THE CHANCELLOR'S CASE.—1 BLAND. 561

ances and Courts of justice; which, it would seem, might have
been considered the best and most correct disposition that could
have been made of it: but, in a few hours after, that reference
was reconsidered, and it was referred to a select committee.

In this place it will be necessary to remark, in order duly to
appreciate what followed, that by the standing rules, and the
long established usages of the House of Delegates, no member is
allowed to introduce any bill, upon any subject whatever, without
having first obtained leave; and the House having referred that
leave to a committee to inquire, to digest the subject, and to report
accordingly—and in cases when a petition or memorial is presented
to the House, or a communication is made to it, such petition,
memorial, or communication may be, and most usually is, as a
matter of course, referred to a committee with leave to report by
bill or otherwise. But, in such case, the bill reported must have
a direct, and immediate relation to the subject referred to the com-
mittee. These two are the only modes by which any bill can be
brought into the House.

It does not appear, from the votes and proceedings, what the
register did say to the House; but it is difficult to comprehend how
any thing which he could have said, in answer to the questions
the House had propounded to him, could warrant this special com-
mittee * in reporting a bill to alter and abolish a most im-
portant part of the Constitution; and also, in reporting a 599
bill for the pui'pose of reducing the Chancellor's salary below
what had been constitutionally secured to the Chancellor for the
time being, for the last two-and-thirty years. But so it was: this
committee to whom the register's communication was referred,
found it perfectly applicable to these subjects, and pregnant with
both of those very important bills. And, accordingly, on the 21st
of January, seemingly as a report in part, they introduced the bill
proposing to abolish the office of Chancellor; and on the next day
they made a further report, by presenting the bill, by which it was
intended to assert and establish the right to cut down the Chan-
cellor's salary at pleasure.

The first of these bills was expressed in these words: "An Act
to repeal all such parts of the Constitution and form of govern-
ment, as relate to the appointment of a Chancellor.—Be it enacted
by the General Assembly of Man/land, That all those parts of the
Constitution and form of government, which require the appoint-
ment of a Chancellor be. and the same are hereby repealed."
This is the whole of it. There was no clause directing the publi-
cation of it for the purpose of apprising the people, that it was in-
tended to take effect as an alteration of the Constitution; without
which it could never operate as such; and without which no bill
intended as an alteration of the Constitution had ever before been
reported or passed.

36 1 B.