Staunton spectator. [volume] (Staunton, Va.) 1849-1896, 1889-12-11

OF the immense amount of business before
1t and also recommends an increase in the
salaries of the district judges.
Combinations of capital commonly called
trusts, should. he says, be made the sub.
Ject of prohibitory and even penal legisla-
tion.
Our naturalization laws, he says, should
De SO revised as to make the inquiry into
the moral character and good disposition
towards our government of the persons ap.
plying for citizenship more thorough.
The enactment of national bankrupt
law is suggested.
he favors more rapid increase in the
number OF serviceable ships of the navy
and concurs in the recommendation of the
secretary for the construction of additional
war ships. He recommends that Congress
grant pension to such honorably dis
charged soldiers and sailors of the civil
war as are dependent upon their own labor
for maintenance, and who by disease or
casualty are incapacited from earning it.
Many of tho men who would be included
in this form of relief are now dependent
upon public aid, and it does not, in his
Judgment, comport with the national honor
that they shall continue to subsist upon the
local relief given to paupers.
He recommends that the weather service
be separated from the War Department
and established as bureau in the Depart
ment of Agriculture. He favors laws regu-
lating the sale of intoxicating drinks in the
District, and suggests that they be revised
with a view to bringing the traffic under
stringent limitations and control
He favors the proposition to observe the
four hundredth anniversary of the discovery
of America by the opening of a worlds ex-
position in some one of our great cities.
In reference to the civil service law he
says it will be his pleasure,a as it is his duty,
to see that the law is executed with firm
ness and impartiality. If some of its pro-
visions have been fraudulently evaded our
resentment should not suggest the repeal
of the law, but reform in It's administration
Instead of land grants tor educational
purposes he recommends an appropriation
for this purpose but slimited in annual
amount aud as to the time over which it is
to extend, as will, on the one hand, give
the local school authorities opportunity to
make the best use of the first years allow
ance, and on the other deliver them from
the temptation to unduly postpone the as
sumption of the whole burden themselves
He says that in many parts of the coun-
try where the colored population is large
the people of that race are deprived of ef-
fective exercise Of their political rights and
many of their civil rights. The colored
map, he says, should be protected in all of
his relations to the federal government,
whether as litigant, juror, or witness in our
courts, as an elector for members of Con-
gress, or as a peaceful traveller upon our
Interstate railways. He invokes the atteu-
ton of Congress to the consideration of
slch measures as will secure to all our peo-
pie free exercise of the right of suffrage
and every other civil right under the Con-
stitution.
The power TO take the whole control of
the election of members Of the House of
Representatives is, be says, clearly given to
the general government A qualified super
vision of these elections, in his opinion,
would secure better results than can be at
tanned by law taking all the processes into
federal control.
There is nothing, he says, more humiliat-
ing than the inferiority Of our merchant
marine as compared with that of other ma
tious, and recommends that appropriations
be made fer mail service, in American
steamships, between cur ports and those of
Central and South America, China, Japan,
and the important islands in both oceans.
The enlargement of our merchant marine,
the development of a sufficient body of
trained American seamen, and the adapta-
tion of large and swift American steam
ships to naval usee, in time of war, are, he
says, public purposes of the highest con-
Germ.