WRITINGS OF. SAM HOUSTON, 1844
516
mankind, endeavored to make iti ·impossible for members of Congress to create offices for the purpose of legislating themselves into office. Tbe present bill provides that there shall be five com- missioners elected to locate the seat of government, with five dollars per diem allowance; and a vote of the Senate today decided that they might be elected from either House of Congress. Might not the same Congress have passed a bill, that there should be fifty commissioners with a salary of one thousand or one million dollars per diem, which would embrace all the members of both Houses of Congress; and could anything but a revolution on the part of the people prevent such a law from going into effect? This needs no answer.-For a definition of the. word office mentioned in the section of the constitution above quoted, I refer to all compilers of dictionaries from Johnson to Webster; all of whom define the word office to mean a public charge or employment, magistracy, agency, &c., &c.-Now if this post of commissioner to select a site for the seat of government does not imply a public charge, employment, magistracy or agency, then your protestor professes himself ignorant of the English language. In the opinion of your protestor, it is clearly an office, an important office-such as is contemplated by the constitution; and any other construction is, and most be, totally subversive of one, I had almost said the most important provision of that instru- ment, and will be productive of incalculable injury to the country." If the position of Senator Wharton was right, the action of Congress in establishing the seat of government at Austin was clearly unconstitutional, and could not invalidate the claims of Washington as the constitutional seat of government, nor give any claim of a constitutional character to any other place. The opinion of the Executive therefore is, that Austin is unsafe, inconvenient and expensive as a location for the seat of govern- ment; that the act of Congress fixing the seat of government there is unconstitutional; that the town of Washington is the only seat of government recognized by the constitution, and that to change and establish it at any other point can only be done by the people themselves. If any dissatisfaction exists on the part of Congress with its location at Washington, the Executive conceives the people to be the proper tribunal to which the question should be referred for decision. This can be done; the question put at rest, and harmony restored. And what more equitable mode pre- sents itself of ascertaining the public will in accordance with the
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