CONGRESS, UNITED STATES. 



167 



defalcate against the coming salary what 

 been rccrivi-il in the months sinco March 

 why has it not the power to defalcate 

 in-t tin- mciuher.s who took the back pay in 



e Forty-sccniiil Congress? Why does the 

 :.!::. MI. Inu-nt of the Senator from Indiana stop 

 there! 1 1 can understand no difference. If 

 my tViciitl from Ohio takes the ground that 

 ('.MI-TIV-- lias the power now to open accounts, 

 ami to defalcate against the coming salary tho 

 - that ha-* been received since the 4th of 

 March la -it, why have we not the power to go 

 hack into the Forty-second Congress? " 



Mr. Thiirman : " That would be a discrimina- 

 tion between members." 



Mr. Scott : " Between what members ? " 



Mr. Thurman : " Between those who be- 

 longed to the Forty-second Congress and those 

 who did not." 



Mr. Scott: "Not at all. It makes no dis- 

 crimination among the present members; it 

 reduces them all to $5,000. Tho only dis- 

 crimination it makes is in favor of those who 

 were in the Forty-second Congress and are not 

 in the Forty-third. They have got the money, 

 and you cannot reach them ; but, if you can 

 reach members from the 4th of March last, 

 you can reach every member of the Forty-third 

 Congress who was a member of the Forty-sec- 

 ond, and this amendment falls short of its 

 highly- patriotic purpose." 



Mr. Stockton, of New Jersey, said: "I 

 understood the Senator from Ohio to say that 

 he could see nothing unconstitutional, he could 

 see no invidious distinction in an amendment 

 which provided that those Senators who, since 

 the 4th of March, have been drawing pay at 

 the rate of $7,500, should have charged up to 

 them that sum, so that they would draw now 

 a less sum than those who did not receive the 

 increased pay under the salary bill. To that 

 proposition the Senator from Ohio, impelled, as 

 he says, by the action of his Legislature to 

 speak on the subject, has given the weight of 

 his authority, than which there is no greater 

 in this Senate. 



"Mr. President, the Constitution says that 

 the Senators and Representatives shall receive 

 a compensation to be ascertained by law. It 

 must be the Senators each and all of them 

 alike. It must be ascertained, namely, made 

 certain as to amount. It must be by law that 

 it is made certain ; that is, by a general rule 

 applying to all. If I understand this ques- 

 tion, a Senator of tho United States, a member 

 of the Congress of the United States, under 

 the Constitution and tho law passed there- 

 under, may receive the sum ascertained by 

 lnw. He has no option about it. If it is noth- 

 ing, he has no riht to any thing; if it is a 

 larger sum than it was when his constituents 

 elected him, he must receive that sum and no 

 other. It is the sum 'ascertained by law.' 

 Those are the words of tho Constitution. 

 That that law was unconstitutional ; that that 

 law was improper or illegal I speak not now 



of motives, nor of the propriety or wisdom in 

 its passage but simply that it has never been 

 claimed that there was any defect in that law 

 by which it was not an operative law. Tbi 

 has never been suggested. So it ban never 

 been whispered that a Senator of the United 

 States had a right to receive more or less than 

 that sum. When it was received it was his 

 own. Of course, no Senator was bound to draw 

 it. A man may let his money that is due him 

 pile up in the Treasury of the United States, 

 or in the office of the Secretary of the Senate, 

 to any amount he pleases, as he may in a bank 

 or anywhere else. There it piles up ; there it 

 goes to his credit ; it is credited to him. The 

 day the bill became operative the amount dne 

 to each was payable ; and the man who did 

 not go to the office the day he was entitled to 

 it and draw the sum, the average of which, it 

 was said in this debate, was about $8,000, was 

 just as much entitled to it as those who did, 

 and his administrators were just as much en- 

 titled, by the laws of this land, to collect it if 

 he died as if he had taken it during his life. 

 That position cannot be controverted. It is 

 impregnable. 



"Now, Mr. President, how would it be in 

 case it appears that any Senator has not re- 

 ceived this pay ? No such case can exist under 

 the law. Every member of Congress received 

 his pay back pay, increased pay, and all. 

 Take the case of the gentleman who devoted 

 the back pay, which was his legal right, to 

 building the Washington Monument ; or of the 

 gentleman who divided among the poor of his 

 district, kind and charitable as he was, the 

 money so taken from the Treasury ; and are 

 they, with their charitable and generous dis- 

 position of it, embraced in the clause of this 

 amendment, or are they excluded as those that 

 did not take the increase? If they are in- 

 cluded because they did with it what their 

 good and charitable hearts suggested, never- 

 theless they took it. The United States Gov- 

 ernment did not make an appropriation to 

 assist in the building of the Washington Mo- 

 nument. Money cannot be taken out of the 

 Treasury to be distributed among the poor of a 

 congressional district except by law. No, Mr. 

 President, they took it; and a Senator who 

 wrote a letter to the Secretary of the Senate 

 telling him to cover tho pay which was due 

 him back into tho Treasury of the United 

 States took that money. He could only con- 

 vey a title to it, because it was their property. 

 He disposed of it where his conscience, where 

 his means, where his disposition led him in the 

 exercise of that right which it was his duty to 

 exercise, where they ti>M him it had better 

 go; but it was nevertheless his act. It was 

 covered into the Treasury by no law of Con- 

 gress, but by the act alone and solely of that 

 individual; and if that individual had died 

 before he made that disposition it would have 

 belonged to his estate, and could have been 

 claimed by his executors. lie was generous 



