or opinions privately to members of one house, and make no such communication to the other?  Would not the two houses be necessarily put in immediate collision?  Would they stand on equal footing?  Would they have equal information?  What could ensue from such a manner of conducting the public business, but quarrel, confusion, and conflict?  A member rises in the House of Representatives, and moves a very large appropriation of money for military purposes.  If he says he does it upon executive recommendation, where is his voucher?  The President is not like the British king, whose ministers and secretaries are in the House of Commons, and who are authorized, in certain cases, to express the opinions and wishes of their sovereign.  We have no king’s servants; at least, we have none known to the Constitution.  Congress can know the opinions of the President only as he officially communicates them.  It would be a curious inquiry in either house, when a large appropriation is moved, if it were necessary to ask whether the mover represented the President, spoke his sentiments, or, in other words, whether what he proposed were “in accordance with the views of the executive.”  How could that be judged of?  By the party he belongs to?  Party is not quite strongly enough marked for that.  By the airs he gives himself?  Many might assume airs, if thereby they could give themselves such importance as to be esteemed authentic expositors of the executive will.  Or is this will to be circulated in whispers; made known to the meetings of party men; intimated through the press; or communicated in any other form, which still leaves the executive completely irresponsible; so that, while executive purposes or wishes pervade the ranks of party friends, influence their conduct, and unite their efforts, the open, direct, and constitutional responsibility is wholly avoided?  Sir, this is not the Constitution of the United States, nor can it be consistent with any constitution which professes to maintain separate departments in the government.

Here, then, Sir, is abundant ground, in my judgment, for the vote of the Senate, and here I might rest it.  But there is also another ground.  The Constitution declares that no money shall be drawn from the treasury but in consequence of appropriations made by law.  What is meant by “appropriations”?  Does not this language mean that particular sums shall be assigned by law to particular objects?  How far this pointing out and fixing the particular objects shall be carried, is a question that cannot be settled by any precise rule.  But “specific appropriation,” that is to say, the designation of every object for which money is voted, as far as such designation is practicable, has been thought to be a most important republican principle.  In times past, popular parties have claimed great merit from professing to carry this doctrine much farther, and to adhere to it much more strictly, than their adversaries.  Mr. Jefferson, especially, was a great advocate for it, and held it to be indispensable to a safe and economical administration and disbursement of the public revenues.