recollect it. Still that would not diminish the confidence he felt on this occasion. …
The Speaker rose from the Chair and said, that there was something so unmanly and improper in the opportunity which had been sought by the member from Georgia of replying to the observations he had made yesterday, that he felt himself irresistibly impelled to break through the rigid form, and to express, in a single word, his sense of it. It could not have escaped the general observation, that, although they had been for some time in Committee of the Whole, when the Speaker was on the floor, and had a right in common with the other members to join in any discussion, yet that member had thought proper in that situation to maintain a perfect silence, and to permit the committee to rise, that he might take advantage of the injunction imposed upon the Chair of never entering into the debate, not even to defend himself. This advantage had been eagerly seized, and the House were witnesses of the manner of his doing it. As to the matter contained in the reply, it was not of such importance, nor so worthy of notice, the Speaker said, as to justify his requesting the House to go again into a committee, merely to give him an opportunity of directly and positively contradicting the member from Georgia, as he should most assuredly and positively do, so far as respected the proceedings of the Federal Convention in 1787.
ⅭⅭⅬⅩⅩⅩⅠ. Albert Gallatin in the House of Representatives.[1]
Mr. G[allatin] said he was well informed that those words had originally been inserted in the Constitution as a limitation to the power of laying taxes. After the limitation had been agreed to, and the Constitution was completed, a member of the Convention, (he was one of the members who represented the State of Pennsylvania) being one of a committee of revisal and arrangement, attempted to throw these words into a distinct paragraph, so as to create not a limitation, but a distinct power. The trick, however, was discovered by a member from Connecticut, now deceased, and the words restored as they now stand.[2]
