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CONGRESS, UNITED STATES. 



the annoyance of an extra session. With this 

 feeling I offered what I thought was a fair ba- 

 sis of compromise, or settlement if you please, 

 which included the question which is now be- 

 fore the House. That basis was something like 

 this : that the Republican side of the House 

 would agree to the proposition that is em- 

 braced in this army bill, and would agree fur- 

 ther to what is known as the jury clause in 

 the legislative bill ; and that the Democrats 

 should recede from what is known as the su- 

 pervisors and marshals clause in the legislative 

 bill." 



Mr. Atkins : " If my friend will allow me, 

 I do not like to interrupt him. He is speak- 

 ing of the conference on the legislative, exec- 

 utive, and judicial appropriation bill. Does 

 my friend confine his remarks to himself, or 

 does he speak of other members of the con- 

 ference ? " 



Mr. Foster : " I am speaking of the proposi- 

 tion that I made." 



Mr. Atkins : " For yourself? " 



Mr. Foster : " For myself. We were in- 

 formed in conference by our Democratic 

 friends that they could not yield anything. 

 Now, while I have no right to speak here of 

 what the Senators might have done on this 

 question, yet upon my own responsibility I am 

 willing to say that I believe if this basis of set- 

 tlement had been agreed to by our Democratic 

 friends an agreement would have been reached. 



" For myself, I care but little about this 

 proposition in the army bill. I do not know 

 but that the time has about come when we 

 perhaps ought to agree to it, though I am not 

 quite ready for it yet. The gentleman from 

 New York [Mr. Hewitt] has said a great deal 

 about English-speaking people and the liberty- 

 loving traits of their character. Sir, I think 

 we Republicans are as much in love with liber- 

 ty as are the English people or as my friend 

 from New York. I have yet to learn from any 

 responsible source that the troops ever pre- 

 vented any single voter from voting as he 

 pleased. On the contrary, they have assisted 

 hundreds and thousands of poor people to vote, 

 who otherwise could not have voted. 



" We Republicans are not quite ready to 

 yield to all these demands. And what is the 

 nature of these demands ? Are you going to 

 force us to repeal these laws by provisions on 

 an appropriation bill ? I know we have a great 

 deal of discussion about legislation upon ap- 

 propriation bills. It has been said that Repub- 

 licans in times past have been in the habit of 

 legislating upon appropriation bills. I agree 

 to that, and for myself I can not see any great 

 harm in legislating upon appropriation bills 

 when both Houses agree to it. But this prop- 

 osition never was brought into this House as 

 an independent measure. You never sought 

 to have it passed through this House and sent 

 to the Senate as an independent measure. But 

 you come in here with this proposition on an 

 appropriation bill, and you undertake through 



the means of an appropriation bill to force the 

 proposition upon the Senate. There, in my 

 judgment, is where the wrong of legislating 

 upon appropriation bills comes in. 



" I have been as anxious as my friend from 

 New York or any other gentleman could be 

 to reach a conclusion. I have worked for it 

 steadily. The only propositions that have 

 come from anybody, so far as relate to a ba- 

 sis of settlement, have come from Republicans. 

 But our Democratic friends stood like adamant 

 in refusing to concede one single thing, refus- 

 ing to dot an * or cross a t ; and that left no- 

 thing for us to do but to agree to disagree. 



" You gentlemen on the other side will have 

 the next Congress. You can repeal these laws 

 by means of bills passed in the regular form. 

 If the President should see fit to veto them, 

 you can then put them upon appropriation bills 

 and probably force him to take them. There 

 will be no election between now and 1880, ex- 

 cept in California, to be affected by these laws ; 

 and I want to say to gentlemen on the other 

 side, and I think I speak for my friends on this 

 side, that we are willing to make an exception 

 of California for the purpose of reaching a set- 

 tlement." 



Mr. Garfield : " Mr. Speaker, it is only just 

 that the precise situation of this legislation and 

 the fair relation of all parties to it should be 

 perfectly understood. It has been quite fully 

 stated on both sides, but I desire to enlarge a 

 little upon one or two features of what has 

 been said. 



" The gentleman from New York [Mr. Hew- 

 itt] has certainly drawn very largely upon 

 what, if I should follow his example, would be 

 my imagination, in his statement that the lib- 

 erties of this country are now in danger or 

 ever have been in danger from the legislation 

 embraced in the two clauses of the sections of 

 the statutes proposed to be repealed by this 

 legislation. I admit that in a monarchical 

 country like England, especially as England 

 was in the days when their first army law 

 passed, there was danger, great danger, in 

 giving any considerable power to the army. 

 But in a country like ours, where the Legisla- 

 ture controls the purse of the nation, it can 

 freeze the army to death when it chooses. In a 

 country like ours, where the Chief Magistrate 

 is liable to be impeached for any serious viola- 

 tion of law, for any malfeasance or misfeasance 

 on the part of any military officer, where the 

 whole spirit of the government is civil, and 

 the military is completely subordinated, it 

 seems to me that the alarms which my friend 

 from New York raises are wholly imaginary. 



" Now, gentlemen ought to bear in mind 

 what these two sections are. They ought to 

 remember in the first place the time when they 

 were passed and the object for which they 

 were passed. It ought to be borne in mind 

 that both the sections sought to be modified 

 in this appropriation bill are restraining sec- 

 tions sections indeed leveled against the army 



