Clarksville weekly chronicle. (Clarksville, Tenn.) 1873-1890, 1879-04-19
THE CONsrnrUFIONAL CUES
THDN.

portion of the speech of Mr.. Black
burn on the army appropriation
hill. We do so because we deem it
decidedly the best speech that has
vet been made in the Forty-sixth
Congress, and we earnestly conn
mend it to the study Of our readers
as a complete REPUTATION of the
much overrated speech Of Mr.. Gar
field on the same measure.
Mr.. Garield's position was that
the lacking to this appropriation
bill the repeal of the law which
enables the Executive to use the
army for the purpose of keeping the
peace at elections is revolutionary
and an unwarrantable attack on the
Government. Mr.. Blackburn so
completely dispOses of this sOphism
that, if an answer to il were all that
was desired, we should not need to
add a word. But Mr.. Blackburn's
argument was necessarily polemt-
cal; he had not the choice Of his
own method of treating the ques-
ton, but was obliged to follow the
sophistry Of his antagonist through
all its tortuous windings, and so
give that antagonist the choice of
ground for his rhetorical contest.
Such a position is not favorable to
the philosophical analysis of an i'm
pOrtant principle in constitutional
Jurisprudence, and we propose now
to do what it would have been
foreign to our orators purpose to
attempt. Had it not been so we
doubt not he would have done it
well, but as he has not done 1T we
will try our hands upon it.
Students of English history need
not be informed that even in the
days of the most despOtic Plantag-
enets money bills were associated
with grievances and remOnstrances
in a way that compelled those prin-
ees to consider their peoples wishes
as well as to take their money; that
though the reigns of the Tudors
were in many ways a reaction
against the popular privileges con-
ceded in former days, yet Elizabeth
retreated like baffied lioness from
her claim to monopOlies ON the
same ground that the troubled
reigns of the Stuarts were taken up
with a struggle OH the part of Parli-
ament to maintain ITS grasp on the
public purse and on the part of
the Kings to carry ON Government
at the expense of the people without
the consent of the peoples repre-
sentatives; that Charles /. lost his
head and James II. his crown in
this attempt; that the popularity of
William of Orange was unable to
elicit from his Parliaments the
standing army he desired for the
maintenance of his continental pol
icy or even the pay of soldiers
whom he might raise outside of
England, because the consent Of
Parliament was necessary before
supplies could be raised for the pur-
pose.
The reign of William III. is in
deed well worth studying in the
works of Hallam and Macaulay in
comparison with the administration
of Mr.. Hayes, not certainly through
any similarity in the character of
the two men, but through the
identity of the constitutional ques-
tions which were under dispute at
the time. To carry out this parallel
is "a temptation which we must
resist, as it would far transcend our
available space and time; we can
only express briefly the constitu-
tIonaI changes which were effected
first at the accession and then at the
death of the great Prince of Orange.
At the commencement of his
reign he signed (as a condition OF
his receiving the crown at alD the
bill of rights, by which, among
other things, it was provided by
positive enactment that no tax was
TO be imposed on the people OF
England except by bill originating
in the House Of Commons that all
money raised by Parliament for
public purposes should be Gppr0pyi-
Oted and not diverted from the
assigned purpose under severe pen
aIties, and that no standing army
should be maintained in time OF
peace without the consent of Parli-
ament. And Immediately after the
death of William the provision came
I'm force without enactment that a
Cabinet which could not obtain the
support of Parliament for its meas
ures should not remain in office, but
should resign and make room for
one in accord with Parliament.
The wretched chickering's with Par
lament which embittered the latter
days of Williams reign all arose
from the failure of that Prince to
see that the enactments above spec
flied necessarily implied such a pro-
VisiOn-the enactments, that is, to-
gether with the powers necessary
for their enforcement,
The second of these enaetments
(that relating to appropriations had
been anticipated by a similar law
made in the time of Charles IL, but
1t had been easily defeated by the
art of the Sovereign, who, when
complaints were made that funds
had been diverted from their apprO-
priated purposes, shelved the matter
by appointing a royal commission
TO inquire into the alleged abuses,
appointing his own favorites on the
commission, which was of course
never heard of again.
Parliament now guarded against
a similar device by providing for
parliamentary instead of royal COM