CO129-383 - Public Offices - 1911 — Page 396

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sent to the violatory acts I have enumerated, by making its

Tossels return with the passengers who have been refused

This act, Mr Secretary, cannot be in any

admittance.

way held to be one of consent; infortunately, like every-

thing else which happened, it shows a condition of impo-

tence against the acts of a Government which, disposing of

all means of coercion exercised an irresistible pressure on

a company that could offer no opposition, and whore sole ob

ject wa to protect its commercial interests. It is a

well known principle of public law, that the waivers of th

benefits obtained under & contract, must be expressed in

writing; that they cannot be general and must be specific

with invocation of the laws which are waived. None of

these reisites have been fulfilled in the cases referrea

to by the Board of Health, and even granting that the wal-

vers had been made, they would be unquestionably void, ba-

cause it is an equally well known principle that the man-

dates of the public laws, amongst which is that of unques-

tioned preference, and which establish the rights of man,

cannot be waived either by the authorities or by the indl-

viduals of a corporation.

It has been very clearly demonstrated that there

was a violation if not an attack on individual guarantees

perpetrated by the sanitary Delegate who expelled the pus-

sengers from the National mer itory and returned them to

the steamers on which they had arrived. This return wab

made with the assistance of the military, in a way that is

not provided for in any part of the Constitution. What

is ingenuously called re-embarkation by the Delegato, was

the usurpation of a public office which is granted to the

Executive of the Union, the only one authorized to expel

for causes which certainly are not connected with the pub-

lic health, and in the case of pernicious foreigners. This

violation