CONGRESS, UNITED STATES. 



shall be noted on, warn us that our act can not 

 be passed in any other mode." 



Mr. Hunl : "Mr. Chairman, by the seventh 

 section of the first article of the Constitution 

 it N provided that 'All bills for raising revenue 

 shall oriir'mati' in the House of Representatives.' 

 In the Firty-fifth Congress the House of Rep- 

 resentative*, in the exercise of its unquestioned 

 power, passed the army hill and the legislative 

 bill, appropriating nearly fifty millions of money 

 for the uses of the Government. To those bills 

 they added certain provisions germane to their 

 subject-matter and in the interest of economy, 

 which repealed provisions of the existing stat- 

 utes, most of which had been incorporated into 

 the law of the land by being in the first in- 

 stance attached to appropriation bills. These 

 bills, when sent to the Senate, were amended, 

 as that body had the undoubted power to do, 

 by striking out these provisions to which I 

 have referred. They went to committees of 

 conference. Not having been a member of one 

 of the committees of conference, nor familiar 

 with the necessities of legislation at that time 

 pending, I am unable to say what tke proposi- 

 tions for settlement and adjustment of the dif- 

 ferences between the two Houses were. I have 

 heard it said upon the floor of this House that 

 certain distinguished representatives of the Re- 

 publican party were willing to concede very 

 ranch to the wishes of the House, only insist- 

 ing that there should be one amendment left 

 out. These gentlemen had not power to speak 

 for the body which differed with this House ; 

 and I do not know that any proposition was 

 made by the Senate of the United States for a 

 compromise. I do know that as a result of 

 the disagreement of the committees of confer- 

 ence an extra session was called. I will not 

 now discuss the question as to who is to be 

 blamed for the extra session, excepting in the 

 general discussion of the propositions that are 

 involved in this debate. If the House were 

 right in insisting upon these provisions, then 

 the Senate was wrong in compelling an extra 

 session. If the Senate were right in refusing 

 to accept the propositions of the House, then 

 the House was wrong ; and I propose, in the 

 few remarks that I shall submit to the consid- 

 eration of this body to-day, to attempt to show 

 that the House was right in every proposition 

 which it insisted upon in the Forty-fifth Con- 

 gress and which it insists upon now in the 

 legislation of the Forty-sixth. 



" Nor shall I discuss the method by which 

 these amendments or provisions have been at- 

 tempted to be made parts of the appropriation 

 bills. If anything has been settled by the legis- 

 lation of the last quarter of a century, it is that 

 even general legislation may be tacked to ap- 

 propriation bills; and certainly no man at any 

 time in the history of this Government has dis- 

 puted the proposition that measures in the in- 

 terest of economy, propositions relating to the 

 revenue, might be incorporated into bills when 

 they were originated by the House under the 



authority of the section to which I have re- 

 ferred. Who was right? Who is right now? 

 I say, Mr. Chairman, that the House of Repre- 

 sentatives was right in insisting that these bills 

 should be repealed. I shall not speak to-day 

 of the test-oath bill. I shall speak only of tke 

 two others which relate to elections, because 

 they both are governed by the same principles 

 and both must be settled by the same consti- 

 tutional doctrine. 



" The House of Representatives insisted that 

 the law should be amended so as to strike out 

 that part which authorized the use of troops at 

 the polls ; that the law should be amended so 

 that supervisors of elections appointed by Fed- 

 eral authority should no longer possess the 

 power they now have; and that there should 

 be a repeal of all the statutes which conferred 

 upon officers of the United States the power to 

 interfere with or regulate State elections. The 

 House was right and it is right in the demand 

 it makes now, because, first, these provisions 

 are unconstitutional. They interfere with the 

 right of suffrage ; they attempt the control of 

 voting in a State in the Union where by the 

 laws of the State the voting power alone is 

 conferred. Have gentlemen who have consid- 

 ered this question read recently section 2, arti- 

 cle 1, of the Constitution of the United States, 

 which declares that ' The House of Represen- 

 tatives shall be composed of members chosen 

 every second year by the people of the several 

 States, and the electors in each State shall have 

 the qualifications requisite for electors of the 

 most numerous branch of the State Legisla- 

 ture.' It is the most numerous branch of the 

 State Legislature that determines the qualifica- 

 tions of electors and not the Constitution of the 

 United States. There is no such thing as the 

 right of suffrage for a citizen of the United 

 States. The right of suffrage is possessed and 

 enjoyed by a citizen of a State under the laws 

 created by the State expressly recognized by 

 the fundamental law of the land. 



"And if any doubt upon this subject had 

 ever been entertained, I ask you to refer to the 

 decision of the Supreme Court of the United 

 States recently made, in which every doubt is 

 taken away : ' The power of Congress ' I read 

 from 2 Otto, page 216, the syllabus of the case 

 ' The power of Congress to legislate at all 

 upon the subject of voting at State elections 

 rests upon this amendment, and can be exer- 

 cised by providing a punishment only when 

 the wrongful refusal to receive the vote of a 

 qualified elector at such elections is because of 

 his color, race, or previous condition of servi- 

 tude.' The highest judicial tribunal of the 

 United States has determined that there is no 

 power in the Congress of the United States to 

 interfere with voting at the State elections ex- 

 cepting in the single instance where the power 

 was conferred upon the General Government 

 by the fifteenth amendment to the Constitu- 

 tion. 



" Now, on what theory, I ask you, does this 



