WRITINGS OF SAM HOUSTON, 1860
35
and that without the knowledge of the Executive and before you had refunded a single dollar of the illegally exhausted public debt fund, or paid prior claims provided for in the deficiency bill. It is no part or parcel of the functions of the Subordinate to construe either the Constitution or the law; that province be- longs to the heads of the Departments. They alone have the power to construe and direct. Your duty is simply to perform. The Bill providing for Interest Warrants is a matter with which the "prope'r office," as you term it, has nothing to do; it is suf- ficient that you should know that the appropriation authorizing their issue has been made, and that you are requested to issue the Warrants. When this is done, your functions have ceased. You are not called upon to provide a fund to meet either the principal or the interest. Your whole duty is perfected and completed upon the issuance of the Warrants, and the Interest being accumulative occurs by virtue of and from the endorsement of the Treasurer. You say that the Comptroller "is not allowed to draw a warrant unless there be a specific app1·op'riation." Now, if there be no money, how ccm it be apvropriated, or how can it be drawn? If the Comptroller's practice was not so inconsistent with his Theory, I might here find grounds to commend his hypotheses. But when his latitudian doctrine of construction permits him to dispose of a fund special and sacred, without authority, and upon his own responsibility and to gratify his own cap1·ice, and at a moment, too, when the country needs every dollar to protect the defenceless people of the frontier, I can see no binding force in the wholesome restraints of Law. Had economy and prudence in the administration of the Gov- ernment for the last two years directed the proper application of the Public funds, there had been no necessity for so many party constructions of law, and so much violation of it in wanton and extravagant expenditures for no valuable purposes. But now, when a disregard of the public interests has drained the public treasury to depletion, and funds set aside for a particular purpose in which the honor and integrity of the State a.re involved, are extorted from the Treasury vaults to enrich in- dividuals, contrary to law, the Comptroller is troubled with serious doubts. Your doubts, however, are only convenient-not general-but particular, not periodical-but occasional, afflicting you only at times, and never when fav·oritism is to be exercised. Had these constitutional doubts attacked you at the time when you were paying the fraudulent claims of Ma1·shall Sca1·b1·ough
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