1610 CONGRESSIONAL PROCEEDINGS. 
of them would rather give the animals away than expend another dollar 
in maintaining them. 
Mr. Horan. I think that is probably true. The provision which 
the gentleman now moves to strike out is somewhat different from the 
one on which the committee voted a while ago. That had relation to 
the improvement of the grounds, but the paragraph which the gentle- 
man now proposes to strike out goes to the heart of this matter, 
because it is the appropriation for buildings, etc., required for the 
actual administration of the park. The question of striking out this 
paragraph stands, therefore, upon an entirely different footing from 
the question in the other case. This and the succeeding paragraph are 
the ones that are of vital consequence to this Zoological Garden. Con- 
gress ought never to have established this garden. The Federal Gov- 
ernment ought not to undertake such enterprises. The State govern- 
ments do not do it. Parks of this kind are always designed for the © 
embellishment of cities, and the Federal Government ought to have 
shrunk from entering upon a kind of expenditure of the public money 
which every State has virtualky condemned by refraining from it. 
Great cities establish these parks. 
The city of Washington at her own expense might well have afforded 
to establish a park of this kind, but it is a matter with which the 
Federal Government has nothing to do, and which it ought not have 
entered into. I ask for a vote. 
Mr. C. T. Boatner. One question before the gentleman takes his seat. 
Does he think we are justified in refusing to make an appropriation to 
execute a law, a valid law of the United States? 
Mr. Hotman. Hardly, until it is repealed. 
Mr. Boatner. I thought the gentleman must concede that. 
A Memper. Is not this one way to repeal the law? 
Mr. H. C. SNoperass. Mr. Chairman, | do not propose to speak more 
than a moment on this question. As I understand the Constitution of 
our country, Congress has no right to appropriate the money of the 
people for a purpose of this kind. I voted for the motion of the gen- 
tleman from Texas | Mr. Bailey] to strike out the preceding clause, and 
I shall vote to strike out this, because I believe it is fundamentally 
wrong. I do not believe the American people, hundreds and thou- 
sands of whom are to-day without homes, ought to be taxed to afford 
shelter and erect homes for snakes, raccoons, opossums, bears, and all 
the creeping and slimy things of the earth. Mr. Chairman, we would 
have no right under the Constitution to tax the whole people to build 
even a home for the homeless or the thousands of shelterless human 
beings of this country; and I want to know with what propriety this 
House can claim the right to lay the heavy hand of taxation upon the 
whole people for the purpose of affording shelter for bears, raccoons, 
snakes, and all the nasty things that can be gathered together for the 
edification of the élite of the District of Columbia. 
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