419. APPROPRIATIONS, Executive power over.—
The Executive * * * has the
power, though not the right, to apply money contrary to its legal appropriations. Cases May
be imagined, however, where it would be their duty to do this. But they must be cases of
extreme necessity. The payment of interest
to the domestic creditors has been mentioned
as one of the causes of diverting the foreign
fund. But this is not an object of greater necessity
than that to which it was legally appropriated.
It is taking the money from our
foreign creditors to pay it to the domestic
ones; a preference which neither justice,
gratitude, nor the estimation in which these
two descriptions of creditors are held in this
country will justify. The payment of the
Army and the daily expenses of the government
have been also mentioned as objects of
withdrawing this money. These indeed are
pressing objects, and might produce that degree
of distressing necessity which would be
a justification.—
To President Washington.
Ford ed., vi, 176.
(Pa.,
1793)
