“Again, if the Senate may throw their whole weight, political and moral, into the scale in favor of the repeal or reduction of one class of taxes, they may thereby compel the House to originate bills, to impose new taxes, or increase old ones to make up the deficiency caused by the repeal begun in the Senate, and thus accomplish by indirection, what the Constitution plainly prohibits. What Mr. Seward said in 1856, of the encroachment of the Senate, is still more strikingly true to-day. “The tendency of the Senate is constantly to encroach,—not only upon the jurisdiction of the House, but upon the rights of the Chief Executive of the nation. The power of confirming appointments is rapidly becoming a means by which the Senate dictates appointments. The Constitution gives to the President the initiative in appointments, as it gives to the House the initiative in revenue legislation. Evidences are not wanting that both these rights are every year subjected to new invasions. If, in the past, the Executive has been compelled to give way to the pressure, and has, in some degree yielded his constitutional rights, it is all the more necessary that this House stand firm, and yield no jot or tittle of that great right intrusted to us for the protection of the people.” This speech was absolutely conclusive on the question, and must take its place with all the immortal arguments and efforts put forth in the past to preserve the rights of the popular branch of national legislature. February 20, 1871, General Garfield delivered a powerful speech against the McGarraghan claim, one of the many jobs of which Congress was the victim. General Garfield was by this time recognized as the highest authority on the intricate subjects of finance, revenue, and expenditure, in the House. It will be seen that these topics fall within the general head of political economy, “the dismal science.” Of these he was the acknowledged master. Accordingly, at the beginning of the Forty-Second Congress, in 1871, Garfield was made chairman of the Committee of Appropriations. It is probable that in this capacity he never had an equal. Something must be said of his work.