Arizona republican., 1899-01-08
ONE OF MoRRILL's sATIREs.
The Opening of Remarkable Speech
 He Made Years Ago

Senator Morrill, Of Vermont, whcse death has just been announced, w6s one of the dearest headed and wittiest members of the senate. Four years ago, when he had long passed four score years, he made a remarkable speech in the senate, taking for his topic Some Marvellous Senatorial Bills and Quack Panaceas for Real and Imaginary Grie- vancSs." This speech was provoked by nine crazy financial measures, chiefly introduced by the lcng-whiskered pop ulist, Peffer of Kansas, which were re ported, adversely, of course, by the finance committee. Senator Merrill called attention to the fact that these bills, if enacted into law, would call for the expenditure by. the government of the stupendous sum of 931a billion dol lars in legal tender money. The speech did more than anything else to expose the folly of the pCpulist financial schemes, and in opening his remarks Senator Morrill, convulsed the senate by saying: Ut is hardly necessary to say these hungry bills, big, bigger and big gest, nine of them, asking for nine or ten times more money than there Is
 
 unanimously reported adversely by the committee on finance. Nothing more, as the committee conceived, could have been expected, save brief pcst-mortem obituaries. The bills, many of them, may have been reluctantly introduced by request, and therefore not tenderly nursed, even by their able and eminent godfather. Respons. bility for such e. centTicities ought not to be asked of senators, and should any member be charged with their real authorship l hope we should be able to plead in de- fense an alibi.
 With no reasons offered for the in troduction of these billion dollar bills, sufficient reason for the adverse re- port would appear to have been that they were all death-stricken from an overdose of the legal tender nostrum at their birth, administered by the ac coucheur. One of these bills proposed an issue of legal tender money forty times greater per capita than any we have ever had; another to purchase all the silver bullion that may he offered at $129 per ounce, though it f2tches now in any market only 62 cents per ounce. Ffguratively speaking. the bills were all of one brcod and Of the same feath er-birds of imitation, none game, EoIe worth a charge ot pOWGer, put leglSla- tive dodoes, unlikely to be ever seen on the earth again. No enc who reads these bills will need to be further bor5d by arguments fer their condemnation without benefit of clergy. do not sup pose there are more vagaries or pO1lti cal tomfooleries put at1oat here than in other countries. Occasionally they come forth here without fatheihood, frisk about through dog days, and then dis appear, leaving no bubbles in sight to show where they sank. We have some imposing financial theories wearing the mask of political ref-rm and sure to give the world the millennium and not more so than was the philosophers stone to turn everything it touched into gold. The eagerness of many pclittc ians and cf some parties in the minor ity. to obtain ascendancy in the control Of public affairs leads them tc present rretentious and kite-fying platforms fer popula- support. which after the gusty winds Of 3 single season, ccly ia tally baWAch anttquated of1cezeekers. wirepulle with no wires to pull, and a few juvdSlle cranks tarrying at Jeri- cho, "-Frdsn New YoRk Dispatch,