may be our opinions; and you do it without stint or mercy. It is only when you come to disburse the money that you are seized with these violent fits of respect for our opinions. If you cannot appropriate money in my district out of respect for my constitutional opinions on the subject of these appropriations, then carry your respect a little further, and quit taxing my constituents until I am satisfied that you are doing it according to the Constitution. If you may take money out of my district without my consent, you may put it back without my consent. If we are to have a partial system of distribution, then let us have a partial system of taxation. If my state is to be thus excluded from the appropriations, let her be stricken from the tax list. Cease to draw money from her, and she relinquishes for ever all claim upon the national treasury. But if the hand that gathers is thrust into her pocket, she calls it robbery if you close against her the hand that distributes.

GENERAL COMMITTEE ON CLAIMS.

SPEECH IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, DECEMBER 20, 1852, ON THE PROPOSITION TO ESTABLISH A GENERAL COMMITTEE ON CLAIAMS.

MR. BROWN. I ask the unanimous consent of the House to introduce the resolution which I proposed on Friday last.

There being no objection, the resolution was read, as follows:

Resolved, That the following be added to the rules of the House of Representatives:

"There shall be appointed a standing committee of the House of Representatives, to consist of fifteen members, to be called The General Committee on Claims, whose duty it shall be to report a bill at each session of Congress making appropriations for the payment of private claimants. It shall be the duty of the other committees of this House, when they have prepared a written report in favor of any claim, to transmit their report, together with the evidence on which it is based, to said General Committee on Claims; and if said committee, after due examination, shall concur in said report, they shall insert an item for the payment of said claim in the bill for the payment of private claimants, and thereupon submit to the House the report and evidence aforesaid, to be printed or otherwise disposed of, as the House may direct. And upon the demand of a single member, a separate vote shall be had on any section of said bill designated by him, notwithstanding the previous question may have been moved and seconded."

Mr. BROWN said: Mr. Speaker, it is conceded that the present mode of treating private claims amounts to a denial of justice, and ought to be changed.

For several years a proposition was urged upon Congress to establish a board of claims. For a time I was strongly inclined to sustain this proposition; but reflection satisfied me that, to make it efficient, it would be dangerous, and possibly a violation of the Constitution.

A board of claims would investigate; but it is not investigation that we want. We want action-final action. Our present committees investigate claims and report bills, but we do not pass those bills. Bills to which there is no reasonable objection remain for years upon the calendar without action. The claimant grows weary and sick with hopes

deferred, but Congress will not act. The bills are not passed, and just claims are not paid. This ought not to be. The creditors of the government have as much right to their pay as the creditors of private persons.

These tedious and sickening delays ought to be remedied. It cannot be safely done, in my judgment, by the appointment of a board of claims. It is the least objection (and yet it is an objection) to the appointment of such a board that it will increase Executive patronage, already grown quite too large.

If such a board is created, it will, as I have said, give us investigation; but what then? "No money shall be drawn from the treasury but in consequence of appropriations made by law," says the Constitution. Will you appropriate an aggregate sum, and allow the board to check it from the treasury as they may see fit, and apply it to the payment of claims? To do this, you must delegate to the board a power over the public funds which belongs exclusively to Congress, and which I very much question your right to transfer to another. The right to appropriate presupposes the existence of an object to which the appropriation may rightfully be made. The Constitution, in my judgment, contemplates that Congress shall decide as to the merits of the object to which the money is to be applied before making the appropriation. To make the appropriation first, and then leave others to decide as to the merits of the object to which it may be applied, is to shrink from the performance of one-half, and that to the treasury the most important half of your duty.

Could you appropriate $10,000,000 for the support of the army, and leave to the Secretary of War, or even to the President and cabinet, the privilege of applying it as he or they should see fit? Possibly you may have the power. But its exercise would dissatisfy the country, and strain, if it did not break the Constitution. It would, to say the least, be a very loose control over the public funds. It would be a still more loose control of them to appropriate $1,000,000 or $500,000, or a greater or less sum, and leave a board of commissioners to parcel it out among private claimants as the board should adjudge right. To do such an act would be to invite constant repetitions of the disgraceful Gardiner frauds. I am very confident Congress will commit no such folly.

What then shall we do? After the board has investigated and reported favorably on claims, shall we pass bills to pay them? This brings us just to the point where we now are; for I repeat, it is action, and not investigation, that we want-action, action. The passage of bills, that is what we want. And why is it that we do not act? why is it that we do not pass bills? It is, sir, because we have not confidence, we have not full confidence in the investigations of our committees. And shall we have more confidence, I pray you, in a board of claims? Will we distrust our own committees, and rely with confidence on the board of claims? I think not. When we are called to act, when we are called to pass bills, to make appropriations, we shall have the same difficulty that we now have. Some doubting Thomas will ejaculate those cabalistic words, "I object!" and in a twinkling the bill fades from our view, and the poor claimant is turned away in sorrow.

I want something practical; something that will give the claimants justice; something that will protect the treasury against fraud; keep

the people's money under the control of the people's representatives, and at the same time relieve the Speaker's table from that accumulated and accumulating mass of private business under which it has literally groaned for five-and-twenty years.

The rule which I propose. will do this. I have reflected on it maturely, and my confidence is entire that it will be efficient for all the purposes I have indicated.

What does it propose? First, a committee of fifteen, to be styled the General Committee on Claims; and why a committee of fifteen? I have, in my own judgment, fixed a large number, because the functions of the committee will be onerous, varied, and perplexing. No small committee could well discharge the duties which I propose to devolve on this general committee.

What will be the duties of this committee? To exercise a supervisory jurisdiction, in the first place, over all the reports from the other committees touching private claims. To stand as a kind of appellate court, having no original jurisdiction, but authorized and required to review the reports of other committees, and only to ask the action of Congress in case they approve such reports; and, in the second place, to report a bill for the payment of private claimants, the items of which shall in all cases be founded on the approved reports of other committees.

Allow me to illustrate, by supposed cases, the practical workings of this rule, if it shall be adopted. A claim is referred to the Committee on the Post Office and Post Roads; another to the Committee on Public Lands, and another to the Committee on Claims. Each of these committees makes a favorable report. These reports, and the evidence to sustain them, they send to the General Committee on Claims. That committee, after due investigation, approve each one of the reports, and thereupon they insert a separate item in the bill for the payment of private claimants to cover each claim, and then lay the report and evidence before the House to be printed, if the House shall so direct. And so of every other claim. It will be seen that each particular item will be sustained by a separate report, and that report will be supported by the concurrent judgment of two separate committees. The bill thus reported must of necessity go to the Committee of the Whole House, and being here considered, item by item, every member of Congress will have ample opportunity for the fullest and fairest investigation. When the bill is at last reported to the House for final action, each particular item will have passed the ordeal of the three separate committees: First, the present committee of nine; next, the proposed committee of fifteen; and lastly, the Committee of the Whole House. Having thus run the gauntlet, it seems to me no reasonable man could object to a vote by yeas and nays, as to whether the bill should become a law. The advantages which I anticipate are-first, thorough investigation, and therefore entire security to the government; and secondly, certain action, and consequently a hope of justice to claimants.

If Congress can be induced to act at all, it will generally act justly. Congress often does not act because of the anxiety of each member to get his own business forward. In the general scramble for precedence the avenues of legislation are choked up, private bills are neglected, and the rights of private parties disregarded. I desire to change this state of things; put all on the same footing, and this scramble will cease.

Under the rule which I propose, we shall have but one bill instead of many hundred bills. The struggle which is constantly going on here for precedence will cease, because all these rival bills will be merged into one bill. This bill will never fail of being considered and passed. It only remains to determine whether the checks and guards which the rule imposes will be sufficient to protect the treasury. In the first place, you have the examination of the committees as at present organized; their duties, so far as investigation is concerned, remain unchanged. In the second place, we have the proposed committee of fifteen, with no original jurisdiction, but sitting only as a revisory court; it is their duty to weigh the evidence and determine whether it sustains the report; and thirdly, we have the Committee of the Whole House. All these committees must pass affirmatively upon each section of the bill separately, before it is laid before the House, and in the House the rule guaranties to every member the right to demand a separate vote upon any section of the bill to which he may object. Now, it does seem to me that if a bill has passed three committees of this House section by section, and has then run the hazard of a separate vote by sections in the House, no reasonable man ought to object to its becoming a law.

If the House does not choose to adopt this rule, I hope at least we shall do something to relieve private claimants from the crushing and overpowering influence of a single member when pronouncing those potential words, "I object!" "I object!" How often the heedless or captious use of these words has sent honest claimants in sadness and in sorrow from this Hall! Let us snatch from them this unnatural power and restore them to their original modest position in our political vocabulary, and we shall have taken one step at least towards a salutary reform.

CUBA.

REMARKS, IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, JANUARY 3, 1853, ON THE CUBA QUESTION.

MR. BROWN. I do not intend to make an argument in reference to the question introduced by my friend from North Carolina [Mr. Venable]; but in the course of his speech he has taken positions so contrary to those which I believe to be right, that I feel it incumbent upon me, having been for a long time associated with that gentleman upon other questions, to say, at the first possible moment, that I totally dissent from many of the views which he has expressed. If I understood the gentleman, one of his positions was this-and I wish to call his attention to it-that the acquisition of the Island of Cuba, by this country, would result in the instant abolition of the foreign slave trade. I so understood the gentleman. Did I understand him correctly?

Mr. VENABLE assented.

Mr. BROWN. Did the gentleman mean to employ that as an argument against the acquisition of the Island of Cuba? I agree with lim perfectly, that its acquisition would result in the instantaneous abolition

of the foreign slave trade. That is one of the strong reasons why I desire to see it conquered, and why I think the people of the whole country ought to desire it.

Mr. VENABLE. Will the gentleman indulge me for a moment? Does the gentleman suppose that I advocate the foreign slave trade? I am willing that it should be put down, and put down by the treaty powerby the powers which are now employed to put it down. I used the argument in this way-that according to the institutions and circumstances of Cuba, and the want of increase of the African population there, the African slave trade was indispensable to keep up the supply of slave labor, and that being cut off, Cuba would be valueless, unless a supply of slave labor could come from somewhere, and the Southern States could spare anything better in the world than their slave labor.

Mr. BROWN. That does not at all change my view of the gentleman's argument. But the gentleman went on to say further, that the acquisition of the Island of Cuba by the United States would be attended with imminent danger, and would be the signal for the Queen of Spain and the Cortes to issue a decree for emancipating the negroes of the island, and that he for one would never vote to reduce any man to the state of slavery who had enjoyed one moment of legal freedom. I am not disposed, at this time, to combat the idea that the Queen and Cortes might take the course indicated; but I wish to make a pause here, and ask my honorable friend to take this into consideration, how far a decree issued in the midst of a revolution, and intended to circumvent the revolutionists, may be regarded as legal and binding. This decree will not be issued, according to the argument of the gentleman, because it is right in itself; it is not to be based upon any great principle of humanity, nor upon any principle of international law, but as a means of punishing the liberators of Cuba. If so done, will it not be a fraud upon the rights of the revolutionary party?

Mr. VENABLE. Will the gentleman allow me again to put myself right? The gentleman must recollect this was my statement, that the instincts of self-preservation would make it right and proper for the Spanish government, if they were satisfied that the invasion of Cuba was simply on account of its adaptation to slave labor, and to get possession of the slaves, the government of Spain would set them free, just precisely as I would blow up a fortification and destroy a magazine, to keep an opposing general from getting possession of them. This having been done by the constituted authorities, the Queen and the Cortes, they would enjoy regular freedom; and the gentleman knows as well as I do that you never can get a Congress of the United States which will subjugate any man who has enjoyed legal freedom.

Mr. BROWN. The gentleman says now, as I understood him before, that the instinct of self-preservation would prompt the Spanish authorities to this course. What self-preservation? Would the island be any more preserved to Spain by such an act? Would her possessions, at the close of the revolution, bo larger because of such a decree? Would the gems in her diadem be more valuable after such a decree than before? Would it not be a naked fraud upon the rights of those who are conducting the revolution? Mark you, I am not declaring that I would vote to reduce any man to slavery who had once enjoyed a moment of freedom. But can freedom be given by such means? That is the ques