6i8 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



before the United States Supreme Court for discussion. And 

 pertinent to the case it should be further noted, that when it 

 was proposed in the Convention that framed the Federal Con- 

 stitution to incorporate in it a provision for bestowing "re- 

 wards " for " the promotion of agriculture," the proposition was 

 rejected. 



The facts about the bounty for codfisheries are, that it was 

 given under the first revenue laws (levying duties) of the United 

 States in 1793, and was intended to offset bounties and other 

 measures adopted by England, as was believed, for the purpose 

 of destroying the fisheries, not only of the United States, but also 

 of France. Its enactment was strenuously resisted at the time, 

 on constitutional grounds, and especially by as good a consti- 

 tutional authority as Madison, who held that the enactment of 

 a bounty was beyond the power of Congress (4 Elliot's Debates, 

 Philadelphia edition, 1875, 525, 52G). Its legality was never judi- 

 cially examined, and the act expired by its own limitation in 

 seven years. Subsequent acts expressing limitation were passed 

 of the same character from time to time ; and since their final 

 expiration, many j'^ears ago, it is claimed that no Congress, until 

 the Fifty-ninth, 1890, has asserted its right to levy taxation em- 

 bodying the bounty principle. 



The court, in giving an opinion affirming the constitutionality 

 of the tariff act of 1890, evaded the question of the constitution- 

 ality of its bounty provision, on the ground that the invalidity 

 of one part of a revenue act does not invalidate the whole act; 

 and when that principle was settled, the objections to the act 

 based on separate clauses really disappeared.* 



The disbursement of the money voted by Congress for the 

 payment of the sugar bounties having been withheld by the 

 Comptroller of the United States Treasury on the ground that 

 the appropriation was unconstitutional, the court held that if 

 Congress made promises and thereby induced people to incur 

 expenses which they would not otherwise have incurred, and 

 has then appropriated the money to indemnify the parties, the 

 payment can not be stopped by an administrative officer on the 

 ground of the unconstitutionality of the primary bounty enact- 

 ment. 



A question of interest in connection with this case, which may 

 naturally suggest itself, especially to those not learned in the 

 law, is. How happens it that repeated acts of expenditure of money 

 raised by taxation for admittedly private purposes have been 



* One of the best reviews of this celebrated case, one to which the writer has been 

 greatly indebted, is to be found in an article contributed to and published in the Harvard 

 Law Review for February, 1892, by Charles B. Chamberlain, Esq., of Boston. 



