194 



CONGRESS, .UNITED STATES. 



greater question, I must call the attention of 

 members to the parliamentary history of this 

 bill. It is one of the twelve great appropri- 

 ation bills necessary for carrying on the Gov- 

 ernment. After being considered forty days 

 in the Committee on Appropriations, after 

 being elaborately debated in this House, it 

 went to the Senate, and, after having there 

 encountered storm and tempest of no ordina- 

 ry character, it came back to the House with 

 such amendments as the Senate saw fit to 

 add. Again 'in the House, it was a bill in 

 order under all the rules of parliamentary law, 

 for our rules do not allow us to rule as out of 

 order an amendment added by the Senate. 

 The bill then being in order, there were but 

 five courses of action open to the House in the 

 ordinary processes of legislation. The first was, 

 to refer it to the Committee on Appropriations, 

 to be considered and brought back subject to 

 the order of the House. The second was, we 

 might have referred it to the Committee of the 

 Whole on the state of the Union, where it 

 would have been open to debate and amend- 

 ment on every one of the ninety-three amend- 

 ments, and then to be reported back to the 

 House to await the further order of this body. 

 A third course was, that we should proceed to 

 consider it in open House under the five-min- 

 utes rule, subject to amendments and debate. 

 A fourth plan was, to non-concur in all the 

 Senate amendments and send the bill to a com- 

 mittee of conference, to be again brought back 

 into the House. There was a fifth plan, to 

 concur in all the Senate amendments, and thus 

 send the bill to the President for his approval. 



" Now, there is no other ordinary course to 

 be taken with an appropriation bill, and I call 

 the attention of the House to the fact that I 

 and my associates on the Committee on Ap- 

 propriations tried again and again in the House 

 each and all of these five ordinary courses of 

 procedure, and again and again did the minor- 

 ity of this House refuse to allow the House to 

 take either of these courses until late at night 

 of Saturday, after a twelve hours' session, and 

 then only on condition that the non-concur- 

 rence and reference to a conference committee 

 should be coupled with a recess which should 

 bring us within four hours of the final adjourn- 

 ment of Congress. In other words, the minor- 

 ity have for days refused to allow the usual 

 legislative processes to be employed in refer- 

 ence to a great and necessary public measure ; 

 they have refused to allow it to be debated or 

 considered except upon terms of their own 

 dictation wholly beyond the ordinary range 

 of parliamentary order. 



"Mr. Speaker, a question has therefore 

 arisen, in its importance far above any item in 

 this bill, and even above the whole bill, and it 

 is simply this: shall the majority of the mem- 

 bers of this House have the right to consider 

 and act upon a great appropriation bill in the 

 mode provided in the rules? The moment a 

 minority, however large, deny that proposi- 



tion, that moment we are in the midst of a 

 parliamentary revolution, and legislation of 

 any sort is impossible for evermore until that 

 position be utterly abandoned. In saying this 

 I do not fail to recognize the amplest right of 

 the minority to make dilatory motions for any 

 and all legitimate purposes. I recognize that 

 right whenever the minority is being op- 

 pressed by any parliamentary proceeding. If, 

 for instance, we should insist that a bill should 

 be passed without being read, I would filibus- 

 ter as long as any man here to prevent it, if it 

 were a bill that I did not understand or ap- 

 prove." 



Mr. Eldredge, of "Wisconsin, said : "I want 

 to ask a question on this particular point, as 

 to what was said by him to gentlemen on this 

 side of the House, and to me personally." 



Mr. Garfield : " When we went into the con- 

 ference committee, we sat two hours on Sat- 

 urday night, running our session into mid- 

 night. 



" We met on Sunday and sat eight hours 

 continuously. At the end of six hours we had 

 finished, to the satisfaction of the conferees, 

 every other item of disagreement between the 

 two Houses. When we reached the tenth 

 amendment, the one in dispute, the Senate 

 conferees informed us that they could make 

 no report that did not treat of that subject in 

 it ; that the report must be one and a whole. 

 The committee on the part of the House was 

 thus compelled to adopt one of two courses, 

 either at eight o'clock on Monday morning, 

 four hours before the time fixed for final ad- 

 journment, bring back a report that they had 

 made no progress whatever, that nothing was 

 agreed to, nothing settled, thus making it 

 wholly impossible to reach an adjustment be- 

 fore twelve o'clock, or to bring in a report 

 concurring in something. 



" After mature deliberation we thought it to 

 be our duty to bring in a report, and in order 

 to do that we proposed a substitute to the Sen- 

 ate's tenth amendment. That substitute con- 

 sists in the main of the enforcement bill sent 

 to the House by the Senate a few weeks since ; 

 but there are two or three important modifi- 

 cations put on that at the suggestion of the 

 House conferees. 



"The amendment thus guarded is clearly 

 within the provisions of the Constitution which 

 empower Congress to regulate the time, place, 

 and manner of holding elections for Repre- 

 sentatives in Congress. Now, the committee 

 of conference having brought in a report under 

 the rules, I do now insist, and shall continue to 

 demand, that the bill before the House shall be 

 acted on ; and against all factious and revolu- 

 tionary resistance I propose to stand, if need 

 be, until December next, until this appropria- 

 tion bill shall be considered, shall be voted on, 

 voted up or voted down. 



" And now, once for all, I say to the gentle- 

 man from Wisconsin (Mr. Eldredge), and to 

 the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Kelley), 



