142 



CONGRESS, UNITED STATES. 



horse, wagon, or stage-coach. How is this 

 done ? Not by the sign-manual of the person, 

 not as the honorable Senator from Illinois is 

 compelled to frank, what he is not privileged 

 to frank, but compelled to frank in the course 

 of his duty, by putting his name broadly upon 

 it and the title of his office, so that everybody 

 may know exactly the individual from whom 

 that frank comes, but by placing upon it a 

 printed stamp as good in the hands of one man 

 as in the bauds of another, a stamp which like 

 money has no color, and leaves no track and 

 no trace. 



" I believe the Senator from Vermont [Mr. 

 Edmunds] said that the men who make the 

 laws are picked out as the only public ser- 

 vants unsafe to be trusted with franking offi- 

 cial matter ; and they whose business is, not 

 even to interpret the laws but only to ex- 

 ecute them, and that not only in the highest 

 but in the most paltry function, they en masge, 

 not some of them, but all of them without ex- 

 ception, are denoted by the law as safe and 

 proper trustees and custodians of this franking 

 power. And then, as if to cap the climax of 

 absurdity, they are to do it, not by making a 

 mark, not by putting an initial, not by signing 

 a name, not by leaving a track or trace by 

 which they can be known, but by an anony- 

 mous printed stamp, which one man's hands 

 as well as another's can affix to a document. 

 Thus you have it said that a Senator or Repre- 

 sentative is not fit, although he signs his name, 

 to exert this power, and that any and every 

 other officer of the Government is fit without 

 any sort of responsibility connected with the 

 act, or any mode of identifying him ; and thus, 

 as might not unnaturally be supposed, although 

 I should like to know, if I could, without pry- 

 ing into it unduly, from which department 

 such a speech as the Senator refers to came, 

 and who was the author of that speech, it 

 turns out that speeches oratorical, political, 

 didactic discourses made by we know not 

 whom, whether as electioneering documents 

 for a party or electioneering documents for an 

 individual, are sent out, not I infer in an ex- 

 ceptional case to the Senator from Arkansas, 

 but sent out generally. It is possible that the 

 Senator from Arkansas, ardent and well known 

 as he is as a supporter of the present Admin- 

 istration, may have been selected from pure 

 favoritism and a little compliment and decora- 

 tion sent to him, a speech with an official 

 frank, perhaps intended to make the Senator 

 from Arkansas feel good, to let him under- 

 stand that he was on a footing with ' the most 

 favored nations,' that compliments and atten- 

 tions were paid to him such as are withheld 

 not only from the rest of his fellow-citizens 

 but even from his brother Senators. But mak- 

 ing all allowance for the distinction of the Sen- 

 ator, making deduction for his intimate rela- 

 tions with those who wield this franking priv- 

 ilege, I take it that the result of his statement 

 is that generally and at large this particular 



mail -matter to which he has referred was 

 transmitted through the mail. 



" Mr. President, I submit that if a condition 

 of things could exist which would show plainly 

 and clearly the peremptory and urgent duty of 

 changing this condition of the statute, here it 

 is. If any Senator will affirm by a bill that 

 the franking privilege should be cut off alto- 

 gether, that there shall be a special account of 

 postage in every department, that each shall 

 pay its postage and have it charged to that 

 fund, so be it. I will not say I will vote for 

 it, but I say it will be respectable compar- 

 atively ; but to leave the law to stand as it 

 does now, to leave the Senator from Illinois 

 to be mulcted because he happens to come 

 from a large and populous State, and because 

 he happens to have been a distinguished mili- 

 tary officer, which leads pensioners naturally 

 to resort to him over the country to leave 

 him to be mulcted at the rate of ten dollars a 

 week to pay out of his own pocket, not his 

 own but official postage, while every head of 

 a department is furnished with official stamps 

 under which editions of speeches may be sent 

 out and all manner of other matter, is, I hum- 

 bly submit, an absurdity so gross and an injus- 

 tice so indecent that it rightfully appeals to 

 the self-respect of every Senator and of every 

 Representative, and it also appeals to the re- 

 gard that they have for the interest of the 

 cripples, the mourners, the orphans, the pen- 

 sioners of this country, who I think have quite 

 as much right to receive, being exempted from 

 the three or twelve cents it would cost to pay 

 the postage on them, their pension papers as 

 any Cabinet minister has, when he is moved to 

 utter his voice to his countrymen, to command 

 the means out of the public purse to send out 

 an edition to fall like a snow-storm from the 

 mail over the whole country." 



The joint resolution was referred to the 

 Committee on Post-Offices and Post-Roads. 



In the Senate, on January 14th, a joint reso- 

 lution appropriating $2,500 to meet the ex- 

 penses of the International Sanitary Confer- 

 ence at Washington was considered: 



Mr. Davis, of West Virginia: "There is a 

 letter here from the Secretary of State, which 

 injustice to the committee ought to be read." 



The Presiding Officer : " The letter will be 

 read." 



The Chief Clerk read as follows : 



DEPABTMENT OF STATE, / 

 WASHINGTON, December 27, 1880. J 

 SIR : In reply to your letter of the 21st instant, 

 touching the joint resolution approved by the House 

 of Representatives and now before the Senate, appro- 

 priating $2,500 to meet the e.xpenses of the Inter- 

 national Sanitary Conference, I have the honor to 

 inform you that the amount estimated for by this De- 

 partment was $10,000, or so much thereof as might be 

 found necessary. The expenses which the Department 

 will be required to meet under the joint resolution of 

 Mav 14, 1880, will consist (besides ocean telegraphy 

 incident to obtaining the responses of foreign govern- 

 ments) mainly of the employment of skilled stenog- 



