Green-Mountain freeman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1844-1884, 1870-11-30
The Late Legislature.

Legislature has now passed into history, and
the good the General Assembly accomplished
will doubtless be found in the FREEMAN sup
PIGMENT, containing the main public acts
enacted at the recent session, and sent out
with this number of the paper. Let US
rustingly hope that the bad, if any such
tthore may have been done by that body, may
be buried with the adjournment and departure
of this representative embodiment of Vermont
virtue and Vermont wisdom. For certain
reasons not necessary to enumerate, we can
not now comment upon the acts of the late
Legislature, or speak of the members COM
posing it with that fullness and freedom
which perhaps, under other circumstances,
might have been both desirable and profitable
We give below what the Free Press-whose
editor most useful senator this session
the next morning after the adjournment,
said of the things done and left undone by
the Legislature;
At four o'clock Wednesday A. N. the Yer
mont Legislature, from an assemblage of the
" men most noted for wisdom and virtue >
-alack for the wisdom, if not for the virtue
baggers, homeward bound. The feshpots of
home proved stronger attractions than the
fieshpots of their Montpelier Egypt. The
adjournment was sine die, and it remains for
US to see what the fifty days of the first
biennial session have amounted to for good
or ill. We have space for but brief and
3hasty recapitulation.
To begin with the things not done, the
Legislature did not pass any listing law. An
L #
both Houses worked hard and long over the
subject, and near the close of session pre-
sented what to our minds was a very good
bill But it was pre-doomed from the start.
The House did, to its honor, in the session,
pass a simple bill, requiring listers to take
an oath of every taxpayer, and proyl ling
for new appraisal in 1872. This would
have given but two years life at most to the
appraisal of 1870, the last and worst one on
record, and permitted the State TO start
afresh, if it chose, on uniform and equal
standard of valuation. This was killed in
the Senate.
The general railroad law was not passed.
Its able author could not even carry his
special committee for it, and in common with
most of the railroad bills which were in any
way obnoxious to the existing railroad cor
porations, it failed, in the House.
The State constabulary bill was lost, in the
House.
Three or four interest bills, one of which
passed the Senate, modifying the usury law
in divers WAYS, were rejected by the House.
The only legal rate of interest in Vermont
remains six per cent, and of course, after
this expression of the Legislature, nobody
will take any more.
The bill to commute the punishment of
Henry Welcome, and the bill abolishing
capital punishment, both of which passed
the House by heavy majorities, failed in the
Senate.
The State was not redistricted, contingent
ly or otherwise.
OF things done, perhaps the most impor-
tant were the changes in the school laws.
These permit the towns to abolish school
districts and substitute the town system
provide for uniform examination of teachers
remove the restriction forbidding the en-
ployment of teachers after Nov, 1871,
unless they are provided with State GER
tifcate or normal school diploma raise the
lower limit of the school age of children
from four years to five; increase the time
for which schools must be maintained in
order to draw public money, from sixteen to
twenty weeks require a more detailed
@ehool eensH- make it the duty of district
committees and town boards to supply school
books to children whose parents cannot or
viii not supply them and provide means
lOF pressing Inc term OF exist
cnce of the three Normal Schools was ex-
tended for three years, and the appropria- |
tions for them increased to $1,000 apiece.
Among other important acts passed, was
one changing the forum for divorce trials |
from the Supreme to the County Courts, and
another relating to alimony, custody of chill |
dren, &c, in divorce cases.
A simplifed general law for the forming of
private corporations by voluntary association
was passed.
The next election of Congressman was
postponed to Nov. 1872. A re-apportion-
ment Of State Senators made, giving four to
Rutland county and reducing Washington
county to two.
State tax of so cents on the dollar was
laid, and appropriations of $4,000 for the
Reform School 1925 900 of it for a new
building) for paying off the maturing bonds,
and for State expenses, were made.
Bills requiring claimants of seized liquor
to give bonds to prosecute their claim, and
forbidding evasion of penalty by newly
discovered use of demurrers, were passed.
Several other proposed notifications of the
liquor law failed.
OF some $40 bills introduced, 800 odd be-
came laws. The Legislature passed fish bills
and private charters without number. Ii
passed bill permitting highway surveyors
TO pick smal! stones out of the roads 1t
did nothing TO modify our odiOus attachment
law. 1t did nothing toward improving our
Jail system. 1t did nothing to improve the
listing laws.
Two bills were vetoed by the Governor
one in relation to collection of taxes, being
the Same bill in reference to that matter
vetoed by Gov. w ashburn last year and one
concerning salary of State Treasurer, which
was a duplicate of a section in another bill
which was approved.
The press generally of the State have not
spoken Of the recent Legislature and their
acts with the respect and reverence which is
always desirable to have entertained towards
a legislative or law-making body. 1t is per-
haps true that the late session has not fully
answered public expectation, and it will be
well indeed if each individual member has
that quiet consciousness of duties well and
faithfully performed that is said TO make
amends for all lack of popular commendation
and praise.
In some respects the House of Representa-
tives was singularly constituted. 1t was not,
so to speak, a homogeneous body. Its mem
bers held diverse and antagonistic views, and
it seemed to outsiders that certain members
delighted to make the breach wide as pos
sible between themselves and brother mem
bers, unless their pet m easures were at once
accepted. Italmost appeared only necessary
for certain ones to introduce or favor acts of
legislation to insure a general bouncing upon
aud ruthless slaughter, if possible, of such
measures. The House was FESTIVE lest it
should be accredited with being under lead
ership, or having leader or leaders,-as
prominent and trusted legislators are some