Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2

by George Frisbie Hoar

In 1878 the Democrats had a majority in the House of Representatives, while the Republicans had the Presidency and the Senate. In March, 1879, there was a Democratic majority in the Senate and in the House, but a Republican President. The Democratic Party chafed exceedingly under the National laws for securing the purity of elections and for securing impartial juries in the courts of the United States. In the December session of 1878, the House inserted a provision repealing these laws. They insisted, in conference, on keeping in this provision, and refused to consent to the passage of the Executive, Legislative and Judicial Appropriation Bill, unless the Senate and the President would yield to their demand. Mr. Beck of Kentucky, one of the conferrees on the part of the Senate, representing what was then the Democratic minority, but what became at the March session the majority, stated the doctrine of the House, as announced by their conferrees—adding that he agreed with it—that unless the States should be allowed to conduct their own elections in their own way, free from all Federal interference, they would refuse under their Constitutional right to make appropriations to carry on the Government.

This was in defiance of the express provision of the Constitution that Congress might at any time alter the regulations prescribed by the State Legislatures as to time, place and manner of holding elections for Senators and Representatives.

Mr. Beck declared that that course would be adopted and adhered to, no matter what came of the Appropriation Bills. He was followed by Mr. Thurman of Ohio, the leader of his party in the Senate, and Chairman of the Judiciary when it came into power. He said it was a question upon which he had thought long and deeply, one of the gravest which ever arose for the consideration of the American Congress, and added:

"We claim the right, which the House of Commons in England established after two centuries of contest, to say that we will not grant the money of the people unless there is a redress of grievances . . . . England was saved from despotism and an absolute monarchy by the exercise of the power of the House of Commons to refuse supplies except upon conditions that grievances should be redressed . . . . It is a mistake to suppose that it was a fight simply between the Throne and the Commons; it was equally a fight between the Lords and the Commons; and the result of two centuries of contest in England was the rule that the House of Lords had no right to amend a Money Bill."

This startling proposition claimed that it was in the power of the House of Representatives to control the entire legislation of the country. It could, if the doctrine of Mr. Beck and Mr. Thurman had prevailed, impose any condition upon an appropriation for the Judges' salaries, for the salaries of all executive officers, for carrying on the courts, and for all other functions of the Government.

I made a careful study of this question and satisfied the Senate,—and I think I satisfied Mr. Beck and Mr. Thurman, —that the doctrine had no support in this country, and had no support even in England. An examination of Parliamentary history, which I studied carefully, afforded the material for giving a narrative of every occasion when the Commons exerted their power of withholding supplies as a means of compelling a redress of grievances, from the Conquest to the present hour. I did not undertake in a speech in the Senate to recite the authorities in full. But I summed up the result of the English and American doctrine in a few sentences, which may be worth recording here.

"First. The Commons never withheld the supplies as a means of coercing the assent of the Crown or the Lords to legislation.

"Second. The supplies withheld were not the supplies needed for the ordinary functions of government, to which the ordinary revenues of the Crown were sufficient, but were for extraordinary occasions, as to pay the King's debts, or to conduct foreign wars.

"Third. That when the hereditary revenues of the Crown, or those settled on the King for life at the beginning of his reign, ceased to be sufficient for the maintenance of government and for public defence, the practice of withholding supplies ceased.

"Fourth. There has been no instance since the Revolution of 1688 of attaching general legislation to a bill for raising or appropriating money, and scarcely, if ever, such an instance before that date. When such an attempt has been made it has been resisted, denounced and abandoned, and the English Constitutional authorities, without exception, are agreed that such a proceeding is unwarrantable, revolutionary and destructive of the English Constitution.