The Portland daily press., 1870-12-10
THE PRESS.
SATURDAY. Morning, December TO- lSio'


Tho w,..;.,. Amateur Theatrica1s.
At Washington, D. C :, on Thursday, there
was repeated by special request The roaring
farce of repeating the franking privilege.
This "drama" has been brought o1t with
great success by the same company on num-
Der of previous occasions, and the applause
that has greeted the leading actors, their be-
ing called before the curtain Tor another two
wears and other substantial tokens of public
appreciation in the shape of newspaper puffs
and nominations for the Presidency, have en-
couraged them to repeat it.
At the last session, the House went through
the whole session with great solemnity,
though it is morally certain that it was per-
fectly we'll understood that the exhibition of
selEdenial, patriotism and public virtue was
rendered safe and inexpensive by the knowl-
edge that the Senate would refuse to concur.
The Senator's term of office being three times
as long as that of the Representative, he es-
capes that troublesome sense of immediate
responsibility that vexes the member of the
lower House. So it is not uncommon for a
tacit agreement to be made by means of which
the House is enabled to throw sops to the
popular Cerberus, and to get the same MEM
bers returned for succession of terms by an
essily beguiled and long suffering people.
Last session the farce was not well played by
the House. Members showed that they were
acting from sense of pressure and not from
sense OF duty, by going through even the
form of repeating the act with an ill grace,
angrily including in their bill provision cut
ting off newspapers from their free exchange
and forbidding the free circulation of coun-
try papers in the counties where they are
published. Though the prnc iple involved in
these latter exemptions is entirely different
from that by virtue Of which many honora-
BILE members frank everything but real es-
tate, the Representatives supposed that by
threatening to sweep them away with their
own cherished prerogative they would stop the
criticism OF the newspapers, those faithful
conservators of the public welfare. But to
their establishment the publishers of newspa-
pers, though they pointed out the folly of at
tempting to establish any logical connection
between the two things thus arbitrarily as
ISOLATED. were honest enough to continue to
preach crusade against the Thanking privi-
lege, even ifsome of their own interests were
thereby unfavorably affected. But the con-
venient preoccupation of the Senate! with
other matters prevented the virtuous gentle.
men of the House from offering themselves up
on the shrine of duty, as they intended-per-
haps.
This year the play is conducted more fairly.
The rightfnlness of the act is not to be OBJ
scured, we hope, by forcing it into an unnatu-
raj companionship with something altogether
foreign to it. The repeal seems to be a radi-
cal one, leaving not a vestige of the Thanking
privilege. Indeed, if we understand the re-
port Of Thursdays proceedings, the privilege
was so firmly rooted, and the agonies of its
separation from other cognate laws were so
terrible that when at length it was torn up it
took took the whole body of the postal laws
with it! This of course made the effect much
more dramatic and everyday admirable 1t
only remains for the Senate to continue to
appear in its traditional part of caution and
dignifed Inconsistencies. We wish that the
life of any given individual was in as little
danger from lightning as the ranking privi-
lege is from genuine repeal, by an act of
Congress.