Clarksville weekly chronicle. (Clarksville, Tenn.) 1873-1890, 1882-02-18
OUR wAsHrNGToN LETTER.
THE LEGISLATIVE DECENTRALIZATION
BUILDING A NAvY.--A PLAN TO
DISPOSE OF PRIVATE BILLS.
tFrcm our regular Correspondent.y

DISPOSE OF PRIVATE BILLS.
(Frcm our regular Correspondent.)
Congress has sufficiently outlined its
programme to enable those who are
well acquainted with the history and
precedents OF political legislation in
this country to predict what it will do
and what it will leave undone. It will
pass the appropriation bills, of course;
the machinery of government must be
fabricated. The tariff question is to
be evaded for the present by referring
it to a committee, outside OF Congress,
for investigation. 1t is believed that
something will be done to increase the
strength and efficiency of our navy, and
the opinion among naval experts is
that our service and our necessities
will not be best supplied by monster
iron-clads, like those which have been
built by England, Germany and Italy
in the last fifteen years, but by num-
Der OF powerful, though smaller, swift
sailing and easily maneuvered vessels
that will be able to overtake a weaker
antagonist, and to escape from the more
formidable but unwieldy ships with
which the navies of the old world have
been recruited. 1t is the opinion of
we'll informed naval officers here, that
since our national policy is defensive
and not aggressive, we may with COM
parative safety rely on torpedoes for
the defense of our ports, and that, with
twenty-five or thirty vessels of a high
degree OF speed, each armed with one
long range steel gun, we will be so
formidable to the merchant marine of
the great naval powers of Europe, that
they will think twice before they attack
US. 1t is plain that the naval policies
OF the European powers should not be
followed without modification by US;
their cumbersome irOn-clads are very
formidable to the coast cities of Europe
and they would be very dangerous to
our coast cities if they were only ON
this side the Atlantic; but the problem
is to bring them here. By far the most
comfortable place for these unwieldy
iron, coffin-like monsters, with their
bellies full of fire and machinery, is the
placid surface of land locked harbor.
| have seen even the officers and sailors
OF first-class ocean steamer sick from
the incessant heaving of the Atlantic;
and by the time one OF those i'll venti-
lated metallic "black holes could reach
these shores, the crew would be filter
to take hospital than city.
Mr.. Dunnell, of Maine, has introduced
a bill in Congress similar to a measure
recently urged by Mr.. Springer, of
Illinois, and by the late Clqrkson N.
Potter, of New York. It's object is to
rid Congress OF the incubus of petty
personal legislation, and to have claims
against the government adjudicated by
a court or courts, constituted for this
purpose. Mr.. Springer, in a recent
speech, showed that personal legisla-
ton was prohibited by the constitutions
OF New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois
and most of the other great States, and
that this prohibition had reduced the
volume of their statutes nearly ninety
per cent 1t is absurd to expect the |
legislature of 50OO0,000 of people, con-
frOnted with momentous questions of !
domestic and foreign policy, to act as
a court for the settlement Of private |
claims against the government. Over
four thousand bills, most of them of Il
personal and private character, have |
already been introduced during this
session OF Congress, and the necessity |
of such measure as that proposed by |
Mr.. Dunnell is urgently felt.