POWER OF CONGRESS TO PROVIDE AGAINST CHOLERA FROM ABROAD.
Speeches in the Senate, on a Joint Resolution to prevent the Introduction of Cholera into the Ports of the United States, May 9, 11, and 15, 1866.
May 9th, the Senate having under consideration a joint resolution, which had passed the House of Representatives, to prevent the introduction of cholera into the ports of the United States, Mr. Sumner said:—
MR. PRESIDENT,—I must say, that, reflecting upon this question, I find that I travelled with my friend from Maine [Mr. Morrill] through his inquiries and his doubts, but it was only to arrive substantially at the conclusion of my friend from Vermont [Mr. Edmunds]. I thought that the criticism of my friend from Maine was in many respects, at least on its face, just. I went along with him, and yet I hesitated in adopting the conclusion he seemed to intimate. I doubt, if we proceed under the House resolution, whether we shall do the work thoroughly. I doubt whether that resolution can be made sufficiently effective. Indeed, I may go further, and say I am satisfied that it will not be efficient for the occasion. We then have the substitute proposed by our own Committee. Against that there is certainly the remark to be made, that it is novel. I am not aware that any such proposition has ever before been brought forward; but certainly it has in its favor the great argument of efficiency. Yet the question remains behind, to which the Senator from Maine has directed attention,—whether this proposition is not something more than even a novelty,—whether it is not a departure from just principles. I am not inclined to say that it is anything more than a novelty. I admit that it is such. It does invest the Government with large and perhaps unprecedented powers, in order to meet a peculiar case, where a stringent remedy must be applied.
But, as the Chairman of the Committee on Commerce suggests, the powers are temporary. I am not ready to say that such powers cannot be intrusted to the Government. I believe they can be. But while I agree in that, and am ready to vote accordingly, yet I should like to know from the Chairman why these powers are to be placed under the direction of the Secretary of War rather than of the Secretary of the Treasury.
Mr. Chandler, of Michigan, the Chairman, said that they were placed jointly in three Secretaries, the Secretary of War, the Secretary of the Navy, and the Secretary of the Treasury. After briefly considering this organization, Mr. Sumner proceeded further.