FIFTIETH CONGRESS; 1887-1889. 1097 
the Senator’s statement is no answer to the argument. The use of 
public money may or may not be a charity. 
Mr. Harris. The Senator dodges the question I asked. 
Mr. Cau. The Senator from Tennessee dodges the conclusion, but 
Ido not. When the Senator from Tennessee says that an act of Con- 
gress passed by a majority of each of the two Houses and approved 
by the President is the same as a thief breaking into the Treasury 
and taking the money out, then there is no argument about it. 
In the one case the people’s representatives, appointed by the Con- 
stitution to decide what is a proper use of the public money, decide 
and perform the constitutional duty assigned to them, and not to the 
Senator from Tennessee, and he says this, if it does not agree with his 
opinion, is very absurd. 
Mr. Grorer. Mr. President, right here I want to put on record an 
extract from an old-fashioned and now almost forgotten paper. It is 
the eighth section of the first article of the Constitution of the United 
States: 
The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts, and 
excises, to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of 
the United States. 
Mr. Catu. The Senator from Tennessee and all others who maintain 
his argument do not allow the words ‘‘ Congress of the United States ” 
to have any meaning. 
Now, Mr. President, this is a matter of argument, and it has been 
argued a hundred times; but every time Congress exercises this power, 
if it does not suit a Senator’s fancy, like the Senator from Tennessee 
or the Senator from Texas, this same question is raised. I remember 
some years ago the Senator from Tennessee thought that charity and 
the general welfare required an ice ship to be built to freeze out the 
yellow fever that had been decimating and destroying Memphis, and 
if I recollect aright there was some amount, over a hundred thousand 
dollars, I think, for this charity donated, granted, appropriated out of 
the Treasury of the United States. 
As to the money that Congress appropriates in the forms of the 
Constitution, the argument is that the Constitution is an assemblage 
of powers—not of ideas, but of powers. That is an instance, and the 
Senator’s vote can not dodge, but answers his question. It is true there 
are declaratory phrases in the Constitution which say the powers ought 
to be exercised so and so, but the power is distinct from the direction; 
the power is given to the two Houses, to the people through their 
representatives. 
Mr. President, that is what I said, and I say the fathers who made 
the Constitution, when they gave to the people the power to send Rep- 
resentatives here every two years and the people as States to send them 
