Page:Harvard Law Review Volume 12.djvu/353

333 MASSACHUSETTS AS A PHILANTHROPIC ROBBER. 333 the refusal of the State to take a lease.^ Six hundred dollars were given in 1896 to an agricultural society for bounties for 1895, " being the amount which said society would have been entitled to receive had it been incorporated by an act of the Legislature."^ In 1896 also a man was compensated for the value of a cow condemned and killed by the Board of Health; and the town also had its expenses for killing and burying said cow, $45 in all.^ On principle, there can be no possible defence of the legality or constitutionality of these payments. Possibly they were meri- torious; possibly the persons paid were worthy recipients of charity. But the fact still remains that it is not the duty or the right of the Legislature to dispense charity to favored individuals. The whole matter may be summed up in one sentence. The Legislature has simply followed the motto of the New York politician : " What is the constitution among friends?" The language of President Cleveland's veto of the Bill for the special distribution of seeds in the drought-stricken counties of Texas is particularly applicable : — "I can find no warrant for such an appropriation in the Constitution, and I do not believe that the power and duty of the General Government ought to be extended to the relief of individual suffering, which is in no manner properly related to the public service or benefit. A prevalent tendency to disregard the limited mission of this power should, I think, be steadfastly resisted, to the end that the lesson should be constantly enforced that though the people support the Government^ the Government should not support the people. Federal aid in such cases encourages the expectation of paternal care on the part of the Government and weakens the sturdiness of our national character." * If any one believes that, after all, this whole question is a matter of slight importance, let him consider the following table and the notable increase in expenditures of this kind. The following is a record made up as nearly accurately as pos- sible from the Acts and Resolves of the various years from 1882 of the yearly sum of State gratuities to individuals, leaving out entirely payments made in the form of military or State aid as exceptions to the statutes, and also leaving out all payments of aid to private hospitals, etc. 1 1883, ch. 53 ; 1887, ch. 65 ; 1898, ch. 80. « 1896, ch. 85. » 1896, ch. 37. * Veto Message, Feb. 16, 1887.