Some of our best
political maxims and opinions have been drawn from our parent isle.
There are others, however, which can not be introduced in our system
without singular incongruity and the production of much mischief, and
this I conceive to be one. No matter in which of the houses of
Parliament a bill may originate nor by whom introduced--a minister or a
member of the opposition--by the fiction of law, or rather of
constitutional principle, the sovereign is supposed to have prepared it
agreeably to his will and then submitted it to Parliament for their
advice and consent. Now the very reverse is the case here, not only with
regard to the principle, but the forms prescribed by the Constitution.
The principle certainly assigns to the only body constituted by the
Constitution (the legislative body) the power to make laws, and the
forms even direct that the enactment should be ascribed to them. The
Senate, in relation to revenue bills, have the right to propose
amendments, and so has the Executive by the power given him to return
them to the House of Representatives with his objections. It is in his
power also to propose amendments in the existing revenue laws, suggested
by his observations upon their defective or injurious operation. But the
delicate duty of devising schemes of revenue should be left where the
Constitution has placed it--with the immediate representatives of the
people. For similar reasons the mode of keeping the public treasure
should be prescribed by them, and the further removed it may be from the
control of the Executive the more wholesome the arrangement and the more
in accordance with republican principle.
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