Every citizen owes to the country a vigilant watch and close scrutiny of its public servants and a fair and reasonable estimate of their fidelity.

After an existence of nearly twenty years of almost innocuous desuetude these laws are brought forth.

Men and times change-but principles-never.

Minds do not act together in public; they simply stick together; and when their private activities are resumed, they fly apart again.

Officeholders are the agents of the people, not their masters. Not only is their time and labor due to the government, but they should scrupulously avoid in their political action, as well as in the discharge of their official duty, offending by a display of obtrusive partisanship their neighbors who have relations with them as public officials.

I can find no warrant for such an appropriation in the Constitution, and I do not believe that the power and duty of the General Government ought to be extended to the relief of individual suffering which is in no manner properly related to the public service or benefit.

Once the coffers of the federal government are opened to the public, there will be no shutting them again.