Roger B. Taney

“ Suppose the Court had deemed the act required by the resolution in question a fit subject for a mandamus, and, in expounding it, had determined that the rations and emlouments of the officer were to be considered in calculating the half-pay? We can readily imagine the confusion and disorder into which such a decision would throw the whole subject of pensions and half-pay; which now forms so large a portion of the annual expenditure of the government, and is distributed among such a multitude of individuals. ”

“ He must exercise his judgment in expounding the laws and resolutions of Congress, under which he is from time to time required to act. If he doubts, he has a right to call on the Attorney General to assist him with his counsel; and it would be difficult to imagine why a legal adviser was provided by law for the heads of departments, as well as for the President, unless their duties were regarded as executive in which judgment and discretion were to be exercised. ”

“ The assumption of powers need not be pushed further, to let suitors enough into the Court to consume the time and absorb the attention of the secretaries; a principal business of theirs presently must be, to sit at the bar of the Court to ward off its mandate, and keep its officers from forcing the money out of the public treasury ”

“ This will present to the Court, in case they should assume the jurisdiction, and decide in favour of the petitioner, a question under the pension laws as to the construction of the words 'half the pay' and 'half the monthly pay,' in those acts of Congress. The uniform construction of all these laws, in all the departments of the government, has invariably been such as to confine the pension to the pay proper; the expression being in all these acts 'pay,' and not pay and rations, or pay and emoluments. ”

“ Applying these principles, we must admit, that where a pension to the widow of a deceased officer is given, and subsequently thereto a pension is allowed to all such widows, including by its terms the one for whom the special act was passed, it is to be taken as one general provision. ”

“ The idea that they are distinct, and their duties separate, is confounded, if the jurisdiction of the Court below is sustained; placing the executive power at its mercy, in case of all contested claims. Few can be more contested than the one before us; if jurisdiction can be exercised in this instance, it is difficult to see in what others it does not exist; to establish which, we will briefly recapitulate the leading facts. On the 3d of March, 1837, a resolution was passed by Congress giving a pension of the half-pay of the late Captain Decatur, to the petitioner, his widow ”

“ And after all this was done, he must have inquired into the condition of the navy pension fund, and the claims upon it, in order to ascertain whether there was money enough to pay all the demands upon it; and if not money enough, how it was to be apportioned among the parties entitled. A resolution of Congress, requiring the exercise of so much judgment and investigation, can, with no propriety, be said to command a mere ministerial act to be done by the Secretary. ”

“ Much less is it so, when the effect of such interference must be to require a revision of decisions previously made in the most deliberate manner, and to oblige every incumbent of an office, already laborious, to investigate and open anew, without the exhibition of additional facts, subjects that have been already fully and finally decided. ”

“ The application by Mrs. Decatur to Secretary Dickerson, to pay her a double pension, the one under the general act, and the other under the special resolution, was refused by the advice of the Attorney General; and she received the sum to which she was entitled under the former, without, however, waiving her claim to the latter. She subsequently applied to Secretary Paulding, the defendant in error, to revise this decision of his predecessor, which he declined to do ”

“ The general provision embraces and controls the special one. This arises from two well established principles in regard to statutes: that all legislative provisions on the same subject are to be taken together ”

“ Decatur should be paid the eighteen thousand five hundred and ninety-seven dollars, and that the true construction of the acts of Congress was, that the widows and orphans pensioned on the navy fund should receive, in addition to the half-monthly pay, half rations, and interest on the arrearages ”

“ She claims by her petition, not only the half-monthly pay proper of a post captain of the navy, but for daily rations, eight, at twenty-five cents each, amounting to one-half of seven hundred and thirty dollars per annum ”

“ A more complicated and difficult lawsuit than is found in this cause, rarely comes before a Court of justice; and to be compelled to defend which the Secretary protests; 'Because such jurisdiction in this Court would, if assumed, operate as such an interference with the discharge of the official duties of the undersigned, as to make it impossible for him to perform them as required and intended; and would transfer to the said Court the discharge of the said duties, and the whole management and disposition of the said fund ”

“ Albans vs. Beauclerk, 2 Atkyns, 638, where the same sum was given to the same person in two codicils, it was held to be but one legacy; and that even a greater sum to the same person is only an augmentation, not a second legacy. In James vs. Semmes, 2 H. Blackstone, 213, an annuity of the same sum to the same person, in a will, and afterwards in a codicil, was held to be but one, because made chargeable on the same fund. In Allen vs. Callow, 3 Vesey, 289, a legacy was given to a child named, and by a codicil the same sum to the children generally ”