CHAPTER IX.

CONGRESSIONAL LEGISLATION.

We owe to the Continental Congress the successful management of the Revolutionary War. When it passed into the Congress of the Confederation, it was called upon to deal with questions of a different and more perplexing character relating to the public domain, to taxation and revenue, to the public credit, and to foreign and inter-state relations. In other words to questions of both a national and inter-national character. The discovery of the inherent weakness of the Confederation under its written articles; the looseness of texture of the League of States which it represented; and the impossibility of building a National Government upon it, with powers of sovereignty commensurate to the necessities of a Federal supremacy, gave early warning of its incapacity to surmount the perils which were daily increasing about it. The Legislative department, which is ordinarily in every representative government the strongest power in the State, was here the weakest.

Under the Confederation, Congress was only a name, and could only recommend. It had no power to coerce, because it had no power to command, or authority to compel obedience. A year had hardly elapsed since the treaty of peace with the mother country, when it was compelled to declare its inability to maintain the public credit, to enforce obedience to its commands or to carry out its treaty-making power. "The radical infirmity of the articles of Confederation," says Mr.

Madison in the introduction to his Record of Debates in the Constitutional Convention, "was the dependence of Congress on the voluntary and simultaneous compliance with its requisitions by so many independent communities, each consulting more or less its particular interest and convenience, and distrusting the compliance of the others."

Without entering into historical details which are accessible to all, or burthening our pages with illustrations of the many occasions on which appeared the glaring impotence of a nation without a National Government, it will suffice to say that this manifest incompetency of a Confederation without a controlling legislative body, became the standing complaint of the day. All public measures encountered its paralyzing influences; all industries suffered, and the public credit after being strained to the utmost, and floated upon every form of irredeemable currency in the various States, finally sunk to so low an ebb as to threaten universal bankruptcy.

It is necessary to retrace these facts, if only in skeleton outline, in order the better to understand why the framers of the Constitution, who had felt the inconveniences of living under the Confederation, and some of whom had been members of both Revolutionary Congresses, were moved to give in that instrument, to our present Federal Legislature, powers unknown to any of its predecessors. They were men of experience in public affairs, whose statesmanship embraced the broadest conceptions of republican government, as based upon the sovereignty of the people. They drew their inspiration and their knowledge from both ancient and modern sources; and while as Englishmen they found in Parliament a convenient model, and in the British Constitution an underlying guide, they avoided everything in each which

clashed with the principles of personal liberty and equality in the citizen. Hence they eliminated the judicial element from the structure of Congress; they excluded every idea of estate or caste from either branch; they placed restraints upon its powers by amendments in the nature of a Bill of Rights, and at the same time they bestowed upon it all the necessary powers, and all the included means, for carrying out the least as well as the greatest purposes of a Federal Assembly.

In the broad field of legislation represented by the States of the American Union, Congress, as the Federal Legislature, takes precedence of all. The Constitution. having prescribed that it shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives-how its members shall be elected and of what qualifications they must be possessed; how representatives and taxes shall be apportioned among the States; that a Speaker shall be chosen by the House of Representatives; that the Senate shall consist of two Senators from each State to serve for six years, and each Senator having but one vote; also of what qualifications a Senator must be possessed; that the Vice President of the United States shall be its presiding officer and have only a casting vote; that it shall have the sole power to try all impeachments; and how such trial before it shall be conducted, and what the effect of its judgments shall be in such cases-the Constitution having thus mapped out the method of organization of a National Legislature, no special comments are called for, upon this preparatory stage of legislation.

All necessary powers for this purpose being thus vested in Congress, and its Acts, when made in pursuance of the Constitution being declared to be the supreme law of the land, the points of importance to the exercise of its legislative functions are—

1st. That it shall assemble at least once in every year.

2d. That each House shall be the judge of the qualifications of its own members, and that a majority of each House when present shall constitute a quorum.

3d. That each House shall keep a Journal, and may establish rules for the government of its own proceedings.

4th. That neither House during the session of Congress, shall, without the consent of the other, adjourn for more than three days.

5th. That all Bills for raising revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives, but the Senate may propose, or concur with amendments as on other Bills.1 That every Bill which shall have passed the House of Representatives and the Senate, shall, before it becomes a law, be presented to the President of the United States. If he approve he shall sign it, but if not, he shall return it with his objections to that House in which it shall have originated, who shall enter the objections at large on their Journal and proceed to reconsider it. If, after such reconsideration two-thirds of that House shall agree to pass the Bill, it shall be sent, together with the objections, to the other House, by which it shall likewise be reconsidered, and if approved by two-thirds of that House, it shall become a law. But in all such cases the votes of both Houses shall be determined by Yeas and Nays, and the names of the persons voting for, and against the Bill shall be entered on the Journal of each House respectively. If any Bill shall not be returned by the President within ten days (Sunday excepted) after it shall have been presented to him, the

1 As to the right of the Senate to originate an Appropriation Bill, see Report 147 House of Reps., 46th Cong., 3d Sess., vol. 1; also opinions of Justices of S. J. Court, 126 Mass. supplement.

same shall be a law in like manner as if he had signed it, unless the Congress by their adjournment prevent its return, in which case it shall not be a law.

"Every order, resolution, or vote to which the concurrence of the Senate and House of Representatives may be necessary (except on a question of adjournment) shall be presented to the President of the United States and before the same shall take effect shall be approved by him; or being disapproved by him, shall be re-passed by two-thirds of the Senate and House of Representatives, according to the rules and limitations prescribed in the case of a Bill." (Art. 1, Sect. 4. 2.; Sect. 5, 1.

2. 3. 4.; Sect. 7, 1.)

Such is the constitutional outline of the general powers and duties of Congress as a basis for legislative procedure. They have been found large enough to embrace all the contingencies of a century of practice, without even the suggestion of a needed amendment. And the rules for the government of both Houses supply the legal machinery required for the orderly transaction of their daily business. Congressional legislation, when examined in its detailed application to the wants of the nation, will be found to exhibit three phases of jurisdictional power, viz:—

1st. Original, or primary and direct.

2d. Concurrent or divided with the States. 3d. Suppletory, or corrective.

ORIGINAL OR PRIMARY POWERS OF CONGRESS.

"To lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts, and excises; to pay the debts and provide for the common defence and general welfare of the United States. But all duties, imposts, and excises shall be uniform throughout the United States."