The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1885-02-23
TALMAGE WRITES A LETTER.
The Preachers Reply to the Action Of the
Members of the New Jersey Legislature.
BROOKLYN, Feb. 20. 1885.

BROOKLYN, Feb. 20, 1885.
To the Legislature of the State of New Jersey:
quote the following elegant extract from the
report of your session as printed on the morning
of March 81 1884, which report find, after full
| investigation, is accurate:
'Mr. Harrigan then walked to the Speakers
desk and said: This matter ought to be setSAed.
1.-The Speaker-Ive stood this long enough.
This is the second time those Essex men have
defied me and am id if I'll stand it
Here Mr.. Fish came I'D, and the Speaker
continued to him: don't want to say anything
to you or hear anything and I'm ID if will.
Ii I'd been sergeant-at-arms, I'd have put you
out of the House
mo you wouldn't, unless you carried me,
said Mr.. Fish
".Then, -, I'd have carried your
mr.. Burgess next spoke to the Speaker when
the latter said: BY -, if you want to talk to
me, talk on the floor of the Housed"
Last Tuesday, and nearly year after this re-
port, you fly into a rage at something l am al
legged to have said in regard to the behavior of
some of your members on that occasion.
Let me first except the honorable members of
your Legislature, the gentlemen who worthy
of their important positions. and who WILL once
for all, understand that I do not mean them.
Next, let me express my utter contempt for the
1884, and who, on the second occasion, last Tues
day, made such an asinine exhibition of them
selves To what depth has the New Jersey
Legislature fallen Shades of Samuel H. Southland,
and William L. Dayton and Theodore Freling
huysen rebuke them The language used by some
Of your members in March, 1884, would disgrace
muledriver on the tow-path of
your Raritan canal. You have no right
by your vulgar behavior to depreciate State
which many of us proud to call the place of
our nativity, and in whose legislatures have
been many whom we have loved and honored,
among them my own father AS to your charge
that seek notorety In attacking you. that is
absurd. No one for such purpose would assai
such insignificant men as those who went into
that legislative wrangle and INDUCED in such
scurrity. | never saw their names before, and
probably will never them again, unless
lind them some morning in the calendar OF the
police court Surely if l wanted a reputation
for skillful hunting [ would not go to shooting
muskrats.
AS the resolutions against me offered in your
body are said to have been withdrawn, l sug
gest the following resolutions as a substitute, to
be passed by you Immediately:
Resolved, That the members of the New Jersey
Legislature, who put themselves into everlasting dis
grace by the indecent and profane behavior on the
25th of March 1884 be requested to resign, if they
still belong to this body or if refusing to do so, that
political accidents who have crawled into official po-
stion.
Resolved Thai the swearing blanks be filed up in
the report of the session of March, 1884 and that the
precious document be hung up over the Speakers
chair warning to all legislatures of the possible
depths Of degradation to which members may fall
Resolved, That we deplore the idiocy of our
socates in exhuming this legislative scandal which
had been buried eleven months and advertising it to all
the world and that the members responsible for this
be committee to fumigate hall and sprinkle
themselves with carbolic acid as disinfectant.
After you have passed the above resolutions,
please send me a copy, as | shall see that each
one of you gets copy of this letter. and thus it
will be an exchange of courtesies.
The only merciful explanation of the behavior
of March, 1884, is that the members may have
been over-stimulated by crooked whisky, com
monty called New Jersey lightning" and they
knew not what they were doing. Or has your
body so degenerated that profanity is no more
noticed, and your moral olfactories have been so
| toughened that you do not observe the nalodor
of March. 1892 Or, have those members
| banded together to falsify about that whichl6
monumental shame for my beloved New Jersey?
The fact that they next day expunged by
unanimous vote, the whole affair from their
| records, did not expunge it from the memory Of
the people
AS these, my acrimonious antagonistists,
threaten me with lawsuit and arragnment be-
fore the bar of their house, l will say that am
at home, No. South Oxford street, Brooklyn,
every evening, when in the city, at o'clock, and
will be ready to receive any document they wish
to serve on me; or If they want me to appear be-
fore the bar of their House, although 1 am not
under their jurisdiction and would not answer
to formal summons, on polite invitation Or. S.
V. P J l would come in pure missionary spirit,
and teach them lesson in common decency
which they are woefully in need of learning.
Mathematical problem: If the report of an
old sermon the contents of which have forget
ten, throws New Jersey Legislature into such
CONSERVATION and paroxyism, how many thou
sand feet into the air would they be blown by
new sermon on legislative outrages?
T. DEWITT TALMAGE