Part 22

Lodge's Alexander Hamilton, p. 105.

Its final and most masterly exposition, by C. J. Marshall, may be seen in McCulloch v. Maryland, 4 Wheaton, 316.

The following passage from William Maclay's Sketches of Debate in the First Senate of the United States (pp. 292-3) illustrates how clearly the results of this were forecast by sagacious men from the first: "The system laid down by these gentlemen (the Federalists) was as follows, or rather the development of the designs of a certain party: The general power to carry the Constitution into effect by a constructive interpretation would extend to every case that Congress may deem necessary or expedient.... The laws of the United States will be held paramount to all "state" laws, claims, and even constitutions. The supreme power is with the general government to decide in this, as in everything else, for the States have neglected to secure any umpire or mode of decision in case of difference between them. Nor is there any point in the Constitution for them to rally under. They may give an opinion, but the opinions of the general government must prevail.... Any direct and open act would be termed usurpation. But whether the gradual influence and encroachments of the general government may not gradually swallow up the state governments, is another matter."

Pensacola Tel. Co. v. West. Union, 96 U. S. 1, 9. (Quoted by Judge Cooley in his Principles of Constitutional Law.)

18 Stat., part 3, 336. See Ex parte Virginia, 100 U. S. 339.

Sect. 5515 Rev. Stats. See Ex parte Siebold, 100 U. S. 371. Equally extensive of federal powers is that "legal tender" decision (Juilliard v. Greenman) of March, 1884, which argues the existence of a right to issue an irredeemable paper currency from the Constitution's grant of other rights characteristic of sovereignty, and from the possession of a similar right by other governments. But this involves no restriction of state powers; and perhaps there ought to be offset against it that other decision (several cases, October, 1883), which denies constitutional sanction to the Civil Rights Act.

Principles of Constitutional Law, pp. 143, 144.

Marbury v. Madison, 1 Cranch, 137.

Cooley's Principles, p. 157.

For an incisive account of the whole affair, see an article Entitled "The Session," No. Am. Review, vol. cxi., pp. 48, 49.

7 Wall. 506.

For a brilliant account of the senatorial history of these two treaties, see the article entitled "The Session," No. Am. Rev., vol. cviii. (1869), p. 626 et seq.

In an article entitled "The Conduct of Business in Congress" (North American Review, vol. cxxviii. p. 113), to which I am indebted for many details of the sketch in the text.

No Committee is entitled, when called, to occupy more than the morning hours of two successive days with the measures which it has prepared; though if its second morning hour expire while the House is actually considering one of its bills, that single measure may hold over from morning hour to morning hour until it is disposed of.

Quoted from an exceedingly life-like and picturesque description of the House which appeared in the New York Nation for April 4, 1878.

No. Am. Rev., vol. xxvi., p. 162.

Id., the same article.

"Glances at Congress," Dem. Rev., March, 1839.

Autobiography, pp. 264, 265.

The National Budget, etc. (English Citizen Series), p. 146. In what I have to say of the English system, I follow this volume, pp. 146-149, and another volume of the same admirable series, entitled Central Government, pp. 36-47, most of my quotations being from the latter.

See an article entitled "National Appropriations and Misappropriations," by the late President Garfield, North American Review, vol cxxviii. pp 578 et seq.

Senator Hoar's article, already several times quoted.

Adams's John Randolph. American Statesman Series, pp. 210, 211.

On one occasion "the House passed thirty-seven pension bills at one sitting. The Senate, on its part, by unanimous consent, took up and passed in about ten minutes seven bills providing for public buildings in different States, appropriating an aggregate of $1,200,000 in this short time. A recent House feat was one in which a bill, allowing 1,300 war claims in a lump, was passed. It contained one hundred and nineteen pages full of little claims, amounting in all to $291,000; and a member, in deprecating criticism on this disposition of them, said that the Committee had received ten huge bags full of such claims, which had been adjudicated by the Treasury officials, and it was a physical impossibility to examine them."--N. Y. Sun, 1881.

Congress, though constantly erecting new Committees, never gives up old ones, no matter how useless they may have become by subtraction of duties. Thus there is not only the superseded Committee on Public Expenditures but the Committee on Manufactures also, which, when a part of the one-time Committee on Commerce and Manufactures, had plenty to do, but which, since the creation of a distinct Committee on Commerce, has had nothing to do, having now, together with the Committees on Agriculture and Indian Affairs, no duties assigned to it by the rules. It remains to be seen whether the Committee on Commerce will suffer a like eclipse because of the gift of its principal duties to the new Committee on Rivers and Harbors.

See the report of this Committee, which was under the chairmanship of Senator Windom.

An illustration of what the House Committees find by special effort may be seen in the revelations of the investigation of the expenses of the notorious "Star Route Trials" made by the Forty-eighth Congress's Committee on Expenditures in the department of Justice.

See General Garfield's article, already once quoted, North American Review, vol. cxxviii. p. 533.