before the United States Supreme Court for discussion. And pertinent to the case it should be further noted, that when it was proposed in the Convention that framed the Federal Constitution to incorporate in it a provision for bestowing "rewards" for "the promotion of agriculture," the proposition was rejected.
The facts about the bounty for codfisheries are, that it was given under the first revenue laws (levying duties) of the United States in 1792, and was intended to offset bounties and other measures adopted by England, as was believed, for the purpose of destroying the fisheries, not only of the United States, but also of France. Its enactment was strenuously resisted at the time, on constitutional grounds, and especially by as good a constitutional authority as Madison, who held that the enactment of a bounty was beyond the power of Congress (4 Elliot's Debates, Philadelphia edition, 1875, 525, 526). Its legality was never judicially examined, and the act expired by its own limitation in seven years. Subsequent acts expressing limitation were passed of the same character from time to time; and since their final expiration, many years ago, it is claimed that no Congress, until the Fifty-ninth, 1890, has asserted its right to levy taxation embodying the bounty principle.
The court, in giving an opinion affirming the constitutionality of the tariff act of 1890, evaded the question of the constitutionality of its bounty provision, on the ground that the invalidity of one part of a revenue act does not invalidate the whole act; and when that principle was settled, the objections to the act based on separate clauses really disappeared.[1]
The disbursement of the money voted by Congress for the payment of the sugar bounties having been withheld by the Comptroller of the United States Treasury on the ground that the appropriation was unconstitutional, the court held that if Congress made promises and thereby induced people to incur expenses which they would not otherwise have incurred, and has then appropriated the money to indemnify the parties, the payment can not be stopped by an administrative officer on the ground of the unconstitutionality of the primary bounty enactment.
A question of interest in connection with this case, which may naturally suggest itself, especially to those not learned in the law, is, How happens it that repeated acts of expenditure of money raised by taxation for admittedly private purposes have been
- ↑ One of the best reviews of this celebrated case, one to which the writer has been greatly indebted, is to be found in an article contributed to and published in the Harvard Law Review for February, 1892, by Charles B. Chamberlain, Esq., of Boston.
