The Republican. [volume] (Oakland, Md.) 1877-current, 1884-02-09
OUR WASHINGTON LETTER.


though, of course, a good deal or bus
mess has been considered by the COM
mittees. The tariff reform measures
that were supposed to be the basis
upon which the House of Representa-
tives was organized have not yet
made their appearance. Both Mr..
Morrison and Mr.. Hewitt, however,
are said to be in labor. There are,
also. the appropriation bills, which
Mr.. Ran1all's committee was said to
have ready to rush forward immedi-
ately after the recess, still in the back
ground, not one having yet been re-
ported. 1t is now said that Mr.. Ran
dall's purpose was only to get these
bills ready to report with all possible
haste and then hold them in hand as
weapon against Mr., Morrison's tar
if bills. The Appropriations Com
mittee is one of high privilege under
the rules, having the right of way at
all times with its reports, and Mr..
Randall can therefore, with his thir-
teen or fourteen appropriation bills,
bother the Ways and Means Commit
tee through a good part of the session.
if so disposed. The railroad lobby
and the whiskey lobby are getting in
their work on the sly, but theindica-
lions are rather against both. The
whiskey men may get through their
extension of time bill, giving them
relief from the taxes falling due July
first, but the railroad IMMIGRANTS Will
have to come to the scratch.
While the House committee is
wrestling with this branch of the sub
ject, a sly resolution of inquiry in the
Senate has no little significance. The
Supreme Court of the United States
is the supreme Judicial authority in
cases where the railroad companies
find it convenient to so recognize 1t.
and when they do not they can al
ways find elsewhere such legal author
ity as suits the exigency of a necessi-
ty of revising the Supreme Court.
Eight years ago the court decided
that when Congress gave a railroad
company every alternate section of
Government land for prescribed
distance from its track, it gave only
that to which the government had an
unquestioned title. This decision,
which was announced in the Leaven-
worth, Lawrence & Galveston case,
was assumed to be guide tor the fu-
ture practice of the Land Office, and
doubtless was until the railroads got
after Mr.. Schurz. who, upon apply
ing to Attorney General Devens for
an opinion, obtained one which suit
ed the railroads a great deal better
than that of the Supreme Court. 1t
was upon this last opinion of the At
torney General that the Interior De.
partment resumed its former practice,
which gives railroad companies in.
demnity for the loss of immense
tracts of land that they never owned
and which the supreme Court said
was never given them. The Senate
inquiry above referred to, seeks to
find out if this practice of the depart
ment still continues.
Mr.. Cox's Test-oath bill will have
the last line of it chopped off by the
Republican Senators. The last line
provides that hereafter no person
shall be required to take the iron clad
oath as condition precedent to the
holding of any Office or the acquire
ment of any right under the law of
the United States. A Senate men,
Der of the Judiciary Committee said
that the last phrase in the bill, if it
should become law, would restore
Jefferson Davis to the rights of citi-
zenship and permit the appointment
of ex-Confederates to places in the
army or in the navy. The Senatorial
critic also held that this smooth, in
nocentlooking phrase made possible
the bringing suit in the Court oil
Claims to recover claims now disbar-
red upon the ground of the disloyalty
of the claimant. There does not APP.
pear to be in the Senate any objec-
ton to the general repeal of the test
oath proper, but the line above men
toned will certainly be cut off.
Some idea of the magnitude of the
Census Report may he gathered from
the statement that 1856 pages of the
statistical part of the book have al
ready been stereotyped, with 544
more in type. To this volume is to
be added the population volume,
comprising 1850 pages, with IA col.
ored maps and any quantity of maps
and charts in black. This will be a
delightful volume when completed,
and will enable the future genera.
tions who will get a chance at its
pages to while away many leisure
hour in the researches for the num-
Der and origin of the Berkshire pork
err, the Attorney short horns, and the
Guelph stations. Of the two-legged
, mammalia, of which we form part,
the census volume, huge as it is, takes
not much account, probably because