the Senate, in 1833, for the removal of the deposits from the Second United States Bank, the President sent his protest to the Senate, and his political friends did not rest until the resolution of censure was expunged. While a resolution may not alter in the least the course of the President, it may lead him to defend his policy before Congress and the country. 2. By an investigating committee. This may be appointed to inquire into the course of a department, to expose it before the public, or to embarrass the President politically, or to make campaign capital against him. This committee may summon a Cabinet officer to appear before it. The Secretary may legally refuse, though he is not likely to; but he is not bound to answer the committee's questions, nor to help it obtain the information which it seeks. The Secretary is responsible to the President, not to Congress or its committees. A Secretary will go a good way to avoid the annoyance of an investigation, and if he should refuse co-operation by trying to conceal information he would bring his department under public suspicion. 3. Congress may refuse legislation which the President requests, in order to embarrass him or force him to comply with the wishes of Congress. This would be on a par with the President's vetoing a bill favored by Congress in order to bring that body to his terms. It is beneath the dignity of either department, and neither should be moved by such tactics. 4. By impeachment. The fact that Congress possesses this weapon of attack will restrain the President from any executive procedure on which impeachment proceedings might be based by a hostile Congress. Impeachment is a heavy weapon. It will not be brought to bear against the President except in extraordinary cases, or for political purposes, to remove obstruction to the policy on which Congress is determined. 5. Congress may pass bills restricting the scope of executive acts, requiring a certain course of the President or his Secretaries, and forbidding them to do what they had hitherto been left free to do. That is, they may attempt to tie the Executive down to the course prescribed by Congress. The President may veto the bills restricting his executive action. If Congress pass them over his veto and the President still disregard and refuse to obey them, alleging that they are unconstitutional and that they interfere with his executive independence, he would be subject to impeachment. The President may be right in his constitutional views, and his views may even have the endorsement of the Supreme Court; but the Senate will judge for itself of the constitutionality of the laws that the President has disregarded, and against the Senate's findings in the trial executive and judicial opinions will not save him. It may be proper, as a means of determining which is right in such a conflict, and as a means of testing the legality of particular executive acts under the disputed laws, to have a case brought before the Supreme Court. If the Court decides against the President and he still refuses to obey and enforce the law, impeachment is then the only weapon which Congress can use against him. If two thirds of both Houses have voted for the law which the President is defying, it is probable in such a case that the President would be removed by impeachment. This process of bringing the President to terms would be difficult; for, in the first place, it might be difficult to get a case before the Supreme Court and a decision from that body before the expiration of the President's term; and, in the second place, Senators who might have voted for the policy of a law might not be led to vote for the President's conviction on a purely judicial question as to the extent of its violation; and because no single offence named in the indictment could be clearly made out. "Impeachment is the heaviest piece of artillery in the congressional arsenal, but because it is so heavy it is unfit for ordinary use. "I 6. Congress holds the power of the purse, and by its power to withhold an appropriation necessary to carry Power of the out an executive policy it may bring influence Purse, and pressure to bear upon the President. Congress may check a scheme which the President favors, by refusing supplies for it. The President cannot carry on military operations without the requisite appropriations. If he were to purchase territory, Congress could withhold the purchase money. But while the President is within the ordinary and constitutional range of his operations, Congress will not attempt to control him and force him, by withholding supplies, to a policy which he opposes. To do that would be to stop the machinery of the Government, and that would injure Congress and the country as much as it would the President. Congress would be "cutting off its nose to spite its face." Riders and Appropriation Bills. 7. By the use of a "rider" to an appropriation bill. A "rider" is an unrelated piece of legislation attached to another legislative measure with the purpose of having it ride through on the merits of the measure to which it is attached. "Riders" are usually attached to appropriation bills. As these have to be passed it is thought the "rider" will not be thrown out. The practice of tacking to appropriation bills irrelevant and impertinent measures did not begin until more than forty years after the adoption of the Constitution. It then became a common practice and all parties resorted to it when in power. The practice gave rise to abuses, conflicts, and waste of public money. Public opinion became set against it, and many States adopted constitutional amendments requiring that no law shall contain more than one subject, and that subject shall be plainly expressed in its title. 1 Bryce, vol. i., p. 211. It is by the "rider" that Congress has most frequently attempted to coerce the President by the use of its money powers. In 1855, the "Anti-Nebraska men," Historic "Riders." or the early Republicans, in passing the Army Appropriation Bill in the House, attached a proviso, or "rider," forbidding the President to use the army to enforce the acts of the pro-slavery legislature in Kansas. President Pierce and the Democratic Senate denounced this as revolutionary. The Republicans maintained the right of the House to guard the purse and to impose conditions. Mr. Fessenden, one of the early Republican leaders, said: "In the English Parliament from the earliest times not only have appropriation and revenue bills gone together, but in cases without number it has been the habit of that Parliament to check the power of the Crown by imposing conditions to their appropriations of money. The only mode in which our ancestors of Massachusetts checked the powers of their royal governors was by granting money only on conditions. The power of supply and the power of annexing conditions to supply have always gone together in parliamentary history, and their joint exercise has never been denounced as a case of revolution, or as calling for revolution, or tending to produce revolution in any shape or form whatever. It is a power essential to the preservation of our liberties."'' Senators Wade and Seward spoke to the same effect. In 1867, Congress used this weapon against President Johnson. It attached to an Army Appropriation Bill a clause virtually depriving the President of the command of the army, entrusting this to General Grant, the General highest in command. President Johnson was powerless, and he yielded because he knew that the bill would anyhow be passed over his veto. Cited in The Abolition of the Presidency, by Henry C. Lockwood, chapter on The Veto," p. 92. 64 In 1879, this issue was again presented in Congress, and this time executive independence of Congress was established. In the controversy between President Hayes and the House, in 1879, the difference was as to the repeal of the Federal Election Law supervising the control of elections in the States. The House wished to repeal the law empowering the President to use the troops in the South, and thus to leave the control of elections solely in the hands of the States. The House attached its repealing act to the Army Appropriation Bill. The Senate rejected this combination and conference committees were appointed. The Senate stood ready to pass the appropriation bills at any time, but was not willing to accept as riders the proposed independent legislation. The Democratic conferees on the part of the House were determined that if the dominant Republican majority in the Senate insisted upon the maintenance of the objectionable laws and refused assent to their repeal, then the House would refuse, as they claimed the constitutional right to do, to make appropriations to carry on the Government. Consequently the Congress expired and the necessary appropriations were not made. This situation compelled President Hayes to call Congress into extraordinary session in the spring of 1879, for this special purpose, to vote necessary appropriations. The new House sent up a bill with the self-same rider. This time the Senate, owing to a change of membership in that body, passed the bill with the rider. In urging this policy of coercion against the President it was said by Mr. Blackburn of Kentucky, on behalf of the House: "It will then be for the President to determine whether he will block the wheels of Government and refuse to accept necessary appropriations rather than allow the Representatives of the people to repeal odious laws which they regard as subversive of their rights and privileges. Whether that |