The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1892-03-01
retary of the treasury, is beyond chal-
T.. .
M'KiNLEY ACT ALL RIGHT.
Three Attempts to Upset 1t Overruled by
the Court.

WASHINGTON, February 29.-The three
coses in which importers sought to test
the constitutionality of the Mckinley
tariff act were today decided by the
United States Supreme Court The titles
of these three cases are: Boyd, Sutton
g. Co., and Herman Sternbach & Co.
each versus the United States, and Joel
B. Erhardt, collector of the port of New
York, and Marshall, Field & Co. VS..
Clark, collector OF the port of Chicago.
The grounds on which it was MAIN
tanned that the tariff was unconstitu-
tional were that the tobacco rebate sec
ton of the bill had been omitted in its
enrolment after passage by Congress,
and therefore that the bill signed by the
President was not the bill passed by the
legislative department of the govern
ment that the reciprocity feature was
transmission to the executive of the law
making power and therefore void, vitiat-
ing the whole act, and lastly, that the
act was void because of the sugar bounty
provision. The court
Affirmed the Judgments
of the New York and Illinois Circuit
Courts of the United States in favor of
the constitutionality of the act.
Justice Harlan read the opinion of the
court. He said that the court had given
most careful, and deliberate attention to
the question now raised for the first
time as to courts determining whether an
act signed by the President was actually
the law passed by Congress. The object
of the journal required to be kept by
Congress, he said, was not that it might
Il tod TO !ato inn tho NIL nrit
of an act Of Congress, but that there
might be publicity of proceedings. The
signatures of the two presiding officers
and of the President was complete au-
Identification OF that bill, providing the
forms required had been complied with.
The suggestion that there might be q
deliberate conspiracy between presiding
officers and the President to make a law
not passed by Congress, the court said,
could not hold. The enrolled act, the
court held, was conclusive.
As to Reciprocity,
the court says, various decisions of the
court and the practice of years establish
the right of Congress to give the Presi-
dent authority, at future day, to
revoke or modify certain clauses of the
act. 1t holds that it was not a transfer
OF legislative power, but simply gave the
President power to determine whether
the time had arrived when requirements
of Congress as to the act taking effect
had arrived. The President the court
says, is not vested with any real legisla-
tive power. Congress prescribed the.
conditions under which the President
should act. All he had to ascertain was
that particular fact existed, and then it
was directed that he execute the act
The President was a mere agent of the
law-making power.
With respect to sugar bounties, the
court says the argument that the validi-
| ty of the whole act is involved in the
question. as to whether or not this clause
is valid is so obvious an error as not to
warrant much argument. THERE is no
such connection between this part of the
act and the other sections as to warrant
the court in assuming that the rest of the
act would not have been adopted but for,
the adoption of the bounty system. They
are entirely separate in purpose.
Justice Lamar and Chief Justice Fuller
concurred in the findings of the Court,
but dissented from that part holding the
reciprocity section constitutional.