The Birmingham age-herald., 1909-01-05

government that this provision was in-
 serted" and MT. Smith says, 'Now, that
 was the only way in which any limita- ton could be put upon the activities of the
 secret service" MT. Fitzgerald followed
 in the same vein, and by far the largest
 part of the argument against the employ
 ment of the secret service was confined to
 the statement that 1t was in violation Of
 law" Of course, such a statement Is
 not in any way an argument in favor of
 the justice of the provision. It is not an
 argument for the provision at all. It is
 simply statement of what the gentlemen
 making 1t conceive to have been the law. There was both by implication and direct
 statement the assertion that 1t was the
 law, and ought to be the law that the
 secret service should only be used to sup
 press counterfeiting; and that the law
 should be made more rigid than ever in
 this respect.
 Legal Authority.
 Incidentally Ilmay say that in my judg-
 ment there is ample legal authority for
 the statement that this appropriation law
 to which reference was made imposes no
 restrictions whatever upon the use of the
 secret service men, but relates solely to
 the expenditure of the money appropri-
 ated. Mir Tawney in the debate stated
 that he had in his possession "a letter
 from the Secretary of the Treasury, re-
 ceived a few days ago." in which the Sec
 retary of the Treasury himself admits
 that the provisions under which the ap-
 propriation has been made have been
 violated year after year for number of
 years in his own department" I append
 herewith as Appendix A the letter re-
 ferred to. It makes no such admission as
 that which Mir Tawney alleges. It con
 tains on the contrary. as you will see by
 reading it, an emphatic protest against
 any such abridgment of the rights dele-
 gated to the Secretary of the Treasury by
 existing law" and concludes by assert
 ing that he 'is quite within his rights in
 thus employing the service of these
 agents" and that the proposed modif1ca- tion which Mir. Tawney succeeded in car rying through would be distinctly to the
 advantage of violators of criminal stat
 utes of the United States" I call atten- tion to the fact that in this letter of Sec retary Cortelyou to MT. Tawney, as in my letter to the speaker quoted below, the explicit statement Is made that the pro- posed change will be for the benefit of the criminals a statement which I simply re- iterated in public form in my message to the Congress this year, and which Is also contained in effect in the report Of the Secretary of the Treasury to the Con- gress.
 careful reading of the Congress sional Record will also show that prac- tically the only arguments advanced in favor of the limitation proposed by MT. Tawney's committee, beyond what may be supposed to be contained by implication in certain sentences as to
 "abuse" which were not specified were those contained in the repeated state ments of MT. Sherley. MT. Sherley stated that there had been pronounced abuses growing out of the use of the secret service for purposes other than those intended" putting his statement in the form of a question, and in the same form further stated that the "private conduct" of members of Con gress senator's" and others ought not to be Investigated by the secret service, and that they should not investigate a
 "member of Congress" who had been accused of "conduct unbecoming a gen l tleman and a member of Congress" In addition to these assertions couched as questions, he made one positive declaration, that This secret service at one time was used for the purpose of looking into the personal conduct Of a member of Congress" This argument of Mr. Sherley. the only real argument as to the merits of the question made on behalf of the committee on appro- priations, will be found in columns one and two of page 5556, and column one of page 5557 of the Congressional Record In column one of page b556 MT. Sherley refers to the impropriety of permitting the secret service men to 1, investigate men in the departments, of | ficers of the army and navy, and sem ators and congressmen; in column two he refers to officers of the navy and members of Congress; in column one, page 5557, he refers only to members of Congress. His speech puts most weight on the investigation of members of Congress.
 Newspaper Story.
 What appears in the record Is filled out and explained by an article which appeared in the Chicago r-Ocean of | January 8, 1904, under a Washington l headline, and which marked the begin ming of this agitation against the secret service. 1t was a special article of