Year: 1859

lie treasury compensation for their services, which may be increased or diminished; but no alteration of such compensation of members shall take effect during the session at whi:h it is made."

 This section of the constitution expressly precludes the present General Assembly from increasing or diminishing their compensation for their services. It then follows as a necessary consequence, that if the members of the house are entitled to per diem pay during the recess, that they must be so entitled under the law as it was prior to the meeting of the General As- sembly, and no resolution or expression of opinion, by the present legislature, as to what is the law, can change their rights in this respect, for that would be recognising in them the right to sit in judgment in cases where they were individually interested.

 Let us then examine and see what the law is regulating the compensation of the members of the General Assembly-chapter 80, sec. 5, on page 56S, of Gould's Dig, is the law, and it reads as follows: Hereafter the members of the General Assembly shall be entitled to have and receive the stun of four dollars day, for their services, as members of said General miles necessary travel to and from their respec- tive residences, in attending on the same." It will be seen by an examination of the above slatute that the members of the house are entitled to four dollars day, respectively, for their services members of the General Assembly, and the consideration for which the state agrees to pay the four dollars. is that they will render the state service as members of the General Assembly, and it will be borne in mind that there Is DO law either constitutional or statutory, which fixes the pay of members of the Senate and House of Representatives, but on the other hand wherever the compensation of members is alluded to, either in the consti- tution or acts of the legislature, it is always alluded to as compensation for their se,vices !as members of the General Assembly,.

 | submit these to you, my fellow citizens, whether when member of the house is at home among his family and friends, attending to his private business he is 50 serving the state as will entitle him to claim, have and re- ceive four dollars per day from the treasury. It is now, and 1t has been all the time, my opin- ion that during the recess there was no Gene ral Assembly of the state, for there was no as- sembling of the two houses for the transaction of business, and if that be true, 1t follows as matter of course, that the members of the house were not under the law, in the service of the state.

 | have now stated all of the facts connected with my resignation of the speakership. In the whole matter have been actuated by no other motive than to discharge faithfully the trust con- fded to me by the representatives of the people, and whether am right or wrong in the course which I thought it my duty to pursue, leave it for the people to determine.

 l cannot, however, let the present opportunity pass of expressing to the entire House of Rep resentatives my grateful acknowledgements for the courtesy universally extended to me while speaker of the house, and since my resignation.

 O. H. OATES.