Morning journal and courier., 1880-09-15


 on the wisdom of exchanging a few lawyers in Congress for business men. Out of 293 members of the present House of Represen- tatives he found 220 to be lawyers. He found that the commercial classes, viz: the merchants, manufacturers, miners, import ers ship-owners and managers of transporta- Eon by land or water, bankers and capitalists, all these vast mercantile and industrial inter- ests, were represented there by just twenty four members. His experience in appearing before committee and trying to instruct it in the matter in which business men were in- terested Ecompels him to ask if we ''had not better elect the so much needed practical knowledge and life experience of commercial matters and material things into Congress, than to continue these hopeless efforts to in ject it by communications and by hearings before these inert committees?" He thinks it better to reverse the clements, and elect to Congress 22O commercial men and twenty four lawyers. He points out that only one tenth of the House of Commons are lawyers and one-fourth of the Canadian Parliament. On the whole he regards the smaller figure as large enough for the American Congress, and quotes de Tocqueville to show that the law yers are specialists, ''whose motion of their own superiority inspires them with @ certain contempt for the judgment of the multitude. !"
 Senator Edmunds is supposed to know something about the laws of the United of his speeches in Vermont he made one statements concerning the danger that rebel claims would be paid if the Democrats should come into power, which statements did not please 8 Democratic editor. This editor pitched into him" and this is part of his reply: ''I fear the editor of the Grand Rapids Democrat is not very hungry to find Fourteenth amendment covers in point of law. The rebel claims referred to are not claims of rebels for aiding the rebellion but for property, amounting altogether to hun dreds and probably thousands, of millions, taken or destroyed by armies of the United States, and therefore the moment the test of loyalty of &ny claimant is repealed, the claim of the rebel stands exactly like the claim of any other citizen against the government on dCCOuAI O1 1bb hCb1Ou, anu AOt Oh uSSOuAD VI the action of the rebel authorities. The Democrats in Congress have tried time after time to repeal this distinction in respect of claims of loyal and disloyal persons, and they have bills now pending in the Senate to effect that object, and they will effect it by 8 solid or nearly solid Democratic vote the moment they get possession of all the departments of the government As to rebel pensions, the editor of the Democrat, if he will reflect a little, will, I am sure, agree that pension does not in any case fall within the descrip- tion of any debt or obligation, and if so, it is not within the prohibition of the Four teenth amendment. A pension is and always has been granted upon the ground of bounty or gratitude, and not of legal obligation. It is perfectly clear, therefore, that the Consti- tuition does not stand in the way of Congress pensioning every rebel soldier or soldiers widow and children, or, indeed, every other rebel, if it pleases. But we shall continue to hear that there is no way in which these claims and pensions could be paid, even if anybody wanted them to be-