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Show HOUSE. Wright offered a resolution instructing instruct-ing the committee on banking and currency to inquire into the propriety of so amending tbe banking laws as to require in the election of directors tbe principle of cumulative voting in states where such laws may exist, and also the propriety of amending said law so as to limit the efficiency of proxies to two months. Referred. Townsend oflered a resolution instructing in-structing tbe judiciary committee to inquire into the facts of the imprisonment imprison-ment of Robert Smalls, colored mom-berof mom-berof tbe bouse from South Carolina, and to report whether such imprisonment imprison-ment is or ia not a violation of the constitutional privileges of the house. Butler oflered as & substitute a resolution giving the judiciary committee com-mittee power to send for persons and papers in making such investigation. Adopted. Wood, chairman of the committee on ways and means, reported hack the resolution for the final adjournment adjourn-ment of congress on the 22d instant at 6 o'clock. He said he would not call for present action, but would cttll it up in a day or two. The houBe then resumed consideration considera-tion of the bill for the repeal of the resumption act. Keefer oflered an amendment, tbat nothing in the resumption act Bbatl be construed to authorize or require the secretary of the treasury to retire or cancel the legal tender notes that may be redeemed on or after the 1st of January, 1879, or that may then be in the treasury uncancelled, or that may afterwards come into the treasury, treas-ury, otherwise than by redemption; but that such notes may be used in payment pay-ment of all dabts against the United States or in exohange for coin or bullion. Deering oflered an amendment to postpone the year of resumption from 1879 to 1SS0; also lo authorize a reissue of legal tender notes and make them legal tender lor all debts, public and private. Ward oflered an amendment, thai nothing in the act shall ailect the pay ment oi wages, or in dents mat m&y become due after that for the payment pay-ment of wages ot labor, but that such debts shall be legally payable only in such coin or notes as shall be leg id tender. Kail favored the repeal of the resumption re-sumption act, because he thought that it would be impracticable and impossible for government, upon tbe 1st of January, 1879, to redeem the legal tender notes now ouistanding, and, even if it would be practicable, it would be unwise in policy and ruin-oub ruin-oub in results to do so. If tbe country could be saved from tbe ruin which; the resumption act was precipitating; by an early repeal of that act, and if American statesmanship was equal to the emergency, there would be little difficulty in returning to specie payment pay-ment within a few years, Felton favored the repeal. He inveighed against class legislation and opposed strikes of laboring men. Labor bad no right to make war upon capital; but it was equally wrong lor capital to conspire against labor. The act demonetizing the silver dollar waa as unjust and wicked as tbe fa mou b strikes which hud recently startled and alarmed tho country. That act demonetizing silver wag the most deliberate and inexcusable attack upon labor ever known in legislative history; but that did not quite make New York and New England the owners of the cotton fields of the south. and. therefore. thfthl.mlr -hpmp of contraction had been consummated just as the wild delirium of war was subsiding into reason. All encouragement encour-agement was withdrawn and financia ruin ensued. During the war the bankers of New York and those an tiquated "Shyiocks" had spent every dollar in paying for substitutes and in buying United States bonds, and they became clamorous for contraction. They cared not lor tbe resumption of specie payments; that waa but a pretense pre-tense which they had trumped up, and the agitation had sent down the price of labor to starvation wages. Chittendon bad said, yesterday, from bis - perch the clerk's desk tbat gamblers and loaferi and bankrupts demanded the repeal of the resumption resump-tion act. The gentleman lrom New York must have kept a ledger, un one side of which tbe poor man; waa put and on the other the maa who owned $300 or $100 in government securities, which 1 was giiuding down tho laboring mau ! (Encouragement on the democratic side. As soon as Cnitlenden heard himself alluded lo iu Feltou's re-, marks ho crossed over to the demo! cratic side io order to hear mure distinctly dis-tinctly what was said about him and! made several attempts to interpose a remark, but was not permitted to doj so, as he himself give notice j ester- day that he would allow uo interruption.) interrup-tion.) Fuiton then went on with his denunciation ol capiiaiisUi, addressing himBelf directly to Chittenden, who was standing in one of the aisles on the democratic side, tbe butt oi jests and laughter on that side. He Bid: "And yet you undertake to comfort the country by telling it that ail these ihings will right themselves I Yes ; these things will rigbt themselves wben they have touched the bottom leas pit ol despair and poverty. Look yonder, at tbe storm-driven ocean. A hurricane and darkness are upon the deep; the signal guns are firing every minute; ships are going down by the hundred; tbousauds ot preci-oua preci-oua lives are being engulfed, and, in tbe midst ot all tbe ruins there (pointing over to Chittenden) stinds the wrecker, (outbust ot laugbter and applause on the democratic side) waiting for spoils, and usouring thoue in peril of destruction tbat all these things will right theniselvesl (Continuation (Contin-uation ol applause on tbe democratic side. ) Chittenden, still standing on that side of the chamber, asked a minute to reply to Felton. Douglass No, not half a minute. Tucker proposed, jocularly, to have a recess of a few minutes, until some restoratives could be applied to the corpse ot New York (meaning Chittenden). Chit-tenden). Hrtnlenbergh, who was entitled to the floor, yielded five minutes of his time to Chittenden. Mr, Chittenden, speaking from bis own seat, said: "I will not return the argument. There is no mau who knows my life who does not know that, when I went to that unusual place, the clerk's desk, to speak, yesterday, yes-terday, I went there to spent: toe truth aocording as I understood it. a capitalist, as owning government, bonds, and therefore as interested m this matter. It is more tban eight years since I have beau able to hold or own a government bond and, although al-though I spoke yesterday of national banks, I parted with the last share ot stock I owned in a national bank five years ago. I do not make this statement state-ment to conciliate anybody, but I make it to explode and expose to the world that idea. The question before the house is before. the world. It is a question now whether the credit and uonor and inregrity of the American people shall, bolore all mankind, be sunk into a bottomless pit. I therefore there-fore say that any maur:wLp. aims blows at me as a holder o (govern -ment securities, as being interested in a national bank, mistakes the mark. I have not come here and dared to utter anything on that subject which I have not considered. If I had the time I could expose the fallacious misstatements, errors and nomenae of the last speaker (Folton ), bo that no man, who is capable of forming a judicial opinion, on any great question, can possibly make any mistake about it. There never was, in a discussion in a deliberative body, as has been shewn iu this discussion, dis-cussion, eo much ot ignorance, so much of that spirit' which will surely destroy the integrity of this nation, to much of that that wus absolutely wrong, absolutely ruinous and leading only to utter dishonor. (Applause on tbe republican side.) Hardenbergh made an appeal, as a member of the banking and ourrency nnmmittdfi. for tbe national honor aud national faith. It would he a poor spectacle to give to the world that a government, founded upon the liberties liber-ties of men, was unable to redeem its promises and its plighted faith. Bacon aaid the country was now iu a condition to resume, and if no ob etacle were interposed it would soon arrive at that much-desired result. Townsend (N.Y.) Baid tbe resump tion had come within a hair'a-breadi b. The national imports of last year had been leas than the exports by $183,-000,000. $183,-000,000. It was this that bad carried down gold towards greenbacks by some 8 per cent. The crops of the year would next year bring $250,000,000 from Europe, and that would do the rest of it. There were abundance of crops in this country, eucb as it never had before. North and west of Ohio, north of the Missouri and north of Kansas there were 1,200,000,000 bushels of corn. Tbe country had a crop of wheat such as it never had before, and a crop of cotton equal to the best. Europe must have it and pay for it. The country must enjoy this prosperity, in spite of mistaken politicians, of political harpies and self styled friends of the people. 1 (Laughter.) Cox asked TownBend whether be considered that the passage of tbe silver bill waa or was not a step toward to-ward resumption, and whether be did not believe that silver was tbe coin according to the constitution, and, therefore, that the public debt could be paid in silver? Townsend replied that when the bonds wern negotiated both silver and gold were the coin of tbe country. He bad no doubt ot tbe moral and political propriety of paying the national bonds and private debta contracted con-tracted before 1873 with what was the coin of the country at the time when these debts were contracted, but he was not in favor of coining silver to an unlimited extent. After further debate, the matter wont over without action and the bouse adjourued. |