WRITINGS OF SAM HOUSTON, 1842
435
present Congress has followed up the course by various resolu- tions, which seem clearly to indicate a recognition of both the principle and propriety-not to say absolute necessity-of paying out government money at its market value. Therefore, I did not perceive that I was either perpetrating crime or committing error, after so long an acknowledgement of its admissibility by Congresses and Presidents in cases not half so meritorious as the single one in which I have acted, in paying a pittance of a Judge's salary-a salary long due, and which I was satisfied should have been paid out of the par funds in the Treasury, which were thrown into the general mass of the millions squandered upon unauthorized projects and designs rejected by Congress and ruin- ous to the country. The receipt of J. Antonio Navarro/ alone, shows that he received as Commissioner to the Santa Fe "one thousand clolla'1's in silve'r." Had the means which were placed at the disposal of the executive, by laws passed at the last session of Congress, been expended agreeably to law, the judges could have been paid, and would not have been forced to the humiliat- ing alternative to either receive money at less than its nominal value and hourly depreciating-or starve. Nor would the Ex- ecutive been reduced to the necessity of adopting a course which had been sanctioned by legislative enactment in, doubtless, an hundred cases. The acts of Congress were directory, and the President obeyed them. Could any circumstance have authorized a departure from the letter of the Constitution, (which I do not admit), or a stretch of law, it would have been the situation of the Judges. They had served the country under the guaranties of law and the Constitu- tion, and had not been compensated. Their rights had been vio- lated, and they had been the victims of the veriest neglect on the part of the public functionaries, ·whose duty it was to have seen them compensated according to the laws which they were bound to execute. The Executive is clear in his conviction, that nothing can change the compensation of the Judges from what it was at the commencement of their term of service; and he would avail him- self of this occasion to recommend to the Honorable Congress that suitable and adequate provision be made for the support of the Judiciary Department of the government. This recommenda- tion is predicated upon the fact that the Judiciary forms one of the three co-ordinate divisions of the government, and is equal in dignity to either of the others. The diffc~rent departments are
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