1522 CONGRESSIONAL PROCEEDINGS. 
United States, and are you going to say that we can take money and 
give it to the children of those men? 
The Senator himself has rendered distinguished services to the Goy- 
ernment of the United States, and shall we, as a mere gratuity to him, 
if he would accept it, which he would not, take the people’s money and 
give him or any other man that money which does not belong to us? 
It seems to me that no principle has ever been advocated in the Senate 
of the United States so destructive of our theory and our character of 
government as the one that has just been announced by the Senator from 
Kentucky. 
Mr. President, before this amendment is adopted I want a yea-and- 
nay vote on it. If we can not get it to-night without stopping the 
business of the Senate, I want the question in such shape that I can 
reserve the amendment when the bill comes into the Senate, because I 
can not consent that this amendment shall be placed in this bill unless 
the yeas and nays have been had on it, either now or at some later 
stage after the bill is reported to the Senate. 
Mr. Buackpurn. Mr. President, when I used the word ‘‘ gratuity ” 
it may have been hastily employed, but I will reiterate it and couple 
with it the explanation suggested by the honorable Senator from 
Massachusetts, which is the only explanation of what was in my mind 
at the time I employed it, and that was to express the gratitude this 
country felt toward the man whose heirs at law, whose children are 
sought to be provided for here. 
I have tried to state the case fairly and I have admitted that there 
is no law for this appropriation; that it is a matter that addresses 
itself to the conscience of the American Congress, and I cited a prece- 
dent which happened to lean my way. This happened to lean the 
other way politically, and I am sure in dealing with questions like this 
the American Senate will not allow politics to intervene. 
I admit, Mr. President, that there is no statute upon the books 
which warrants us in making this appropriation, but at the same time 
linsist that it is but proper and right that we should do it in this 
modest form—I mean as to the amount—when we come to consider 
the precedents. 
The Senator from Arkansas is no more a strict constructionist of the 
Federal Constitution or the organic law of the land than I am. I 
admit that the Senator does not need to remind me that it is a danger- 
ous precedent, but I seek to remind him that the precedent has been 
already established more than once, more than a hundred times, more 
than a thousand times. 
Suppose that the Senator from Arkansas should die to-night, which 
I sincerely trust and pray that God will not permit either now or for 
many years hereafter, an appropriation bill would come in here carry- 
ing in it a provision giving to his worthy wife and lovely children the 
