I will not seek to draw my lessons in legislation from France, or even Italy or Spain. We know what degree of liberty is allowed in those lands. I doubt if France has made any progress in her assemblies since the middle ages. It is related of the minister De Marigny, that wishing to gratify the king, Philip le Bel, in a levy of taxes, he called the Assembly of States; a great scaffold was erected; the king lords, and bishops took their places on it; and the Commons attended at its foot. The minister proposed an excise. The king, says an old chronicle, rose from his throne and advanced to the extremity of the scaffold that he might second by his looks the harangue of his treasurer and see who refused and who consented. This is the idea of the committee. The Cabinet will be here, not to vote, but, by their looks, to second the demands of the President; and woe to him in all future who dares to vote against the Administration! The eyes of the Cabinet will be upon him. Bastiles, Towers, imprisonments, may be powerless now, to influence us; but who has not constituents of influence at home, anxious for the fat of contracts or the drippings of office!

Mr. Speaker, if I did not believe that this measure would tend to increase the power of the Executive at the expense of the Legislature, I would have remained silent. But, sir, in times like these I would be most careful of the purity of the Legislature. I believe that in these days of usurpation of power, when unheard-of claims and inexplicable conduct have marked the executive career; when the power of Congress in foreign affairs has been denied at a distant court; when the laws we pass here are set aside by the minions of power, and when the State is afflicted with a civil war and its incidents of expense, patronage, and increased authority, that we should guard our portals as sacred from the intrusion of the ministers of that power which debauches. I must enter my negative to the opportunity for corruption. I do not forget the prayer that we be "not led into temptation." I base my opposition to this measure in the depravity of our nature. I remember that nations have fallen when their rulers yielded to the lures of the mercenary. Rome reared her grandeur by centuries of virtue, wisdom, and blood. When she lost her virtue she lost her grandeur and her power. Luxury favored corruption, and venality gave to the tongue of her Juvenals the fiercest shafts of satire. When her magistrates were elected by bribes, the sentences of her judges were purchased and the decrees of her senate were sold, then her liberties fell, and the mistress of nations became the scorn and prey of the barbarian. Then she was ruled by a Claudius, a Nero, a Caligula, and a Narcissus; by ministers who were emancipated slaves, parasites to power, and panderers to rapacity. Shall such be the finale of these, our terrible trials? Let us beware that we do not open the door to this mask of death, this saturnalia of hell. Whether such would be the result of this junction of the Legislature and the Executive, it is not for me to allege; but I would not open the breach, even if I were careless of the attack.

It is thought that this union of the Cabinet and Congress will elevate the standard of eloquence and statesmanship. England is pointed at as an example. The greatest efforts of oratory have been made against ministerial corruption and executive aggrandizement even there; and now in England, where the system is in full operation, the forum cannot boast greater names than those who opposed these encroachments upon the popular assembly. Pym, Hampden, Wentworth, and Falkland in their great struggles with Charles; Pulteney, Wyndham, and Bolingbroke in their struggles against the corruptions of the time of Anne; Chatham, thundering against George III and his minister, and Fox echoing back his Demosthenic philippies against the son of the great Commoner; Burke with his splendid imagery; Erskine with his pure and earnest style; the finished precision of Wedderburn; the silver tongue of