Sacramento daily record-union., 1890-03-14
SPEAKER REEDS DEFENSE.

SPEAKER REEDS DEFENSE.
Speaker Reed, in the North american
Reriew, makes a vigorous and entirely clear
and unanswerable defense Of his course on
the question of quorum, which the De-
mocracy so Intellectually attempted to mag
nifty into usurpation of the liberties of
the people. The Speaker shows that
6libustering in the House of Congress had
become a national shame; that it had
come to mean not the discharge of public
business, but the hindering of debate, voting
and the consideration of the business of the
body. He makes it perfectly clear that it
was never intended by the founders of the
Government, nor by parliamentary rule
and usage, that member present could
exercise greater power by sitting silent
than more than 160 willing and ready to
attend to the business of the nation. He
says:
The House is body of $50 men, representing
vast extent of country, with interests and
wants so varied that no catalogue could fully
c-t,..lerate them. If any one supposes that
each question receives the deliberate judgment
of each and all the members, he is indulging in
a dream of duty performed which has no cor
responding reality. The great majority of the
bills which pass Congress pass on the authority
OF committees, or members whose reputation
carries them through. OF course this is not
true of public bills OF general concern or of ma
tiOnal importance. But bills of local interest,
affecting distinct regions, and concerning small
numbers only, are daily passed without stand
ing vote. Indeed, there have been many bills
passed without the utterance of an audible
sound, because even the promoter amid the
general certainty would forget to vote for his
This was precisely what was contemplated by
the trainers of the Constitution If the majority
OF the members were on the spot, within sound
OF the transaction; II they heard the bill read
at the desk and the voice of the Speaker putting
the question, there could be no human proba-
bility that any measure would pass detrimental
to the republic. In pursuance of this view.
every day for hundred years the House has
passed bills, in the total innumerable, without
even a count, by mere determination OF volume
of voice. When the writer of this article re-
Gently declared that he had heard Mr.. Carlisle
announce such bills as duly passed hundred
times, he was altogether too guarded. He
ought to have said a thousand times.
As it is essential that all the reading
voters of the country understand the mat
ter clearly, since the opposition will prob
ably endeayor to misuse it in the approach
ing campaigns, we follow Mr.. Reeds state
ment further. The Speaker has to sign
every bill passed. All the kind mentioned
that Mr.. Carlisle signed therefore bear
witness to his rule that it is not necessary
that quorum shall vote, so long as there
is quorum actually present. If it needed
a quorum actually voting, Mr.. Carlisle
would never have dared to sign bills passed
by less than a quorum vote, but with
quorum present More than this, Mr..
Reed shows that Mr.. Carlisle signed many
of these bills on the day of passage, and
before the record of the day could possibly
have been written up. He must, there
fore have trusted to the fact that the
journal, when written up, would show that
a quoram was present when the bills were
passed, or that they would not show the
fact that less than quorum voted on the
bills.
But Mr.. Carlisle's proceeding was right
and constitutional, for the presumption
always is that the body is legally consti-
tuted. That is, that constitutional
quorum is actually present. The old rules
of the House actually provided for count
of the House by the Speaker to ascertain
if quorum was actually yisibly present in
the House.
while. therefore, the friends of easy obstrue-
tiou who wish TO lie in ambuscade, visible TO
the eve. hat invisible to the law, are obliged to
admit that outside the Toll-call Of yeas and
NAYS q quorum need not participate, yet they
claim that the preeedents of a hundred years
have been violated in recognizing the fact that
a quorum of the House was actually present
conduct of members. did not show majority
actually voting.
This recitation about the precedents of
hundred years Mr.. Reed declares is rhetor-
ical buncomb. Certainly our fathers knew
nothing of the modern metaphysics by
which a man can be present and absent at
the same time-present to demand the
yeas and nays, absent when the roll is
called. This tilibustering is of modern
origin, and it has spread all over the eoun-
try, until it has become possible under the
claim Of the opposition for one man to
hold an entire deliberatiyesssemb of the
people at bay, by refusing to open his
mouth. This evil early reached the Leg
isIatures, il went on down int town coun
ellis and to school boards aud district
trustees gatherings, and it even invaded
the assemblies of the churches
It is no wonder that the scheme of exposition
by not voting spread so rapidly. IT is so much
easier TO sit still than to argue, so much more
restful to Use the attraction of gravitation than
than to exhaust nervous energy, that it fwGs not
II, human nature to refrain from the use Of this
pOwer which had the high sanction OF Con-
gress and the ''preeedsnts OF hundred years"
But men never remain reasonably bad; they al
most always carry badness to excess. and there
fore to correction. And TINS the scheme of 81
lence which worked so well in the distant at
mosphere of the National Capital, soon met its
death when It got down to the region business.
Washington is far away and only little under
stood buE man whose contract may be judged
void and his business career ruined by this
doctrine o< coIporeai presence and parliament
sry absence soon begins to understand one place
where the right OF minorities ought TO leave of.
Hence when municipal bodies began 10 initiate
their superior aud tried TO break contracts ss
well as qu0ruus the gladsome light OF juris-
prudence was soon shed upon them. and the
parliamentary fiction that nan present could
truthfuIly declare himself absent disappeared
from every place except the Capitol at Wash
jngton.
Mr.. Reed then cites cases in Maine and