demerits of the laws which the House bill proposes to repeal,
but involves the rights, the privileges, the powers, the
duties of the two branches of Congress and of the President
of the United States. It is a vast question; it is a question
whose importance can scarcely be estimated; it is a question
that never yet has been brought so sharply before the American
Congress and the American people as it may be now. It is
a question which sooner or later must be decided, and the
decision must determine what are the powers of the House of
Representatives under the Constitution, and what is the duty
of that House in the view of the framers of that Constitution,
according to its letter and its spirit.

Mr. President, I should approach this question, if I were in
the best possible condition to speak and to argue it, with
very grave diffidence, and certainly with the utmost anxiety;
for no one can think of it as long and as carefully as I have
thought of it without seeing that we are at the beginning,
perhaps, of a struggle that may last as long in this country
as a similar struggle lasted in what we are accustomed to call
the mother land. There the struggle lasted for two centuries
before it was ultimately decided. It is not likely to last so
long here, but it may last until every man in this chamber is
in his grave. It is the question whether or no the House of
Representatives has a right to say, "We will grant supplies
only upon condition that grievances are redressed. We are
the representatives of the taxpayers of the Republic. We, the
House of Representatives, alone have the right to originate
money bills. We, the House of Representatives, have alone the
right to originate bills which grant the money of the people.