154 



CONGRESS, UNITED STATES. 



clauses in the bill containing such appropria- 

 tions. 



"I desire to say to gentlemen on both sides 

 of the House that I have now no letter and 

 know of none to offer to Congress from any 

 officer of the Government stating we owe spe- 

 cial deputy-marshals in California anything. 

 Indeed, I do not suppose the Attorney-General 

 would take the responsibility of saying that we 

 did owe United States special deputy-marshals 

 any particular sum of money in the absence of 

 appropriations, because the law is very explicit 

 on the statute-book that no department of the 

 Government has the power to incur an obliga- 

 tion in the absence of an appropriation for that 

 purpose. The law was laid down distinctly by 

 Attorney-General Williams in regard to the 

 printing of postal-cards when no appropriation 

 had been made for that purpose. The Presi- 

 dent of the United States confirmed the doc- 

 trine in a message which he sent to this House 

 in the month of June, 1876 ; and the Secretary 

 of the Treasury, in an executive document 

 which I have before me, says expressly there 

 is no power to incur any obligation on the part 

 of the Government unless money has been ap- 

 propriated for that special purpose. Therefore, 

 although we know by report, by telegraph, and 

 possibly by official letters in response to inquiry 

 to the Attorney-General, that we had seventy- 

 six hundred dollars' worth of special deputy- 

 marshals in the State of California at the late 

 election in that State without knowing how 

 many ; yet they are not in a shape to claim any 

 relief at the hands of this Government, and, in 

 my j udgment, they have long since been paid 

 by the Republican Central Committee. Any 

 proposition to amend this bill by inserting 

 $7,600 would be simply a proposition for the 

 relief of the Republican Central Committee. 



" It is a private debt when certain gentle- 

 men are put, as they have been, upon public 

 duty for which no appropriation has been 

 made, and are told if the Government does not 

 pay them the private purse would. I know 

 no public officer who has a right to create that 

 debt on the part of the Government; the 

 proposition is as plain as that two and two make 

 four, that if any debt exists it is the debt of 

 the Republican Central Committee, and can not, 

 in law, be the debt or obligation of the coun- 

 try. No department can incur an obligation 

 in the absence of an appropriation (except in 

 the Army and Navy), and no public officer 

 will take the responsibility of saying that we 

 owe (in its proper sense) any one in such a 

 case. 



" Now, special deputy-marshals are entitled, 

 if properly appointed and there is an appropri- 

 ation for them, to five dollars a day. General 

 deputies are entitled to the ordinary fees which 

 are specified in the statute. A general deputy- 

 marshal is entitled to be present at elections 

 under the election law (if it be regarded as 

 constitutional), but he is entitled to no compen- 

 sation for being present. The compensation of 



five dollars a day is confined expressly to special 

 deputy-marshals. A general deputy-marshal 

 has no fees even for arresting a man without 

 process on election-day, for there are no such 

 fees allowed. The supposition is that there is 

 always a warrant, an attachment, or process 

 of some kind or other. Of course, if he seizes 

 a man who violates the law in his presence, 

 he may be entitled to the ordinary fifty cents 

 for the commitment of the prisoner. He may 

 be entitled to ordinary fees for attending be- 

 fore a United States commissioner. But these 

 are fees to which he would be entitled if he 

 held a warrant, and are incurred in the ordi- 

 nary course of judicial proceedings. 



"But the Committee on Appropriations 

 thought, so far as their duty extended, that all 

 they could do and all they were willing to do, 

 in view especially of the recent decision of the 

 Supreme Court, was this: that the general 

 deputies' ordinary fees should be paid, but the 

 extraordinary fees of the special deputy-mar- 

 shals should not, because no appropriation had 

 ever been made for that purpose, and their 

 employment was not authorized and created 

 no obligation. 



" There can not be two sides, Mr. Chairman, 

 to the question of law that, whether a law is 

 constitutional or not, we have the right to de- 

 termine how much shall be appropriated under 

 it, especially where no amount is fixed. For 

 example, if a public building needs $500,000 to 

 complete it, Congress may say that in the pres- 

 ent state of the Treasury, or in the present 

 state of other advanced work, we will give 

 nothing yet the building ought to be com- 

 pleted ; or we will give $50,000 yet that may 

 not be enough ; or we will give $100,000 and 

 that may not be enough. By committing to 

 the House power to appropriate, the right is ab- 

 solutely left in the House to determine wheth- 

 er it will appropriate for a certain purpose and 

 how much it will appropriate. 



" Of course I understand, as a legislator, that 

 upon us rests the burden of refusing to carry 

 out a law or refusing to carry it out properly. 

 That is a responsibility we must take. We 

 always have taken it, and I hope we always 

 will without fear. 



" And I desire to say that because the Su- 

 preme Court of the United States has decided 

 that the election law is constitutional by a sort 

 of eight-by-seven decision and I mean by that 

 a division apparently according to party lines 

 (without impugning the good faith of any mem- 

 ber of the Supreme Court, but to show how dif- 

 ferently a legal question may appear to persons 

 who have been educated in different political 

 schools) that although that court has decided 

 the constitutionality of the law, that when we 

 come, as legislators, to appropriate money it is 

 our duty to say, Is this law constitutional ? or, 

 if constitutional, is it a good law, and are we 

 bound to appropriate money for it ? Beyond 

 that, we have a right to determine whether the 

 exigency for any appropriation exists, or wheth- 



