1076 CONGRESSIONAL PROCEEDINGS. © 
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ments to great soldiers and sailors of the war of the Revolution and 
of the later war? ; 
Mr. Harris. He allowed the Senator from Massachusetts to vote 
for them. 
Mr. Hoar. Who would like to see the monument to Professor 
Baird, with the inscription of this splendid and magnificent service, 
paid for by the Congress of the United States, and then have it written 
on its reverse: ‘‘N. B. His wife and children died in the poorhouse 
because the Senator from Tennessee did not think it constitutional to 
give them $25,000?” 
Mr. W. M. Evarrs. Mr. President, I can not allow this item to 
pass without some notice from me. © I certainly can not think that 
the Senator from Tennessee supposes that there is not lodged in the 
two Houses of Congress the power of disposing of money in the 
Treasury as the two Houses shall regard useful to the public interest. 
No court, if there were courts with strict authority to keep us within 
our duties, could say that an effort by a nation to recognize and com- 
pensate services of a citizen was ultra vires for the nation that had 
power to apply money to the public welfare. If the public welfare 
can be consulted in advance for what it will gain for public welfare, it 
can examine for itself after the service has been performed, seeing 
whether it was not for the public welfare, and whether it is not for 
the public welfare that such services should be rewarded. 
It is therefore a figure of speech to say that to a nationa debt is not 
a debt because it is one of gratitude, of duty, and of encouragement in 
the future as well as reward in the past, and that a debt of a nation is 
to be measured on a book-account debt and on proof in a piepoudre 
court. 
Mr. President, I want to look at the situation relieved from every- 
thing but the most distinct and direct examination of the attitude of 
the family of Professor Baird to this nation upon what none dispute 
about as the facts of thesituation. Professor Baird, it seems, notwith- 
standing great occupations and valuable and brilliant services to science 
and the world, was so in love with this industry that if he did not 
invent it he raised it from the condition of an amusement to that of the 
feeding of a nation. He would not let it go because he would serve 
his family, his name, his patriotism, and the welfare of this country. 
He knew, we knew, we now know, that if these years of service had 
been relinquished by Professor Baird there was nobody who would 
carry on with the same volume and the same rapidity the development 
of thisaffairas he did. When he has died, in the strength of his man- 
hood, entitled to calculate upon as long a life and as enduring a health 
as any man who ever undertook the trust and services of life, when 
it is over and ends at the zenith, it is discovered that besides these 
double services the compensation received has every dollar of it been 
