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FIFTIETH CONGRESS, 1887-1889. 1075 
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from private charity. If the American Congress can not do this thing, 
the result is it can not be done on this continent. If the authority is 
not vested in these Chambers, it is not vested anywhere. 
This was not a service to the State of Tennessee or to the State of 
Massachusetts; it was a service to the United States of America; and 
we have the same constitutional right to see that when this man gave 
his life for us in this way without asking terms, without demanding 
compensation, without thinking of pay, that at least there shall be 
some little pittance which shall save his wife and his daughter from. 
the almshouse. 
I want to know if on the narrowest construction of the terms it is 
not for the general welfare to Have it understood and to have a policy 
adopted that when men do these things they shall be compensated. 
’ When these things are done in other governments, the man is raised to 
the peerage, vast tracts of land and vast funds are provided from the 
public treasury, and the family goes down fora thousand years, it goes 
down until it is extinct, honored and respected and raised above the 
rest of its fellow-citizens for the single service. Can we not do for the 
widow of Professor Baird a thousandth part as much as England has 
been doing for ten centuries for the race of some Norman robber who 
came over the sea with William the Conqueror? 
It is for the general welfare that when men are sacrificing themselves 
in such services to this country they should at least know that the 
country has a power and a disposition which will not let their* widows 
and their children go to the poorhouse. 
We have done it a hundred times. A man in the Treasury a few 
years ago, after doing his duty asa clerk ata salary of $1,200 or $1,500 
a year, devised some salary tables, which he worked on at night, and 
saved to the people who had to pay the vast number of salaries which 
are paid the labor of calculating in each one the fraction of a quarter, 
the fraction of a month, and the income tax, and all the deductions. 
We sent to the Court of Claims by the authority of this body last year 
that case, and the Senate passed for that little paltry year’s service a 
bill within three or four weeks giving to that man $1,200 or. $1,500, I 
do not remember exactly how much; the chairman of the Committee 
on Claims knows what compensation was given for that service. 
Is it possible that we have a Constitution which has banished from 
this whole American continent, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and 
from Canada to the Gulf, the power to be exercised anywhere of show- 
ing our gratitude to a national benefactor? Is the one supreme lux- 
ury which is given to the human soul, the luxury of gratitude, denied 
by our Constitution to this great American people? The Senator from 
Tennessee may believe it; I do not. 
Would not the Senator from Tennessee vote for a monument to the 
memory of Professor Baird? Has he not voted for a hundred monu- 
