Show THE ALCOHOL GRIEVANCE I The second Cleveland administration I was an era of undisguised contempt for I law on the part of tho Executive The I I President and his Secretaries enforced or ignored l 1 icli Congress as happened to suit their convenience or their pre judices A most flagrant example of this lawlessness Is recalled by the bills S 22S3 and H R 57C5 introduced respectively re-spectively by Senator Platt of Connecticut I Connecti-cut and Representative Russell of I Connecticut for the relief of the manufacturers manu-facturers who were taxed on the alcohol i j used In their processes when the Wilson revenue law expressly exempted them The law provided that manufacturers I using alcohol in tho arts should receive rebates of the taxe8 paid under regulations regula-tions to be prescribed by the Secretary f of the Treasury There were thirtynine other provisions of the same sort in the I same act In all these Secretary Car Hrle duly framed the necessary rcgula I tlon but he calmly refused to do so In the case of alcohol on the ground that no special appropriation had been made I to carry out this section of the law The result was that the manufacturers who had made contracts to sell goods at reduced re-duced prices on the faith of the Governments Gov-ernments promise to relieve them of taxation on their materials found their profits wiped out by the Secretarys refusal re-fusal to obey the commands of Congress Con-gress The pending bills have been Introduced Intro-duced to remedy this injustice They provide that in any suit brought to recover re-cover tho promised rebates the failure I of the Secretary of the Treasury to prescribe pre-scribe regulations as required by law shall not operate as a defense on the part oC the Government That seems I no more than fair New York Journal |