The Arkansas banner., 1846-04-01
! REN ARNS or MR ASIILEY,
 h the Senate, l2 .March IS46, on the rePol
ofHe commissioner of pafenis.

port iIom the Committee on Printing, in favor O the printing of25,000 copies of the recent report o the Commissioner of Patents, without the list 'ot patents, and the amendments thereto; one to print I5ae0, and the other to I0,OB8 copies only.
 Mr. ASHLEY remarked that he deemed 1t proper to explain the motives which had induced him to make the motion It would | be recolleeted that this was an agricultural So perhaps than any ather na ton on the face oi the earth. By the returns of the last census, ii was shown that more than four-fiths of the whole populauon-at least s per cenl.-werc engaged Tn agrlcul- tural pursuits; leaving F per cent only en- gagged in mercantile, manufacturing, and other pursuits Or that number, al least four millions were male operatives engaged in the cultivation ol the soa. And he would ask 5whai supply would 25.000 copies of ihe re- port furnish to that number? Honorable senators could easily perceive how made quate would be the supply-inlniely less than the proportion of the public printing applied to the benefit of other classes of the community. Nearly the whole of the pub lie printing for years past had been for the benefit of the small seclion-the l7 per cent.
 
 had been made for the benefit of the com mercial interests and the manufactures; and some reports had been made and printed at no inconsderable expense for what purpose it would be indeed difficult to tell. 1t had been said that these documents were drug on the hands oE the government and were sold at two cents pound to lhe grocers. He hhl no hesitation in saying that whatever might be the fact witl regard to other doeu- ments. il was not true with regard to the re- port of the Commissioner ot Patents, that it was a drug in. the hands of the government. IL was sought for with the utmost aYldlty by the agricultural community, and indeed by the whole community, for it contained mat ter of interest, not only to the agricullurisis, but 10 all engaged in the mechanic arts. It was more important and valuable 10 the great masses of the people, than all the rest of the documents printed by order of Congress. But the honorable senator from Connecticut,
 Ar NILES, asserted that the matter oi the report could De obtained from other sources -insinuating, probably, that the scissors had been chiefly employed ia it's preparation. He Mr. Al supposed that the senator had not taken the pains of examining the doeu- meut. If he had done SO, he would have found that nine-tenths of the contents of the report were original, and issned from the pa tent office exclusively, being gathered in res- ponse to enquiries made by themselves. All the matter relating to the improvement aud promotion of agricultural science had been obtained i'll response to inquiries instituted by the patent office. He was ready to admit that some of the matter might have been con- densed into sn~lller space. But as 1t was, 1t was the most important document that could be circulated amongst the agricultural classes. Some genilemen-he did not re- collect exactly who Il was--Seemed 10 doubt the conslitutionality of printing extra nuu- bers of any public document; that the con stituton required that the number of copies should be limited to that requisite to aid the legislation of Congress. If this were so, all he could say was, that they had uniformly been in the habit Of departing widely from the provisions of the constitution in that particular But he did not think that the view was at all correct. He apprehended that il was legitimate and proper for them to make any publication calculated to dssemi- nate information throughout the masses of the community, and for the benefit of the great interests which the Senate represented. He had no objection to establish an agriculiu. ral department, as one gentlemen had sug- gested. If there were no constitutional pro vision in the way, he had no objection to appropriate llberaIly for all agricultural de partment that should take the special super vision of the agricultural interests of the whole country-lnst as they now did the commerce and manufactures of the country. He apprehended that legislation for the bene- fit of the S3 per cent. would be quite as le gilimate and proper as the legislation for the l7 per cent. Let them go back to seven years past, and sec the amount expended for public printing. Mr. A. here went into a number of details of the items expended for the printing of public documents for the last seven years, for the purpose ot showing the large expenditure for reports and documents not of general interest, as he copended, or at least not by any means so,Valuable and ia- teresting to the majority of the people as the report of the Commissioner of Patents, He did not find fault with these appropriations
 -He did not quarrel with the large expendi- tnres for Wilkes narrative, or Fremout's report, for insance-but he cOntended that in justice to the interests of the great mass of the people, liberal appropriation should be made for the dillusion amongst them of valuable information immediately bearing on the pursuits in which they were engaged He trusted that the report of the committee would prevail He had heard 1t stated that tfis report of the Commissioner of Patents contained something on political matters He was informed by gentleman on the other side of the Senate, who had taken pains to inquire at the proper quarter whether there were anything of political nature in the report-any Bundelcundsms--and he was assured that there was nothing of the sort = nothing whatever in relation 10 the tariff nothing in relation to the questions that divi- ded the democratic party and the whig party, it was solely confined to the agricultural and other subjects of which it prolessed to treat. Before setting down, he would beg leave to say that if, after the rabiioatien of the ordi nary number, 1t should be found that the docum It was of the value that il was repre- sented to be, he would ask at some future day for an increase of the number, even of