Page:The Granite Monthly Volume 2.djvu/251

 CONGRESSIONAL PAPERS.

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��subject matter thereof, and may report a bill thereon upon the call of committees. A large number of bills are reported from committees of Invalid, and Revo- lutionary Pensions, Post Office and Post Roads, Commerce, Military Affairs," Claims, and War Claims. Petitions are introduced in the House by members who endorse their names on the back of the documents and place them in a box in front of the Speaker's desk, from which they are taken to the Peti- tion clerk, and thence distributed to the proper committees. Some of the petitions are huge rolls of manuscript, one of them in the second session of the Forty-fifth Congress containing the names of over 50,000 petitioners.

The New England temperance soci- eties petition for the suppression of the liquor traffic in the District of Colum- bia, in the firm belief that sound legis- lation cannot be had while Congressmen obtain the morning "eye-opener" and evening "night cap." All the old maids append their authographs to for- midable rolls of paper, insisting upon the abolition of polygamy in Utah, upon the ground, presumably, that a woman is entitled to a whole man, if she can get him, or none. The wool- growers of Vermont petition for an increase of the duties on foreign wool, and others in Michigan pray, just as earnestly, for its removal. Pennsylvania and New England petition that existing tariff laws shall not be tampered with ; while the South and West are equally clamorous for their modification or repeal. Among the "miscellaneous" are petitions from all classes of people for every conceivable object. One asks for an appropiation to test the efficacy of the theory that yellow fever and other similar diseases can be cured by the firing of cannon. Another believing, or assuming to believe that the light of the sun is soon to be extin- guished proposes to light the world after Old Sol has departed. Still another is wil- ling to accept a pension from the govern- ment for having succeeded, with the aid of his wife probably, in raising "one boy a year among the sand-hills of Florida," for several years past." The

��Common Council of Louisville ask the government "that the Howgate explor- ing expedition be directed to take the vessel making the exploration, after the colony leaves the same, out into the open Polar Sea and test the truth of of the Symmes theory, and that Ameri- cus Symmes, a son of the author of said theory, be permitted to go on said vessel — ."

A gentleman from New York with an eye upon posterity insists "that in the next census such necessary vital statis- tics be taken as will definitely settle all controversy upon the question of the effects upon the off-spring, of consan- guineous marriage."

Forty-nine teachers in Illinois, who are evidently willing that country shall be spelled with a " k," ask " for the appointment of a commission to inquire into the propriety of a simplification of English orthography."

Another gentleman thinks he can se- cure an intelligent ballot "by the pub- lication by the Government of a paper which shall be sent each week free to each family in the United States ; in which paper shall be printed in the course of the year the Constitution of the United States and df the several States, the proceedings of Congress, the duties of the officers of the Govern- ment and their salaries, the reports of all Government expenditures, the amount of money. received by the Gov- ernment, the purposes to which applied, a monthly statement of the public debt. "

The Lowell Operatives Reform So- ciety want a territory set apart where " monogamic law shall not prevail. "

A Maryland patriot wants pay for " two hogsheads of molasses destroyed by the British in 1814."

A Pennsylvania spinster, distressed by her lonely condition, and realizing the improbability of securing a man in any other way, asks Congress to enact a law, "compelling men to marry. "

An evangelist whose penmanship and orthography needs reorganizing, wants the "religgun of Exist " made universal by Congressional enactments.

The petition box is alike the recept-

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