THE CHANCELLOR'S CASE. 603

are of a highly important character, shall be set afloat, because
your wishes in regard to the Chancellor's salary cannot be grati-
fied; we must lament that you have adopted what to us seenjs an
extraordinary principle, 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 cannot be deterred from doing what we believe io
be right, lest injurious 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 per-
nicious consequences 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 you
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 following
message explanatory of their considerations and motives: "Gentle-
men of the House 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 accom-
panying message. The sentiments of the Senate have undergone
no change in regard to the subject in controversy between your
honourable body and themselves, but actuated alone by a desire to
terminate the session, which has been already too long protracted,
they 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 Feb-
ruary, 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 my
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 services during