ously one thing, and right another. And he had often been led to question the right by which any portion of the Representatives of the people could say to any other portion, except where it might be absolutely essential to their own self-defence and self-preservation as a deliberative, legislative body, that they should not exercise the common and acknowledged privileges and powers of membership. All were here by similar titles and upon similar terms. We were the Representatives of the several communities which had elected us, and our responsibilities were to them, and not to each other. And it would seem no inappropriate reply, to any one who should attempt to interfere with another in the exercise of his duty as a member, and to exclude him in any case from his equal share in the collective will of the House, upon some allegation of his being disqualified for the service which his fellow-citizens had assigned him,"Who art thou that judgest another man's servant? To his own master he shall stand or fall." The Speaker confessed, therefore, that, as a matter of principle, he was opposed to the rule altogether. But it had come down to us from a distant antiquity, and had been annually incorporated into our parliamentary system. It was his duty, accordingly, as the servant of the House, to observe and execute it. And he should not shrink from doing so, wherever its execution was called for. But the same views which had led him to question its justice in the abstract, would lead him also, now and always, to give it the narrowest possible construction. He desired to be personally instrumental in depriving as few of the Representatives of the people as might be, of what seemed to him their just and rightful prerogative. And he had no hesitation in repeating what he said on this subject three years ago, that he should very much prefer to have any one or any number of his decisions set aside by the House, than to be guilty himself of setting aside the vote of a single member in a case in any degree doubtful. Nor did scruples like these seem to have been confined to himself. Old as the rule was, and incorporated, as it had been, into all our legislative systems, national and State, it seemed to have been a very rare occurrence for it to be enforced, or even for any question to be raised under it. With the exception of a single case which had recently occurred in Congress, during a very exciting discussion, and to which he would presently allude, he had no knowledge of any such point having been raised in any American Assembly but our own. Doubtless, there must have been such instances in some of our State Legislatures, but he had never met with any, and knew not where to find any account of them. During the long and agitating controversies, extending through so many successive years, as to the re-charter of the United States Bank, in Congress, although partisan jealousies were sharply stimulated against that institution, although not a few of its stockholders were known to be members, and although accusations of other sorts of interest in its continued existence were rife in all quarters, no such point of order is believed to have been started. The rule, by general consent, seems to have been left to operate upon individual consciences, inducing members to decline voting of their own accord, wherever they felt they were liable to be swayed from the discharge of their duties by their private interests, or wherever perhaps, they were unwilling to incur the suspicion of being thus swayed, but to have been regarded as altogether too odious and too arbitrary to be put forcibly into execution. But its execution had been demanded in this case by the gentlemen from Northfield, and, in default of any American authorities on the subject, the Speaker said he was compelled to resort to the Parliamentary Annals of the Mother Country, from which the rule was originally borrowed, to find precedents for determining its rightful interpretation and legitimate intent. Even there the precedents were few and far between;-but the Chair was happy to state, that all which he had been able to find had confirmed him in his opinion that the strictest and narrowest possible construction was to be given to the rule, which its terms would admit of. Even in an unreformed, rotten-borough House of Commons, where there was so little pretence to any representation of the people on the principle of equality, and where so many of the members were without any direct responsibility to the people in the true sense of that term, there seemed to have been the utmost caution observed in disfranchis ing a member on any pretence of private interest. How much more ought such a caution to be observed in a Legislative Assembly so carefully constituted to insure equality and responsibility as ours! There were but three leading cases in the English Parliamentary Journals on this subject, so far as the Chair had found opportunity to examine them. The first in order was the Loyalty Loan case, in 1797. This was a question about allowing an outright bonus or gratuity of five pounds in the hundred to the subscribers to a loan called the Loyalty Loan, which had been made to the British Government in a great public exigency, and by which the subscribers had suffered a pecuniary loss. It was a measure purely of pecuniary relief and indemnification to private individuals. It was there decided that the interest of the subscribers was direct and immediate. It was a vote of money directly and immediately out of the public Treasury into their own pockets, and the votes of such of them as were members — except, indeed, of those who declared in their places that they did not intend to avail themselves of the bonus were accordingly disallowed. This case, it would be perceived, was precisely analogous to the pension case supposed by the Chair, a day or two since, when this point of order was first suggested, and did not go at all beyond it. The second case was that of the London Flour Company, incorporated for the manufacture of bread in the year 1800. By that bill certain persons were not merely incorporated for the purpose which has been named, but it was provided that they should be allowed ten per cent. interest on moneys advanced by them for the establishment, instead of five per cent. which was the legal rate of interest. In this case it was decided, that subscribers to the stock might vote on the passage of the bill in all its various stages, and upon all questions arising in relation to it, with the single exception of that relating to this provision as to the rate of interest which they should be allowed to receive. But on a motion to reduce this rate from ten per cent. to five, their votes were disallowed. a The third case was that of the Gold Coin Bill, in 1811, bill introduced to remedy some of the evils growing out of a suspension of specie payments and a depreciation of paper money in England, and in which it was alleged the Bank of England was deeply interested. The direct purpose of the bill was to prohibit the purchase of gold coins at any price above their par value in paper. The immediate intention was to bring up the bills of the Bank of England from the state of depreciation in which their irredeemability had naturally involved them, and to restore them to their full nominal value. On this occasion there were no less than forty-five directors and proprietors of that institution in the House of Commons, and the votes of all of them were allowed, after much debate but without any division. Of these three cases, the only ones the Speaker had been able to find, the second manifestly presented the nearest analogy to that now before the House. It was, like this, the case of a Corporation whose charter was immediately under consideration; and the question there, as here, was how far the stockholders could vote upon that charter. It was clear, that if that precedent were to be followed, they could vote on the passage of the bill from one stage to another, and on its final passage, and on all other questions relating to it, except where the question was solely and exclusively one as to the amount of their own profits. The principle of the case, as repeatedly laid down in the debate on the point of order, was,—that where a bill was partly of a public nature and partly of benefit to themselves, (and it was admitted that that bill was of such a mixed character,) the stockholders might vote on the principle; but that whenever the incidental point arose in which their own interests exclusively lay, they could not vote. This is substantially the rule of this House, by which it is provided, that to exclude a member from voting, the interest must be a private interest,—or rather "a private right,” (a word certainly of greater caution, and which unquestionably justified a narrower construction than the English rule,) - immediately concerned and distinct from the public interest. And now the question was, whether the proposition offered by the gentleman from Westport involved directly and immediately such a distinct private interest of the Stockholders of the Boston and Sandwich Glass Company, and presented such a question of unmixed private right, as to exclude them from voting on it under the rule as illustrated by these precedents. This inquiry rendered necessary some examination of the proposition itself, and the answer to it would undoubtedly depend not a little on the different views which were entertained as to the character and consequences of that proposition. Did this proposition of unlimited liability present to the House solely and singly a consideration of profit or loss to the stockholders? Was it a naked, unmixed matter of private interest or private right to the company? Had the public no concern in the question? If such were the case, the three gentlemen clearly could not vote upon it. But the Chair certainly did not regard it in that light. He looked upon the question of limited or unlimited liability, whether in reference to all corporations or to one, as a question in which the public was deeply interested. He had always believed that where there was an unlimited liability, an unlimited credit was sure to follow; that instead of looking to the capital only, the public were led to place their trust on some indefinite amount of individual wealth behind it; that unwarranted confidence was thus certain to be created, while, at the same time, those of the stockholders whose liability beyond their stock was worth any thing, were not less certain to withdraw from the concern; and that the security of the corporation, of its creditors, and of the community generally, were thus at once and together put in jeopardy. The tendency of such a measure to drive capital out of the State, furnished another mode of illustrating the interest of the public in such a proposition. But, without entering further into his personal opinions as to the amendment in question, it was enough for him to say, that it had been argued from first to last on the express ground of the public interest, the interest of the creditors and the interest of the community generally. No one had pretended that it was a mere matter of dollars and cents to the stockholders simple question whether they should receive ten per cent. or five per cent. on their money. The very term liability was a relative term. Liability to what? Liability to whom? It was plain, and had been all along admitted, that, however there might be - a |