and eleven arsenals protected. There are sixty troops to every million of people. In the South I have the entire number in each State, and will give it. And the entire South has eleven hundred and fifty-five soldiers to intimidate, overrun, oppress and destroy the liberties of fifteen million people! In the Southern States there are twelve hundred and three counties. If you distribute the soldiers there is not quite one for each county; and when I give the counties I give them from the census of 1870. If you distribute them territorially there is one for every seven hundred square miles of territory, so that if you make a territorial distribution, I would remind the honorable Senator from Delaware, if I saw him in his seat, that the quota for his State would be three-"one ragged sergeant and two abreast," as the old song has it. [Laughter. That is the force ready to destroy the liberties of Delaware! Mr. President, it was said, as the old maxim has it, that the soothsayers of Rome could not look each other in the face without smiling. There are not two democratic Senators on this floor who can go into the cloak-room and look each other in the face without smiling at this talk, or, more appropriately, I should say without blushing-the whole thing is such a prodigious and absolute farce, such a miserably manufactured false issue, such a pretense without the slightest foundation in the world, and talked about most and denounced the loudest in States that have not and have not had a single Federal soldier. In New England we have three hundred and eighty soldiers. Throughout the South it does not run quite seventy to the million people. In New England we have absolutely one hundred and twenty soldiers to the million. New England is far more overrun to-day by the Federal soldier, immensely more, than the whole South is. I never heard anybody complain about it in New England, or express any great fear of his liberties being endangered by the presence of a handful of troops. As I have said, the tendency of this talk is to give us a bal name in Europe. Republican institutions are looked upon there with jealousy. Every misrepresentation, every slander is taken up and exaggerated and talked about to our discredit, and the democratic party of the country to-day stand indicted, and I here indict them, for public slander of their country, creating the impression in the civilized world that we are governed by a ruthless military despotism. I wonder how amazing it would be to any man in Europe, familiar as Europeans are with great armies, if he were told that over a territory larger than France and Spain and Portugal and Great Britain and Holland and Belgium and the German Empire all combined, there were but eleven hundred and fifty-five soldiers ! That is all this democratic howl, this mad cry, this false issue, this absurd talk is based on-the presence of eleven hundred and fifty-five soldiers on eight hundred and fifty thousand square miles of territory, not double the number of the democratic police in the city of Baltimore, not a third of the police in the city of New York, not double the democratic police in the city of New Orleans. I repeat, the number indicts them; it stamps the whole cry as without any foundation; it derides the issue as a false and scandalous and partisan makeshift. What then is the real motive underlying this movement? Senators on that side, democratic orators on the stump cannot make any sensible set of men at the crossroads believe that they are afraid of eleven hundred and fifty-five soldiers distributed one to each county in the South. The minute you state that, everybody sees the utter, palpable and laughable absurdity of it, and therefore we must go further and find a motive for all this cry. We want to find out, to use a familiar and vulgar phrase, what is "the cat under the meal." It is not the troops. That is evident. There are more troops by fifty per cent. scattered through the Northern States east of the Mississippi to day than through the Southern States east of the Mississippi, and yet nobody in the North speaks of it; everybody would be laughed at for speaking of it; and therefore the issue, I take no risk in stating, I make bold to declare, that this issue on the troops, being a false one, being one without foundation, conceals the true issue, which is simply to get rid of the Federal presence at Federal elections, to get rid of the civil power of the United States in the election of Representatives to the Congress of the United States. That is the whole of it; and disguise it as you may there is nothing else in it or of it. You simply want to get rid of the supervision by the Federal Government of the election of Representatives to Congress through civil means; and therefore this bill connects itself directly with another bill, and you cannot discuss this military bill without discussing a bill which we had before us last winter, known as the legislative, executive, and judicial appropriation bill. I am quite well aware, I profess to be as well aware as any one, that it is not permissible for me to discuss a bill that is pending before the other House. I am quite well aware that propriety and parliamentary rule forbid that I should speak of what is done in the House of Representatives; but I know very well that I am not forbidden to speak of that rying the thing a little further than I have ever known. We do not merely propose to starve the Executive if he will not sign the bill, but we propose to starve the judiciary that has had nothing whatever to do with avowed on this floor; that has been boldly avowed in the other House; that has been boldly avowed in democratic papers throughout the country. which is not done in the House of Representatives. I am quite free to speak of the things that are not done there, and therefore I am free to declare that neither this military bill nor the legislative, executive, and judicial appropriation bill ever the question. That has been boldly emanated from any committee of the House of Representatives at all; they are not the work of any committee of the House of Representatives, and, although the present House of Representatives is almost evenly balanced in party division, no solitary suggestion has been allowed to come from the minority of that House in regard to the shaping of these bills. Where do they come from? We are not left to infer; we are not even left to the Yankee privilege of guessing, because we know. The Senator from Kentucky [MR. BECK] obligingly told us-I have his exact words here "that the honorable Senator from Ohio [MR. THURMAN] was the chairman of a committee appointed by the democratic party to see how it was best to present all these questions before us." We are told, too, rather a novel thing, that if we do not take these laws, we are not to have the appropriations. I believe it has been announced in both branches of Congress, I suppose on the authority of the democratic caucus, that if we do not take these bills as they are planned, we shall not have any of the appropriations that go with them. The honorable Senator from West Virginia [Mr. HEREFORD] told it to us on Friday; the honorable Senator from Ohio [Mr. THURMAN] told it to us last session; the honorable Senator from Kentucky [Mr. BECK] told it to us at the same time, and I am not permitted to speak of the legions who told us so in the other House. They say all these appropriations are to be refused-not merely the Army appropriation, for they do not stop at that. Look for a moment at the legislative bill that came from the democratic caucus. Here is an appropriation in it for defraying the expenses of the Supreme Court and the circuit and district courts of the United States, including the District of Columbia, &c., "$2,800,000: “Provided "--provided what? That the following sections of the Revised Statutes relating to elections-going on to recite them-be repealed. That is, you will pass an appropriation for the support of the judiciary of the United States only on condition of this repeal. We often speak of this government being divided between three great departments, the executive, the legislative, and the judicial-co-ordinate, independent, equal. The legislative, under the control of a democratic cau us, now steps forward and says, "We offer to the Executive this bill, and if he does not sign it, we are going to starve the judiciary." That is car And you propose not merely to starve the judiciary but you propose that you will not appropriate a solitary dollar to take care of this Capitol. The men who take care of this great amount of public property are provided for in that bill. You say they shall not have any pay if the President will not agree to change the election laws. There is the public printing that goes on for the enlightenment of the whole country and for printing the_public documents of every one of the Departments. You say they shall not have a dollar for public printing unless the President agrees to repeal these laws. There is the Congressional Library that has become the pride of the whole American people for its magnificent growth and extent. You say it shall not have one dollar to take care of it, much less add a new book, unless the President signs these bills. There is the Department of State that we think throughout the history of the Government has been a great pride to this country for the ability with which it has conducted our foreign affairs; it is also to be starved. You say we shall not have any intercourse with foreign nations, not a dollar shall be appropriated therefor unless the President signs these bills. There is the Light-House Board that provides for the beacons and the warnings on seventeen thousand miles of sea and gulf and lake coast. You say those lights shall all go out and not a dollar shall be appropriated for the board if the President does not sign these bills. There are the mints of the United States at Philadelphia, New Orleans, Denver, San Francisco, coining silver and coining gold-not a dollar shall be appropriated for them if the President does not sign these bills. There is the Patent Office, the patents issued which embody the invention of the country-not a dollar for them. The Pension Bureau shall cease its operations unless these bills are signed and patriotic_soldiers may starve. Agricultural Bureau, the Post Office Department, every one of the great executive functions of the Government is threatened, taken by the throat, highwayman-style, collared on the highway, commanded to stand and deliver in the name of the democratic congressional caucus. That is what it is; simply that. No committee of this Congress in either branch has ever recom The mended that legislation-not one. Simply a democratic caucus has done it. first time in eighteen years, and they do not intend to stop until they have wiped Of course this is new. We are learning out every vestige of every war measure. something every day. I think you may Well, "forewarned is forearmed," and you search the records of the Federal Govern- begin appropriately on a measure that has ment in vain; it will take some one much the signature of Abraham Lincoln. I more industrious in that search than I think the picture is a striking one when have ever been, and much more observant you hear these words from a man who was than I have ever been, to find any possible then in arms against the Government of parallel or any possible suggestion in our the United States, doing his best to destroy past history of any such thing. Most of it, exerting every power given him in a the Senators who sit in this Chamber can bloody and terrible rebellion against the remember some vetoes by Presidents that authority of the United States and when shook this country to its centre with ex- Abraham Lincoln was marching at the citement. The veto of the national-bank same time to his martyrdom in its defense! bill by Jackson in 1832, remembered by Strange times have fallen upon us that the oldest in this Chamber; the veto of the those of us who had the great honor to be national-bank bill in 1841 by Tyler, re- associated in higher or lower degree with membered by those not the oldest, shook Mr. Lincoln in the administration of the this country with a political excitement Government should live to hear men in which up to that time had scarcely a paral- public life and on the floors of Congress, lel; and it was believed, whether rightfully fresh from the battle-fields of the rebellion, or wrongfully is no matter, it was believed threatening the people of the United States by those who advocated those financial that the democratic party, in power for measures at the time, that they were of the first time in eighteen years, proposes the very last importance to the well-being not to stay its hand until every vestige of and prosperity of the people of the Union. the war measures has been wiped out! That was believed by the great and shin- the late vice-president of the confederacy ing lights of that day. It was believed by boasted-perhaps I had better say stated that man of imperial character and im--that for sixty out of the seventy-two perious will, the great Senator from Ken-years preceding the outbreak of the retucky. It was believed by Mr. Webster, the greatest of New England Senators. When Jackson vetoed the one or Tyler vetoed the other, did you ever hear a suggestion that those bank charters should be put on appropriation bills or that there should not be a dollar to run the Government until they were signed? So far from it that, in 1841, when temper was at its height; when the whig party, in addition to losing their great measure, lost it under the sting and the irritation of what they believed was a desertion by the President whom they had chosen; and when Mr. Clay, goaded by all these considerations, rose to debate the question in the Senate, he repelled the suggestion of William C.jority, two-thirds in the House, and out of Rives, of Virginia, who attempted to make upon him the point that he had indulged in some threat involving the independence of the Executive. Mr. Clay rose to his full height and thus responded: "I said nothing whatever of any obligation on the part of the President to conform his judgment to the opinions of the Senate and the House of Representatives, although the Senator argued as if I had, and persevered in so arguing after repeated correction. I said no such thing. I know and I respect the perfect independence of each department, acting within its proper sphere, of the other departments." A leading democrat, an eloquent man, a man who has courage and frankness and many good qualities, has boasted publicly that the democracy are in power for the bellion, from the foundation of the Government, the South, though in a minority, had by combining with what he termed the anti-centralists in the North ruled the country; and in 1866 the same gentleman indicated in a speech, I think before the Legislature of Georgia, that by a return to Congress the South might repeat the experiment with the same successful result. I read that speech at the time; but I little thought I should live to see so near a fulfillment of its prediction. I see here today two great measures emanating, as I have said, not from a committee of either House, but from a democratic caucus in which the South has an overwhelming ma forty-two Senators on the other side of this Chamber professing the democratic faith thirty are from the South-twentythree, a positive and pronounced majority, having themselves been participants in the war against the Union either in military or civil station. So that as a matter of fact, plainly deducible from counting your fingers, the legislation of this country today, shaped and fashioned in a democratic caucus where the confederates of the South hold the majority, is the realization of Mr. STEPHENS' prophecy. And very appropriately the House under that control and the Senate under that control, embodying thus the entire legislative powers of the Government, deriving its political strength from the South, elected from the South, say to the President of the United States, at the head of the Executive Department of the Government, elected as he was from the North-elected by the whole people, but elected as a Northern man; elected on Republican principles, elected in opposition to the party that controls both branches of Congress to-day-they naturally say, "You shall not exercise your constitutional power to veto a bill." speak a word unbefitting the dignity of the office of a Senator of the United States. But as there has been speculation here and there on both sides as to what he would do, it seems to me that the dead heroes of the Union would rise from their graves if he should consent to be intimidated and outraged in his proper constitutional powers by threats like these. Some gentleman may rise and say, “Do All the war measures of Abraham Linyou call it revolution to put an amendment coln are to be wiped out, say leading demoon an appropriation bill?" Of course not. crats! The Bourbons of France busied There have been a great many amendments themselves, I believe, after the restoration, put on appropriation bills, some mischie-in removing every trace of Napoleon's vous and some harmless; but I call it the power and grandeur, even chiseling the audacity of revolution for any Senator or "N" from public monuments raised to Representative, or any caucus of Senators perpetuate his glory; but the dead man's or Representatives, to get together and say, hand from Saint Helena reached out and "We will have this legislation or we will destroyed them in their pride and in their stop the great departments of the Govern- folly. And I tell the Senators on the other ment." That is revolutionary. I do not side of this Chamber,-I tell the demothink it will amount to revolution; my cratic party North and South-South in opinion is it will not. I think that is a the lead and North following,-that, the revolution that will not go around; I think slow, unmoving finger of scorn, from the that is a revolution which will not revolve; tomb of the martyred President on the I think that is a revolution whose wheel prairies of Illinois, will wither and destroy will not turn; but it is a revolution if per- them. Though dead he speaketh. [Great sisted in, and if not persisted in, it must be applause in the galleries.] backed out from with ignominy. The democratic party in Congress have put themselves exactly in this position to-day, that if they go forward in the announced programme, they march to revolution. I think they will, in the end, go back in an ignominious retreat. That is my judg ment. out. The extent to which they control the legislation of the country is worth pointing In round numbers, the Southern people are about one-third of the population of the Union. I am not permitted to speak of the organization of the House of Representatives, but I can refer to that of the last House. In the last House of Representatives, of the forty-two standing committees the South had twenty-five. am not blaming the honorable Speaker for it. He was hedged in by partisan forces, and could not avoid it. In this very Senate, out of thirty-four standing committees the South has twenty-two. I am not calling these things up just now in reproach; I am only showing what an admirable prophet the late vice-president of the Southern Confederacy was, and how entirely true all his words have been, and how he has lived to see them realized. I do not profess to know, Mr. President, least of all Senators on this floor, certainly as little as any Senator on this floor, do I profess to know, what the President of the United States will do when these bills are presented to him, as I suppose in due course of time they will be. I certainly should never speak a solitary word of disrespect of the gentleman holding that exalted position, and I hope I should not The presiding officer, (Mr. ANTHONY in the chair.) The Sergeant-at-Arms will preserve order in the galleries and arrest persons manifesting approbation or disapprobation. Mr. BLAINE. When you present these bills with these threats to the living President, who bore the commission of Abraham Lincoln and served with honor in the Army of the Union, which Lincoln restored and preserved, I can think only of one appropriate response from his lips or his pen. He should say to you with all the scorn befitting his station: Is thy servant a dog that he should do this thing? States. I will read their names: Alabama, | dismissed twelve or fourteen million of Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, annual tax on tobacco. Mississippi, North Carolina, South Caro- This vast revenue is raised and to be lina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia. These elev-raised for three uses. It is supplied in en States paid $13,627,192.89. Of this sum time of severe depression and distress, to more than six million and a half came pay debt inflicted by rebellion; to pay penfrom the tobacco of Virginia. Deducting sions to widows, orphans, and cripples the amount of the tobacco-tax in Virginia, made by rebellion; and to maintain the the eleven States enumerated paid $7,125,- Government and enforce the laws pre462,60 of the revenues and supplies of the served at inestimable cost of life and Republic. treasure. Mr. HILL, of Georgia. Will the Senater from New York allow me to ask him a question? Mr. CONKLING. If the Senator thinks that two of us are needed to make a statement of figures I will. Mr. HILL, of Georgia. Two no doubt can make it better. The PRESIDING OFFICER. Does the Senator from New York yield to the Senator from Georgia? Mr. CONKLING. After the expressed opinion of the Senator from Georgia that the statement needs his aid, I cannot decline. Mr. HILL, of Georgia. I will not interrupt the Senator if it is disagreeable to him, I assure him. I ask if in the computation he has made of the amount paid he does not ascribe to the States that adhered to the Union, to use his language, all Mr. CONKLING. Having heard the Senator so far, I must ask him to desist. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New York declines to yield further. Mr. CONKLING. I have stated certain figures as they appear in the published official accounts: the Senator seems about to challenge the process or system by which the accounts are made up. I cannot give way for this, and must beg him to allow me to proceed with observations which I fear to prolong lest they become too wearisome to the Senate. It can be devoted to its uses in only one mode. Once in the Treasury, it must remain there useless until appropriated by act of Congress. The Constitution so ordains. To collect it, and then defeat or prevent its object or use, would be recreant and abominable oppression. The Constitution leaves no discretion to Congress whether needful appropriations shall be made. Discretion to ascertain and determine amounts needful, is committed to Congress, but the appropriation of whatever is needful after the amount has been ascertained, is commanded positively and absolutely. When, for example, the Constitution declares that the President and the judges at stated periods shall receive compensation fixed by law, the duty to make the appropriations is plain and peremptory; to refuse to make them, is disobedience of the Constitution, and treasonable. So, when it is declared that Congress shall have power to provide money to pay debts, and for the common defense and the general welfare, the plain meaning is that Congress shall do these things, and a refusal to do them is revolutionary, and subversive of the Constitution. A refusal less flagrant would be impeachable in the case of every officer and department of the Government within the reach of impeachment. Were the President to refuse to do any act enjoined on him by the Constitution, he would be impeachable, and ought to be convicted and removed from office as a convict. Should the judges, one, or some, or all of them, refuse to perform any duty which the Constitution commits to the judicial branch, the refusal would be plainly impeachable. The laws exacting these few millions from eleven States, and these hundreds of millions from twenty-seven States, originated, as the Constitution requires all bills for raising revenue to originate, in the House of Representatives. They are not recent laws. They have been approved Congress is not amenable to impeachand affirmed by succeeding Congresses. The ment. Congressional majorities are trilast House of Representatives and its pre-able at the bar of public opinion, and in decessor approved them, and both these Houses were ruled by a democratic Speaker, by democratic committees, and by democratic majority. Both Senate and House are democratic now, and we hear of no purpose to repeal or suspend existing revenue laws. They are to remain in full force. They will continue to operate and to take tribute of the people. If the sum they exact this year and next year, shall be less than last year, it will be only or chiefly because recent legislation favoring southern and tobacco-growing regions has no other human forum. Could Congress be dissolved instantly here as in England, could Senators and Representatives be driven instantly from their seats by popular disapproval, were they amenable presently somewhere, there would be more of bravery, if not less of guilt, in a disregard of sworn obligation. Legislators are bound chiefly by their honor and their oaths; and the very impunity and exemption they enjoy exalts and measures their obligations, and the crime and odium of violating them. Because of the fixed tenure by |