The Congress is, by the same instru ment, prohibited from laying any tax upon exports ; from giving a preference to the ports of one State over those of another; from laying any direct tax except according to the number of inha bitants in each State who are represented in Congress ; from suspending the writ of habeas corpus, except in case of rebel lion or invasion ; from passing any bill of attainder or es post facto law ; from granting, or permitting to be granted, any title of nobility ; or from passing any law to restrict the freedom of religion, of speech, or the press.
Congress must assemble at least once in every year, which of late has been on the first Monday in December. The members of both Houses receive eight dollars for each day's attendance on Congress, and also for every 20 miles which they must travel to the seat of Government at Washington, and in their return home.
The powers of this body to give special encouragement to manufactures, to make roads and canals, to establish banks and other corporations, and to exercise some other legislative functions, are contested points in the construction of the federal constitution ; and these questions often furnish the real or ostensible grounds of dispute between political parties.
Under the power to give special en couragement to manufactures, the CC,i gress has passed acts which lay duties and imposts on the importation of foreign commodities, and these duties and im posts have been laid not merely for the purposes of revenue, but for the protec tion of domestic manufactures. Such duties for the protection of domestic manufactures are described in the ordi nance of the Carolina Convention (about fourteen years ago) as "bounties to classes and individuals engaged in par ticular employments at the expense and to the injury and oppression of other classes and individuals." The object of the Carolina Convention was to nullify the revenue laws of the United States; and the verb nullify gave birth to the new word Nullification. Those who maintained this doctrine maintained that a State, which is a member of the Federal Union, can nullify certain acts of the General Government. The general doc trine of nullification was laid down in the following terms : "A State has a right in her sovereign capacity in Con vention to declare an unconstitutional act of Congress to be null and void ; and such declaration is obligatory on her citizens and conclusive against the Gene ral Government; which would have no right to enforce its construction of its powers against that of the State." This
doctrine of Nullification was much dis cussed at the time in the United States. The objections to it, and the difficulty or rather impossibility of the process which the nullifiers of Carolina proposed for the purpose of getting rid of the revenue laws of the United States, are shown in an article in the North American Review on Nullification (vol. 36, Jan. 1833).
The executive power is vested iz a President, who is commander-in-chief of the army and navy, collects and disburses the revenue according to law, and makes treaties with foreign nations, but in the exercise of the treaty-making power, the concurrence of two-thirds of the senators present is required. He nominates and, with the advice and consent of the Senate, appoints ambassadors, other public mi nisters, and consuls, and judges of the Supreme court, and other inferior officers. He has also a qualified negative on the laws enacted by the two Houses, which becomes absolute unless it is subsequently countervailed by two-thirds of each House. He is provided with a ready furnished house, and his salary is 25,000 dollars. He is chosen by a determinate number of electors ; the voters in each State elect as many electors as are equal to the members which such State sends to both Houses of Congress. Every State has its own electoral college, and all the colleges give their votes on the same day, and by ballot. The votes are sent sealed to the President of the Senate. If no person has a majority of the electoral votes, the election devolves upon the House of Representatives, when all the representatives of a State give but one vote. The president must be thirty-five years of age, and he is re-eligible for life, but the usage has been never to elect the same person for more than two terms of four years each.
The executive business is distributed among four departments ; that of the state, of the treasury, of war, and of the navy ; the four secretaries of which, with the attorney-general, reside at Washing ton, and compose the president's cabinet council.