THE CHANCELLOR'S CASE.—1 BLAND. 565

cellor his present salary; and that the whole of the temporary laws
of our State, some of which *are of a highly important
character, shall be set afloat, because your wishes in regard 603
to the Chancellor's salary cannot be gratified; we must lament
that you have adopted what to us seems an extraordinary prin-
ciple, that the wheels of government shall stand still for the sake
of a single individual. It seems to us to amount to a declaration,
that you are determined not to concur with us in doing acts which
both of us admit to be right and proper, because of a difference of
opinion as to other acts of a wholly different character; we can-
not be deterred from doing what wre believe to be right, lest in-
jurious consequences might result from it. With us, the rule has
been adopted and adhered to in this instance, that we must pursue
the right, so far as we can ascertain it, and if pernicious conse-
quences flow from it, we must leave it to the people of this State
to determine whether it is the consequence of our acts, or of your
opposition to them. We therefore again return to yon the general
continuing Act, in the hope that you will reconsider and pass it in
its original form with its excepting clauses."

Late in the evening of the same day, the last one of the session,
the Senate assented to the general continuing Act in the form in
which it had been sent to them by the delegates, with the follow-
ing message explanatory of their considerations and motives.
" Gentlemen of the Home of Delegates—The Senate have again
received the bill entitled an Act to continue in force the Acts of
Assembly which would expire with the present session, and also
your accompanying message. The sentiments of the Senate have
undergone no change in regard to the subject in controversy be-
tween your honorable body and themselves, but actuated alone by
a desire to terminate the session, which has been already too long
protracted, thej have passed the said bill; content to leave the
decision of the question to the people of Maryland."

The delegates, as will be seen by their vote of the 21st of February,
passing the bill to reduce the Chancellor's salary to twenty-two
hundred dollars, could not have rested their pretensions upon any
distinction between the Act of 1798 and 1792; or upon any notion
about the temporary nature of the one Act, and the permanent
character of the other; because, the salary awarded to the Chan-
cellor, by that vote, was much less than had been allowed to him
by either of those Acts. And the resolution which they passed
and offered to the Senate for fixing the Chancellor's salary at " the
sum of twenty-five hundred and thirty-three dollars and thirty-
three cents and one-third of a cent, as a compensation for his ser-
vices during * the present year;" without any reference to
any antecedent law, clearly shows, that they held the Chan- 604
cellor's salary to be reducible at their pleasure.