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Date Posted: 06:27:59 03/17/05 Thu
Author: Pot
Subject: Re: YEP!!
In reply to: Marv 's message, "YEP!!" on 16:23:57 03/16/05 Wed

>Cut and by Gawd Paste...!:A Humbling Lesson:
>Congressman Davy Crockett Learns About Limited
>Government
>
>
>
>
>In the following, excerpted from the book The Life of
>Colonel David Crockett (1884) compiled by Edward S.
>Ellis, the famous American frontiersman, war hero, and
>congressman from Tennessee relates how he learned --
>from one of his own backwoods constituents -- the
>vital importance of heeding the Constitution and the
>dangers of disregarding its restraints.
>
>Crockett was then the lion of Washington. I was a
>great admirer of his character, and, having several
>friends who were intimate with him, I found no
>difficulty in making his acquaintance. I was
>fascinated with him, and he seemed to take a fancy to
>me.
>
>I was one day in the lobby of the House of
>Representatives when a bill was taken up appropriating
>money for the benefit of a widow of a distinguished
>naval officer. Several beautiful speeches had been
>made in its support, rather, as I thought, because it
>afforded the speakers a fine opportunity for display
>than from the necessity of convincing anybody, for it
>seemed to me that everybody favored it. The Speaker
>was just about to put the question when Crockett
>arose. Everybody expected, of course, that he was
>going to make one of his characteristic speeches in
>support of the bill. He commenced:
>
>"Mr. Speaker -- I have as much respect for the memory
>of the deceased, and as much sympathy for the
>sufferings of the living, if suffering there be, as
>any man in this House, but we must not permit our
>respect for the dead or our sympathy for a part of the
>living to lead us into an act of injustice to the
>balance of the living. I will not go into an argument
>to prove that Congress has no power to appropriate
>this money as an act of charity. Every member upon
>this floor knows it. We have the right, as
>individuals, to give away as much of our own money as
>we please in charity; but as members of Congress we
>have no right so to appropriate a dollar of the public
>money. Some eloquent appeals have been made to us upon
>the ground that it is a debt due the deceased. Mr.
>Speaker, the deceased lived long after the close of
>the war; he was in office to the day of his death, and
>I have never heard that the government was in arrears
>to him. This government can owe no debts but for
>services rendered, and at a stipulated price. If it is
>a debt, how much is it? Has it been audited, and the
>amount due ascertained? If it is a debt, this is not
>the place to present it for payment, or to have its
>merits examined. If it is a debt, we owe more than we
>can ever hope to pay, for we owe the widow of every
>soldier who fought in the War of 1812 precisely the
>same amount. There is a woman in my neighborhood, the
>widow of as gallant a man as ever shouldered a musket.
>He fell in battle. She is as good in every respect as
>this lady, and is as poor. She is earning her daily
>bread by her daily labor; but if I were to introduce a
>bill to appropriate five or ten thousand dollars for
>her benefit, I should be laughed at, and my bill would
>not get five votes in this House. There are thousands
>of widows in the country just such as the one I have
>spoken of, but we never hear of any of these large
>debts to them. Sir, this is no debt. The government
>did not owe it to the deceased when he was alive; it
>could not contract it after he died. I do not wish to
>be rude, but I must be plain. Every man in this House
>knows it is not a debt. We cannot, without the
>grossest corruption, appropriate this money as the
>payment of a debt. We have not the semblance of
>authority to appropriate it as a charity. Mr. Speaker,
>I have said we have the right to give as much of our
>own money as we please. I am the poorest man on this
>floor. I cannot vote for this bill, but I will give
>one week's pay to the object, and if every member of
>Congress will do the same, it will amount to more than
>the bill asks."
>
>He took his seat. Nobody replied. The bill was put
>upon its passage, and, instead of passing unanimously,
>as was generally supposed, and as, no doubt, it would,
>but for that speech, it received but few votes, and,
>of course, was lost.
>
>Like many other young men, and old ones too, for that
>matter, who had not thought upon the subject, I
>desired the passage of the bill, and felt outraged at
>its defeat. I determined that I would persuade my
>friend Crockett to move a reconsideration the next
>day.
>
>Previous engagements preventing me from seeing
>Crockett that night, I went early to his room the next
>morning and found him engaged in addressing and
>franking letters, a large pile of which lay upon his
>table.
>
>I broke in upon him rather abruptly, by asking him
>what devil had possessed him to make that speech and
>defeat that bill yesterday. Without turning his head
>or looking up from his work, he replied:
>
>"You see that I am very busy now; take a seat and cool
>yourself. I will be through in a few minutes, and then
>I will tell you all about it."
>
>He continued his employment for about ten minutes, and
>when he had finished he turned to me and said:
>
>"Now, sir, I will answer your question. But thereby
>hangs a tale, and one of considerable length, to which
>you will have to listen."
>
>I listened, and this is the tale which I heard:
>
>"Several years ago I was one evening standing on the
>steps of the Capitol with some other members of
>Congress, when our attention was attracted by a great
>light over in Georgetown. It was evidently a large
>fire. We jumped into a hack and drove over as fast as
>we could. When we got there, I went to work, and I
>never worked as hard in my life as I did there for
>several hours. But, in spite of all that could be
>done, many houses were burned and many families made
>houseless, and, besides, some of them had lost all but
>the clothes they had on. The weather was very cold,
>and when I saw so many women and children suffering, I
>felt that something ought to be done for them, and
>everybody else seemed to feel the same way.
>
>"The next morning a bill was introduced appropriating
>$20,000 for their relief. We put aside all other
>business and rushed it through as soon as it could be
>done. I said everybody felt as I did. That was not
>quite so; for, though they perhaps sympathized as
>deeply with the sufferers as I did, there were a few
>of the members who did not think we had the right to
>indulge our sympathy or excite our charity at the
>expense of anybody but ourselves. They opposed the
>bill, and upon its passage demanded the yeas and nays.
>There were not enough of them to sustain the call, but
>many of us wanted our names to appear in favor of what
>we considered a praiseworthy measure, and we voted
>with them to sustain it. So the yeas and nays were
>recorded, and my name appeared on the journals in
>favor of the bill.
>
>"The next summer, when it began to be time to think
>about the election, I concluded I would take a scout
>around among the boys of my district. I had no
>opposition there, but, as the election was some time
>off, I did not know what might turn up, and I thought
>it was best to let the boys know that I had not forgot
>them, and that going to Congress had not made me too
>proud to go to see them.
>
>"So I put a couple of shirts and a few twists of
>tobacco into my saddlebags, and put out. I had been
>out about a week and had found things going very
>smoothly, when, riding one day in a part of my
>district in which I was more of a stranger than any
>other, I saw a man in a field plowing and coming
>toward the road. I gauged my gait so that we should
>meet as he came to the fence. As he came up I spoke to
>the man. He replied politely, but, as I thought,
>rather coldly, and was about turning his horse for
>another furrow when I said to him: 'Don't be in such a
>hurry, my friend; I want to have a little talk with
>you, and get better acquainted.' He replied:
>
>"'I am very busy, and have but little time to talk,
>but if it does not take too long, I will listen to
>what you have to say.'
>
>"I began: 'Well, friend, I am one of those unfortunate
>beings called candidates, and --'
>
>"'Yes, I know you; you are Colonel Crockett. I have
>seen you once before, and voted for you the last time
>you were elected. I suppose you are out electioneering
>now, but you had better not waste your time or mine. I
>shall not vote for you again.'
>
>"This was a sockdolager .... I begged him to tell me
>what was the matter.
>
>"'Well, Colonel, it is hardly worthwhile to waste time
>or words upon it. I do not see how it can be mended,
>but you gave a vote last winter which shows that
>either you have not capacity to understand the
>Constitution, or that you are wanting in the honesty
>and firmness to be guided by it. In either case you
>are not the man to represent me. But I beg your pardon
>for expressing it in that way. I did not intend to
>avail myself of the privilege of the constituent to
>speak plainly to a candidate for the purpose of
>insulting or wounding you. I intend by it only to say
>that your understanding of the Constitution is very
>different from mine; and I will say to you what, but
>for my rudeness, I should not have said, that I
>believe you to be honest .... But an understanding of
>the Constitution different from mine I cannot
>overlook, because the Constitution, to be worth
>anything, must be held sacred, and rigidly observed in
>all its provisions. The man who wields power and
>misinterprets it is the more dangerous the more honest
>he is.'
>
>"'I admit the truth of all you say, but there must be
>some mistake about it, for I do not remember that I
>gave any vote last winter upon any constitutional
>question.'
>
>"'No, Colonel, there's no mistake. Though I live here
>in the backwoods and seldom go from home, I take the
>papers from Washington and read very carefully all the
>proceedings of Congress. My papers say that last
>winter you voted for a bill to appropriate $20,000 to
>some sufferers by a fire in Georgetown. Is that true?'
>
>"'Certainly it is, and I thought that was the last
>vote which anybody in the world would have found fault
>with.'
>
>"'Well, Colonel, where do you find in the Constitution
>any authority to give away the public money in
>charity?'
>
>"Here was another sockdolager; for, when I began to
>think about it, I could not remember a thing in the
>Constitution that authorized it. I found I must take
>another tack, so I said:
>
>"'Well, my friend; I may as well own up. You have got
>me there. But certainly nobody will complain that a
>great and rich country like ours should give the
>insignificant sum of $20,000 to relieve its suffering
>women and children, particularly with a full and
>overflowing Treasury, and I am sure, if you had been
>there, you would have done just as I did.'
>
>"'It is not the amount, Colonel, that I complain of;
>it is the principle. In the first place, the
>government ought to have in the Treasury no more than
>enough for its legitimate purposes. But that has
>nothing to do with the question. The power of
>collecting and disbursing money at pleasure is the
>most dangerous power that can be intrusted to man,
>particularly under our system of collecting revenue by
>a tariff, which reaches every man in the country, no
>matter how poor he may be, and the poorer he is the
>more he pays in proportion to his means. What is
>worse, it presses upon him without his knowledge where
>the weight centers, for there is not a man in the
>United States who can ever guess how much he pays to
>the government. So you see, that while you are
>contributing to relieve one, you are drawing it from
>thousands who are even worse off than he. If you had
>the right to give anything, the amount was simply a
>matter of discretion with you, and you had as much
>right to give $20,000,000 as $20,000. If you have the
>right to give to one, you have the right to give to
>all; and, as the Constitution neither defines charity
>nor stipulates the amount, you are at liberty to give
>to any and everything which you may believe, or
>profess to believe, is a charity, and to any amount
>you may think proper. You will very easily perceive
>what a wide door this would open for fraud and
>corruption and favoritism, on the one hand, and for
>robbing the people on the other. No, Colonel, Congress
>has no right to give charity. Individual members may
>give as much of their own money as they please, but
>they have no right to touch a dollar of the public
>money for that purpose. If twice as many houses had
>been burned in this county as in Georgetown, neither
>you nor any other member of Congress would have
>thought of appropriating a dollar for our relief.
>There are about two hundred and forty members of
>Congress. If they had shown their sympathy for the
>sufferers by contributing each one week's pay, it
>would have made over $13,000. There are plenty of
>wealthy men in and around Washington who could have
>given $20,000 without depriving themselves of even a
>luxury of life. The congressmen chose to keep their
>own money, which, if reports be true, some of them
>spend not very creditably; and the people about
>Washington, no doubt, applauded you for relieving them
>from the necessity of giving by giving what was not
>yours to give. The people have delegated to Congress,
>by the Constitution, the power to do certain things.
>To do these, it is authorized to collect and pay
>moneys, and for nothing else. Everything beyond this
>is usurpation, and a violation of the Constitution.'"
>
>"I have given you," continued Crockett, "an imperfect
>account of what he said. Long before he was through, I
>was convinced that I had done wrong. He wound up by
>saying:
>
>"'So you see, Colonel, you have violated the
>Constitution in what I consider a vital point. It is a
>precedent fraught with danger to the country, for when
>Congress once begins to stretch its power beyond the
>limits of the Constitution, there is no limit to it,
>and no security for the people. I have no doubt you
>acted honestly, but that does not make it any better,
>except as far as you are personally concerned, and you
>see that I cannot vote for you.'
>
>"I tell you I felt streaked. I saw if I should have
>opposition, and this man should go to talking, he
>would set others to talking, and in that district I
>was a gone fawn-skin. I could not answer him, and the
>fact is, I was so fully convinced that he was right, I
>did not want to. But I must satisfy him, and I said to
>him:
>
>"'Well, my friend, you hit the nail upon the head when
>you said I had not sense enough to understand the
>Constitution. I intended to be guided by it, and
>thought I had studied it fully. I have heard many
>speeches in Congress about the powers of Congress, but
>what you have said here at your plow has got more
>hard, sound sense in it than all the fine speeches I
>ever heard. If I had ever taken the view of it that
>you have, I would have put my head into the fire
>before I would have given that vote; and if you will
>forgive me and vote for me again, if I ever vote for
>another unconstitutional law I wish I may be shot.'
>
>"He laughingly replied: 'Yes, Colonel, you have sworn
>to that once before, but I will trust you again upon
>one condition. You say that you are convinced that
>your vote was wrong. Your acknowledgment of it will do
>more good than beating you for it. If, as you go
>around the district, you will tell people about this
>vote, and that you are satisfied it was wrong, I will
>not only vote for you, but will do what I can to keep
>down opposition, and, perhaps, I may exert some little
>influence in that way.'
>
>"'If I don't,' said I, 'I wish I may be shot; and to
>convince you that I am in earnest in what I say I will
>come back this way in a week or ten days, and if you
>will get up a gathering of the people, I will make a
>speech to them, Get up a barbecue, and I will pay for
>it.'
>
>"'No, Colonel, we are not rich people in this section,
>but we have plenty of provisions to contribute for a
>barbecue, and some to spare for those who have none.
>The push of crops will be over in a few days, and we
>can then afford a day for a barbecue. This is
>Thursday; I will see to getting it up on Saturday
>week. Come to my house on Friday, and we will go
>together, and I promise you a very respectable crowd
>to see and hear you.'
>
>"'Well, I will be here. But one thing more before I
>say good-by. I must know your name.'
>
>"'My name is Bunce.'
>
>"'Not Horatio Bunce?'
>
>"'Yes.'
>
>"'Well, Mr. Bunce, I never saw you before, though you
>say you have seen me, but I know you very well. I am
>glad I have met you, and very proud that I may hope to
>have you for my friend. You must let me shake your
>hand before I go.'
>
>"We shook hands and parted.
>
>"It was one of the luckiest hits of my life that I met
>him. He mingled but little with the public, but was
>widely known for his remarkable intelligence and
>incorruptible integrity, and for a heart brimful and
>running over with kindness and benevolence, which
>showed themselves not only in words but in acts. He
>was the oracle of the whole country around him, and
>his fame had extended far beyond the circle of his
>immediate acquaintance. Though I had never met him
>before, I had heard much of him, and but for this
>meeting it is very likely I should have had
>opposition, and had been beaten. One thing is very
>certain, no man could now stand up in that district
>under such a vote.
>
>"At the appointed time I was at his house, having told
>our conversation to every crowd I had met, and to
>every man I stayed all night with, and I found that it
>gave the people an interest and a confidence in me
>stronger than I had ever seen manifested before.
>
>"Though I was considerably fatigued when I reached his
>house, and, under ordinary circumstances, should have
>gone early to bed, I kept him up until midnight,
>talking about the principles and affairs of
>government, and got more real, true knowledge of them
>than I had got all my life before.
>
>"I have told you Mr. Bunce converted me politically.
>He came nearer converting me religiously than I had
>ever been before. He did not make a very good
>Christian of me, as you know; but he has wrought upon
>my mind a conviction of the truth of Christianity, and
>upon my feelings a reverence for its purifying and
>elevating power such as I had never felt before.
>
>"I have known and seen much of him since, for I
>respect him -- no, that is not the word -- I reverence
>and love him more than any living man, and I go to see
>him two or three times every year; and I will tell
>you, sir, if every one who professes to be a Christian
>lived and acted and enjoyed it as he does, the
>religion of Christ would take the word by storm.
>
>"But to return to my story. The next morning we went
>to the barbecue, and, to my surprise, found about a
>thousand men there. I met a good many whom I had not
>known before, and they and my friend introduced me
>around until I had got pretty well acquainted -- at
>least, they all knew me.
>
>"In due time notice was given that I would speak to
>them. They gathered up around a stand that had been
>erected. I opened my speech by saying:
>
>"'Fellow-citizens -- I present myself before you today
>feeling like a new man. My eyes have lately been
>opened to truths which ignorance or prejudice, or
>both, had heretofore hidden from my view. I feel that
>I can today offer you the ability to render you more
>valuable service than I have ever been able to render
>before. I am here today more for the purpose of
>acknowledging my error than to seek your votes. That I
>should make this acknowledgment is due to myself as
>well as to you. Whether you will vote for me is a
>matter for your consideration only.'
>
>"I went on to tell them about the fire and my vote for
>the appropriation as I have told it to you, and then
>told them why I was satisfied it was wrong. I closed
>by saying:
>
>"'And now, fellow-citizens, it remains only for me to
>tell you that the most of the speech you have listened
>to with so much interest was simply a repetition of
>the arguments by which your neighbor, Mr. Bunce,
>convinced me of my error.
>
>"'It is the best speech I ever made in my life, but he
>is entitled to the credit of it. And now I hope he is
>satisfied with his convert and that he will get up
>here and tell you so.'
>
>"He came upon the stand and said:
>
>"'Fellow-citizens -- It affords me great pleasure to
>comply with the request of Colonel Crockett. I have
>always considered him a thoroughly honest man, and I
>am satisfied that he will faithfully perform all that
>he has promised you today.'
>
>"He went down, and there went up from that crowd such
>a shout for Davy Crockett as his name never called
>forth before.
>
>"I am not much given to tears, but I was taken with a
>choking then and felt some big drops rolling down my
>cheeks. And I tell you now that the remembrance of
>those few words spoken by such a man, and the honest,
>hearty shout they produced, is worth more to me than
>all the honors I have received and all the reputation
>I have ever made, or ever shall make, as a member of
>Congress.
>
>"Now, sir," concluded Crockett, "you know why I made
>that speech yesterday. I have had several thousand
>copies of it printed, and was directing them to my
>constituents when you came in.
>
>"There is one thing now to which I will call your
>attention. You remember that I proposed to give a
>week's pay. There are in that House many' very wealthy
>men -- men who think nothing of spending a week's pay,
>or a dozen of them, for a dinner or a wine party when
>they have something to accomplish by it. Some of those
>same men made beautiful speeches upon the great debt
>of gratitude which the country owed the deceased -- a
>debt which could not be paid by money -- and the
>insignificance and worthlessness of money,
>particularly so insignificant a sum as $10,000, when
>weighed against the honor of the nation. Yet not one
>of them responded to my proposition. Money with them
>is nothing but trash when it is to come out of the
>people. But it is the one great thing for which most
>of them are striving, and many of them sacrifice
>honor, integrity, and justice to obtain it."

I reckon we could use a few Davy Crocketts now.

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