Page:Harvard Law Review Volume 5.djvu/336

3 20 HAR YARD LA W RE VIE W. THE SUGAR BOUNTIES. IT is difficult to avoid the conclusion that, whatever be the deci- sion of the Supreme Court in the recent cases on the "McKinley Bill," it will have as far-reaching an influence as any since Dred Scott's. The cases 1 are ordinary importers' appeals from duties illegally assessed. One is a sample of both. Take No. 1050. The plaintiffs, Sternbach & Co., on October 7, 1890, entered at the port of New York certain colored cotton goods of a num- ber of threads to the inch and a valuation such that under the Act of March 3, 1883 (22 Stats, at Large, 488), they would have been dutiable at 40 per cent, ad valorem. Under the Act of October 1, 1890 (26 Stats, at Large, 567, 591), the duty of 45 per cent, was assessed and paid on these goods. The grounds of appeal all involve the same point — that the Statute of 1883 is still in full force and not repealed by the subsequent Act of 1890, for the short reason that the latter is void. The reasons alleged in the various stages of the appeal are three. (1.) The Act signed by the President as the Act of October 1, 1890, was not the Act which passed the two Houses of Congress, and therefore was not enacted in conformity with the provision of the Constitution (Const. U. S., art. 1, sec. 7, cl. 3). (2.) The Act in its so-called " Reciprocity Clause " purports to authorize the President to reimpose taxes upon certain articles under circumstances amounting to a delegation of legislative func- tions to the executive. (3.) It provides for the payment from the Treasury of bounties to the producers of domestic sugar. 2 Each of these three grounds of objection opens up an invit- ing field for investigation. Of the three, the last seems of greatest importance, in that it indicates a marked and persistent 1 No. 1049, Robert M. Boyd et ah. v. United States; No. 1050, Charles Sternbach et ah. v. United States; represented respectively by Currie, Smith & Mackie and Messrs. Stanley, Clarke & Smith, both of New York. 8 A fourth case, No. 1061, U. S. v. Ballin, Joseph & Co., also represented by Messrs. Stanley, Clarke & Smith, is based largely upon the alleged legal inability of Speaker Reed to count a quorum among members of the House of Representatives who declined to respond to the roll-call, during the passage of that section of the McKinley Bill involved in the appeals.