to be considered by the committee, and a report made on it."

Mr. Logan: "A matter of this kind certainly every Senator in the Chamber is just as familiar with as the Committee on Post-Offices and PostRoads. This is a mere resolution authorizing Senators and Representatives and Delegates to frank official letters sent to their constituents by them. That is what it embraces. How can the committee give any more information on it than there is in the resolution?"

Mr. Davis, of West Virginia: "I appeal to the Senator to allow the reference to be made; but if he prefers not, I reckon we had just as well take a test vote on it, and therefore I move that the joint resolution be referred to the Committee on Post-Offices and PostRoads."

Mr. Logan: "I move, as an amendment to that motion, that the committee be instructed to report back immediately."

Mr. Conkling, of New York: "I have no objection to a reference of this resolution to the Committee on Post-Offices and Post-Roads; but if it is to be referred I agree with the Senator from Illinois that it should be with a direction of the Senate that it shall come back presently, a direction which I can not doubt is proper; and I say that for this reason: the whole question is whether we want the legislation of Congress to so continue that every clerk in a post-office, every clerk in a department from the head clerk of that department down, may send through the mails matters of public business, while at the same time the members of this body and of the House of Representatives shall be compelled to defray each from his own pocket the great volume of postage which is borne upon communications coming from the soldiers, the sailors, the widows, the beneficiaries under the pension acts, and other persons who send letters not touching our business but their business. That is the whole question."

Mr. Edmunds, of Vermont: "I think that the idea in a republic like ours that the representatives of the people are to be taxed for communicating with them about any matter of public concern, whether you call it official business or political business, is wrong. I believe the more you can encourage the people by carrying their letters and communications to members of Congress from and upon all possible subjects, the more good you do to republican government and the dissemination of intelligence upon which it rests. Therefore I have always voted against the abolition of the franking privilege, so called, and always voted in favor of its restoration, and I mean to do it again. We all understand how this notion of abolishing it got up. A few great city papers started it because they thought they would increase their circulation by cutting off as far as possible communication between Members and Senators at the capital and distant parts of the country; and it is a

strange thing, as the Senator from New York has said, that year after year by our own laws we have declared that the only public servants not fit to be trusted in communicating with the people about public affairs are Senators and Representatives. A head of department, any of the department clerks, everybody in the executive service of the country is thought worthy to be trusted to communicate concerning public affairs with everybody else through the advantage of the mails, it costing the United States nothing to carry the free communications except on a very few routes. It is true that the postage that you would force Senators and Members and citizens to pay, and which otherwise they would not pay, is so much loss to the accumulated taxation of the people. That is true; but I think that every cent that you lose in allowing a citizen to send to any Senator a letter on any subject of public concern-and we all know that ninety-nine hundredths of these letters are about subjects of public concern-is ten thousand times counterbalanced by the advantage that there is to a country constituted like ours in this absolutely free intercommunication. Therefore I am not afraid of the opinions of my constituents or anybody else on such a subject. The present course of procedure is very unjust to Senators and Members. Every chairman of a committee in respect of the absolute performance of his duties is taxed day by day. When I had the honor to be chairman of the Committee on the Judiciary, I found that I was taxed to the extent of several dollars a week, and I have no doubt my friend from Ohio [Mr. Thurman] is now to a large sum, in paying postage in respect to matters that we had no more individual concern in than a resident of France, but that the public had concern in. I am in favor of this reference and for an immediate report, in order that the committee may consider whether they shall not extend this right-I would not call it a privilege; rather a right and a duty-to all the correspondents of Senators and members of Congress; or if they think it unfit to do that, to be careful to define the word 'official' in some way, so that we can honorably and honestly understand it all alike as to what is covered by what is called 'official business' of Senators. I do not know precisely what that would mean."

Mr. Eaton, of Connecticut: "Mr. President, I have no doubt about the propriety of this resolution. I have been paying postage, as my friend from Vermont says he has been. I have done it to-day and every other day, as well as I can remember, for a long time past; but after the remarks which have been made here, is there any necessity to instruct the committee? In my judgment the committee will report as speedily as possible."

Mr. Thurman, of Ohio: "Mr. President, I have a little delicacy in speaking on this subject. My political life is so nearly at an end that it might be supposed I was interfering

"The franking privilege was taken away because it was so flagrantly abused. If there had never been any abuse of that privilege, it never would have been taken away. It was really misnamed a privilege; that is, in the sense of being a privilege of the members of Congress. It was the privilege of the people far more than of any member of Congress. It enabled the people to receive what they otherwise would not have received, in the form of documents and other information of the workings and doings of the Government. It was the people's privilege, and not the privilege of the members of Congress. But it was flagrantly abused, and when I say that I speak with some knowledge on the subject-and do not let anybody suppose that I am going to make a confession, for I am not conscious that I ever did abuse it myself-but it was so flagrantly abused that there was a demand, and I believe both political parties had a sort of struggle with each other who could go the farthest in advocating the repeal of that privilege.

Some years ago (I will not say what year it was, but it was the year of a presidential election) I was passing, in the recess of Congress, through one of the corridors of this Capitol, and seeing three or four hundred people at work, sending off all sorts of matter, I asked a friend of mine, the chairman of the committee under whom these men were working, 'Won't you give me one of those bundles that you have put up there, and let me see what kind of food you are sending off to the people?' Why, certainly,' said he, and he told one of them, 'Give Mr. Thurman one of those bundles. He gave it to me and I have it yet, and I could show that it contained not one single line of frankable matter; and furthermore, that in the case of one man whose frank appeared upon it, it was written in four different handwritings, showing that four different clerks had been writing that man's name, and that man, as I know, was not less than five hundred miles from this Capitol at that time.”

Mr. Logan: "At the time the law was repealed, it was done at the dictation of a few newspapers of the country and of a Postmaster-General, who sent out instructions to every postmaster in the United States to have a petition signed and sent to Congress to repeal the law, and the postmasters were instructed to get names to these petitions. That was the way it came to be stricken from the statutebook, and it was not for the reason assigned by the Senator from Ohio."

Mr. Thurman : "Has the Senator never heard of the speech of a distinguished member of the Government made to his constituents, a political speech?"

Mr. Logan: "I have heard of many of that

kind."

Mr. Thurman: "Of one that was sent, as it was stated in the newspapers, by thousands

frank of a department?"

Mr. Logan: "What has that got to do with official communications from the departments?" Mr. Thurman: "I should say that was an abuse of the privilege." Mr. Conkling: it stands now."

That was under the law as

Mr. Garland, of Arkansas: "Mr. President, so far as the principle of the resolution is concerned, as I understand it, I indorse it; for, in brief, I think that Senators and Representatives ought to be entitled to the franking privilege upon all official business sent through the mails by them. But this subject is like most other subjects, the more it is considered the larger it grows. I once heard a soldier say as to the beef they got in the army, that the more they chewed it the thicker it got; so the more we masticate this subject the larger it seems to get.

"The joint resolution proposes to make an addition to a regulation that already exists. It would necessarily form a portion, either by an addition or an amendment of some character, of the postal laws that now exist in the United States. I am in favor of the Committee on Post-Offices and Post-Roads taking the joint resolution and incorporating its theory in the present existing laws and modifying it further, and in their own good time reporting it back to the Senate. In the first place the existing law provides that

"Senators, Representatives, and Delegates in Congress, the Secretary of the Senate, and Clerk of the Ilouse of Representatives may send and receive through the mail free all public documents printed by order of tive, Delegate, Secretary of the Senate, and Clerk of Congress; and the name of each Senator, Representathe House shall be written thereon, with the proper designation of the office he holds, and the provisions of this section shall apply to each of the persons following the expiration of their respective terms of named herein until the first Monday of December office.

"There is one provision in reference to congressional documents. Then there is a provision relating to the Agricultural Department, as to how Senators and Representatives may transmit seeds, etc., through the mails. Then we have the 'Congressional Record' and extracts from that, which go free:

"The Congressional Record,' or any part thereof, or speeches or reports therein contained, shall, under the frank of a member of Congress, or Delegate, to be written by himself, be carried in the mail free of postage under such regulations as the Postmaster-General may prescribe.

"That by the laws is put under regulations to be prescribed by the Postmaster-General. Now, we have gone further, and provided that letters, etc., on Government business may go free:

"It shall be lawful to transmit through the mail, free of postage, any letters, packages, or other matters relating exclusively to the business of the Government of the United States: Provided, That every

such letter or package to entitle it to pass free shall bear over the words official business' an indorsement showing also the name of the department, and, if from a bureau or office, the names of the department and bureau or office, as the case may be, whence transmitted.

"What I have read embraces the features in reference to free postage. The difficulty in the proposition of the Senator from Illinois, it occurs to me, is that it is too loose, it is too liable to misconstruction; in other words, it is not sufficiently guarded in its language to make it safe. We have heard from several Senators who have been in the Senate longer than I have of abuses under these sections that I have just read as to letters, etc., on Government business. In order to make it, in common phrase, the more binding, the protection is to require an indorsement of the words 'official business' upon the matter, and there it ends with the signature of the person or persons sending it or a stamp showing that. If all the abuses existed in reference to this feature that were indicated by the Senator from Ohio [Mr. Thurman], and the Senator from Vermont [Mr. Edmunds], what may we not expect under the utmost scrutiny in the way of abuses under this phraseology indicated by the Senator from Illinois?"

Mr. Blair, of New Hampshire: "Does the Senator from Arkansas mean to be understood that we receive under franks speeches not made in Congress?

Mr. Garland: "Yes, speeches and documents, and pamphlets of various kinds."

Mr. Blair: "Under the frank of members of Congress?"

Mr. Garland: "No, but under this section 249 from governmental officers. There is no one to determine whether the matter is official business' or not, or what kind of official business it is. In the section which I have just read allowing the indorsement of the superscription 'official business' upon official envelopes signed by the head of a department, or a clerk in the office sending them, no one is provided to determine whether they are on 'official business.' This joint resolution in regard to Representatives or Senators uses the same words 'official business.' It is possible that neither the Senator from Illinois nor any other Senator could go into enacting a law so as to define specifically what is meant by 'official business,' and what particular letters would come under that characterization. To protect against that in the matter of the 'Record' it is provided that that shall be sent under regulations prescribed by the Postmaster-General; but here this is left without any protection. It is not worth while for a Senator to say that we all know what official business' is, because we know in the practice of the law that words very simple in every-day use and common acceptation, when they are to be interpreted in law sometimes mean very different things, and are sometimes construed to be very different from their plain meaning.

6

"I recollect in the course of my reading to have seen that it was once a very grave question before one of the courts of England whether a turkey came within the designation of a bird, and after a long argument and long examination it was solemnly decided that a turkey came within the classification of the word 'bird.' It is possible some one might doubt as to whether, if I was writing to my constituents about a peck of oats, that could be deemed official business.' I might feel inclined, for the purpose of self-protection, to say it was official business, but the Senator from Missouri or the Senator from Tennessee might not think so."

Mr. Conkling: "Will the Senator allow me to make an inquiry? Am I right in supposing that he stated that speeches which are not a part of the Congressional Record,' not made in Congress, go free through the mail?"

Mr. Garland: "I say I have received under these superscriptions pamphlets of different kinds that it did not occur to me referred to any particular official business or any legislation in Congress or pending before either House."

Mr. Conkling: "But speeches?"
Mr. Garland: "Speeches."

Mr. Conkling: "Speeches not made in Congress?"

Mr. Garland: "Speeches not made in Congress; a speech made, for instance, before the Bankers' Association in New York."

Mr. Conkling: "Mr. President, if I understand the Senator from Arkansas aright, he says that he himself has received through the mail communications covered by the official frank of the executive officers of the Government, which communications contained no public or official business, but speeches made by somebody-I did not hear by whom-and not made in either House of Congress. Do I understand and report the Senator aright?"

Mr. Garland: "The Senator from New York quotes me with literal correctness, with this exception: that so far as I could see they pertained to no official business and no matter of legislation pending in either House of Congress."

Mr. Conkling: "Mr. President, if a stinging commentary, if a sharp and thorough criticism upon the absurdity of the law as it now stands were needed or possible, the Senator from Arkansas has pronounced that commentary. Here are provisions under which any and every clerk in the Post-Office Department and in every other department; every postmaster, every deputy-postmaster, every postmistress, every deputy-postmistress, every man, woman, and child, as far as I know, engaged in conducting the public business, may determine each by himself or herself at the time that it is 'official business,' place upon mail-matter a frank which exempts it from postage and carries it free through the mail wherever the mail goes on land or sea, or inland on water or on

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 hands 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 servants unsafe to be trusted with franking official matter; and they whose business is, not even to interpret the laws but only to execute them, and that not only in the highest but in the most paltry function, they en masse, not some of them, but all of them without exception, 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 anonymous 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 Representative 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 prying 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 exceptional 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 decoration sent to him, a speech with an official frank, perhaps intended to make the Senator from Arkansas feel good, to let him understand that he was on a footing with the most favored nations,' that compliments and attentions were paid to him such as are withheld not only from the rest of his fellow-citizens but even from his brother Senators. But making all allowance for the distinction of the Senator, making deduction for his intimate relations with those who wield this franking privilege, 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 altogether, 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 comparatively; 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 military 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 humbly submit, an absurdity so gross and an injustice so indecent that it rightfully appeals to the self-respect of every Senator and of every Representative, and it also appeals to the regard that they have for the interest of the cripples, the mourners, the orphans, the pensioners 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 resolution appropriating $2,500 to meet the expenses of the International Sanitary Conference at Washington was considered: letter here from the Secretary of State, which Mr. Davis, of West Virginia: "There is a in justice to the committee ought to be read." The Presiding Officer: "The letter will be read."

}

The Chief Clerk read as follows: DEPARTMENT OF STATE, WASHINGTON, December 27, 1880. 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, appropriating $2,500 to meet the expenses of the International Sanitary Conference, I have the honor to inform you that the amount estimated for by this Department 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 incident to obtaining the responses of foreign governMay 14, 1880, will consist (besides ocean telegraphy ments) mainly of the employment of skilled stenog

raphers and clerks capable of reporting speeches and propositions made in French or Spanish, and of the daily composition and printing of the protocols of the session. It is, of course, impossible to say in advance just how much these items will amount to. If the conference remains in session only a few days, it is possible that the sum appropriated by the resolution of the House of Representatives may be sufficient to defray expenses. But if the sessions are at all protracted, and especially if the discussions should take an extended range, the necessary cost of the most economical management of the conference might amount to the sum originally suggested by this Department. I have the honor to be, sir, your obedient servant, WILLIAM M. EVARTS.

Hon. HENRY G. DAVIS,

Chairman of the Committee on Appropriations,
Senate.

Mr. Carpenter, of Wisconsin: "Mr. President, I find myself once more compelled to sit at the feet of the Democratic doctors on a constitutional question. I want to know from them what authority is conferred by the Constitution of the United States upon Congress to vote any money out of the Treasury for any such purpose. I want to know, in the second place, whether Congress can appropriate any public money for a cause over which and as to which it has no jurisdiction. I want to know, in the third place, who will vote for an appropriation of money touching a subject not committed to the Federal Government by the Constitution of the United States. I would be very glad indeed if any Senator on any side of this Chamber would furnish me the information in reply to those three questions, or either one of them."

Mr. Harris, of Tennessee: "It was my purpose to say that I had no hope of being able to give to the Senator from Wisconsin such information as will be satisfactory to him, having heard the views of the Senator upon previous occasions as well as upon this in respect to this question.

"If there be a constitutional warrant, as I have believed and still believe there is, for this appropriation and kindred appropriations that have been made, it will be found to rest upon the power to regulate commerce with foreign nations and among the several States." Mr. Carpenter: "That would be touching the communication of diseases?"

Mr. Harris: "It is touching commerce; and if the Senator will take the trouble to investigate the legislation of Congress upon the subject of commerce (which he has doubtless done very many times, and is very much more familiar with it than I am), he will find that there are innumerable instances in which Congress has legislated regulating commerce in the interest of health and comfort as well as in other respects, regulations as to what passenger-vessels shall carry and what they shall not carry, all of which regulations are in the interest of human health and the safety of human life.

"But the power to regulate commerce the Senator and I can not possibly differ about. I do not think it probable we can differ very

widely as to the extent of the meaning of the term commerce, and what is embraced in it. Intercourse, travel, and whatever is connected with the travel of persons as well as the transmission of goods, is commerce, and falls within the scope of the general power that Congress has to regulate it.

"Upon a former occasion, where a similar question arose in respect to the creation of the Board of Health and clothing it with certain powers, the same question arose. Of course I do not pretend that Congress ever had the authority to appropriate money to any such purpose unless the things to be done, the powers to be exercised, are proper and legitimate regulations of commerce and falling_within that clause of the Constitution, but I think that Congress has the power in the regulation of commerce to so regulate it as to strip it of elements dangerous to human health as well as those which are injurious to the pecuniary interests of trade or revenue."

Mr. Carpenter: "Mr. President, nothing is more ungracious and nothing more unpleasant than to be constantly compelled to interpose objections to things which everybody will agree are desirable to have done. Take the subject of agriculture. Everybody says it would be a good thing to improve it, and to improve the conveniences for carrying it on. So with education; so with public health; so with a thousand things, which in the frame-work of our Constitution has been left to the States and not conferred upon the General Government. If the proposition were to be submitted to amend the Constitution so as to commit the regulation of education to the General Government, I would vote for it. If the proposition were to be submitted to permit the United States to provide for the public health of the Union, I might vote for that; but when I came into this Chamber I was compelled under the rules of this body to go to the desk and swear to support the Constitution of the United States, by which I understood then, and understand now, that I took an oath that in any act or thing done by me as a Senator I would observe and obey the Constitution; I would exercise my best judgment and reason, and in all things act in conformity with the Constitution.

"Upon this question I can see no more power in Congress to enter upon the regulation of the health of the Union, or to invite conventions with foreign nations to consult with and advise us, any more than I can see the power to do anything in the world that you can demonstrate is desirable to have done by somebody.

"I believe sincerely that the prosperity of this country depends upon an honest and faithful observance of the constitutional distribution of sovereign powers between the great Republic and the States; and although $2,500 for this purpose is a mere bagatelle, yet the vote of Congress appropriating any money for