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CONGRESS, UNITED STATES. 



if necessary would commit our lives, men who 

 could not be forced, even by torture, to go 

 themselves, and with this circular in their 

 hand, to make application to these persons to 

 whom it is sent; men who could not be in- 

 duced to do it ; who would feel it to be a per- 

 sonal dishonor to do it. Yet together they 

 combine, and put in operation this machine, 

 which has no heart to be touched, no body to 

 be punished, no soul to be damned, to visit the 

 houses of the widow and the fatherless, and 

 extract from them, for political partisan pur- 

 poses, a large proportion of their hard earnings. 



"It degrades the men to whom it is sent. 

 "What sense of self-respect can be left to the 

 man who feels himself compelled to submit to 

 this extortion, which his honest judgment ab- 

 hors, and which his penury rejects, and yet is 

 obliged, with a hypocritical smile, to pretend 

 that it is a voluntary contribution? What 

 faithful, honest, personal service in office can a 

 man render when he feels that upon his very 

 best service is put this badge of servitude? 

 How can he admire our institutions with his 

 whole heart as he ought, and devote himself 

 absolutely to the duties of an office, when he 

 is made to buy with money that office which 

 he knows, and everybody knows, is a public 

 trust involving duties to the public? What 

 discipline can there be in a system when all 

 above him, and all below him, are bound to- 

 gether by the consciousness of this common 

 degradation? The galley-slaves are chained 

 together; and their proximity, making them 

 conscious of the common infamy, the common 

 degradation, and the common punishment, 

 leads them to hate, and despise, and dread, 

 and suspect, and injure each other. 



" Mr. President, this system is a great wrong 

 to the people. A fair day's work and a fair 

 day's pay is common honesty imported into 

 our Government. If these employes can have 

 extracted and abstracted from their salary 2, 

 or 4, or 10 per cent, and yet sufficient remu- 

 neration is left to them, then I say the de- 

 duction should be made directly from their 

 salary, and be left in the Treasury. 



" Now, Mr. President, how are we met 

 when we make this arraignment of this prac- 

 tice of the party in power ? One gentleman 

 who signs himself ' assistant attorney -general,' 

 with a great deal of ostentatious gasconade, 

 says that he defies and spits upon the enact- 

 ment which is in existence because it is no law, 

 for he has examined carefully the Constitution 

 of the United States, and does not find any 

 clause which authorizes Congress to prohibit 

 voluntary contributions for lawful objects. 

 "Why, sir, the man who in the face of that cir- 

 cular can talk about voluntary contributions, 

 is either entirely ignorant of the force of lan- 

 guage, or of the substance of things ; and in 

 either alternative discussion with him would 

 be useless. 



" The gentleman whose name is signed to 

 the circular as the acting treasurer of the com- 



mittee, vaunts himself that he has broken no 

 law. Listen to his defense. The law de- 

 clares : 



That all executive officers or employe's of the Unit- 

 ed States not appointed by the President, with the 

 advice and consent of the Senate, are prohibited from 

 requesting, giving to, or receiving from, any other 

 officer or employe of the Government any money or 

 property, or other thing of value, for political pur- 



" He says, 'I have committed no crime, I 

 have not violated the law, because I am not an 

 officer or employe of the Government.' Put- 

 ting himself upon a decision made in the last 

 century, that a Senator of the United States 

 was not liable to impeachment, he says : ' I am 

 not liable to this law, because I am a member 

 of Congress, and not an officer or employ^ of 

 the Government. If I were a door-keeper, or 

 a clerk, or a messenger, I would be liable un- 

 der the statute. As a member of the House 

 of Representatives I am not.' 



" Mr. President, that question is to be taken 

 into the courts. I will not anticipate their de- 

 cision. I say to the gentleman who signs this 

 circular that before he gets through he will 

 find if he has not landed some of these men 

 in the penitentiary he has drawn them peril- 

 ously near to the verge of a criminal convic- 

 tion." 



Mr. Hale : " Mr. President, I do not mean 

 to take up too much time in replying to the 

 Senator from Ohio (Mr. Pendleton), but there 

 are some things which he has said, there are 

 some impressions that he has conveyed, no 

 doubt honestly, to the Senate and to the pub- 

 lic mind upon which I wish to touch. In the 

 first place, I desire to say that as to the circu- 

 lar which has been paraded here, signed by 

 the Secretary of the Republican Congressional 

 Committee, with the names of the executive 

 committee at the head, my own included, I 

 have no apology to make. 



"It is almost exactly like those that were 

 sent out in 1880 and in 1878, when I had the 

 honor to be chairman of the committee, and, 

 as the Senator from Iowa (Mr. Allison) said, 

 those two were submitted to and approved 

 by the then ' civil-service reform ' President, 

 Hayes. 



" There has been no intention on the part 

 of the committee in sending out this little cir- 

 cular, three inches by eight, as shown by in- 

 spection, of oppressing anybody ; and it has 

 not been sent out in the dark, there has been 

 no secrecy, nothing whatever covert, nothing 

 whatever apologetic, on the part of the Repub- 

 lican Congressional Committee in this act signed 

 by Colonel Henderson, its secretary. If, in 

 sending out numerous circulars asking em- 

 ployes of the Government if they were willing 

 to contribute to a cause which they believe to 

 be the greatest, politically, that agitates men r s 

 thoughts in this country, there has been here 

 and there a circular delivered to some poor 

 woman in a department, or outside, of Wash- 

 ington, that has never been intended. The 



