602 THE CHANCELLOR'S CASE.

list and other expenses of civil government, and also the resolution
relative to the Chancellor's salary. We dissented from this bill
yesterday, because the salary provided for the Chancellor was in
our opinion, insufficient, and because we considered it a violation of
the spirit and intention of the constitution and bill of rights. It is
known to your honourable body, that but a few days ago, the
Senate unanimously rejected the bill from your house to reduce the
salary of the Chancellor, and to-day, at the very moment we are
about closing the session, when many of our members are absent,
who are known to have been opposed to any reduction of the
salary of that officer, we are presented with another bill from your
house, in which you have thought proper to make no provision to
pay the Chancellor any salary whatever. If your honourable body
will send us a bill to continue in force the act entitled a supplement
to the act, entitled. An act for establishing and securing the salary
of the Chancellor, we will at once pass the civil list bill; other-
wise we cannot, under any circumstances whatever, consent to that
bill. The Senate regret the difference of opinion that has arisen
between the two houses in relation to this matter; but they owe it
to themselves, and to the people of Maryland, after the repeated
expressions of their opinion on this subject, to adhere to the course
they have taken." This message expresses concisely the opinions
of the Senate upon this subject.

On the same day the Delegates returned the general continuing
act to the Senate for their reconsideration, with the following mes-
sage:—"Gentlemen of the Senate—We find ourselves driven to
the painful necessity of dissenting from the amendment to the con-
tinuing act proposed by your honourable body. We conceive, that
we cannot, in conscience, longer continue to the Chancellor the pro-
fuse 'and enormous salary which he now enjoys; we conceive that
duty requires us to reduce it, and that there is nothing in our decla-
ration of rights or constitution to inhibit it. What we have already
refused to do directly, by at least four or five different votes of this
House, we cannot consent to do indirectly; we stand pledged to
our consciences to maintain in every constitutional way, the ground
we have occupied* We regret that this proposition has been so
often coupled by your house with acts or propositions of a wholly
different character, and in no wise dependent upon it. If your
House has resolved to reject every continuing act, unless it also
continues the acts giving the Chancellor his present salary; and
that the whole of the temporary laws of our State, some of which