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Show SENATOR HOAR'S MISTAKE. The more one thinks of Senator Hoar's idea that petitions to the senate urging the attention of the senate particularly to a matter that is before be-fore it, or is to come before it are wrong, the moie untenable his position seems. Thousands Thou-sands of bills are introduced annually and referred to committees. Hundreds of them die in the pigeon holes. While the senate by fiction of terms represents the states, it likewise represents all the people. It is directly a law-making body, not a law expounding body, and though it has to be careful to do nothing noth-ing in conflict with the laws its chief function is legislation. Why should not a patriotic people, so to speak, "get right up against" the Senate? Again, the case which brought out the petitions is one more likely to be dealt with by the rules which the Senate makes for its own government, : than by the statutes of the nation. Is there anything any-thing in those rules to cause the voice of the 1 people to be hushed? The purpose and prayer" of i the petition went no further than to urge the earnest consideration of the senate to a question which the members of the Senate, as a rule, know nothing, or next to nothing about. Suppose the petitions are the cause of bringing out a full investigation in-vestigation will that do any harm? Suppose, too, it should, on investigation be made clear that 1 while no law has been violated, the nedd of additional ad-ditional legislation, to cure evils which former law-makers never dreamed of, was urgent, would not that be worth all the trouble, and would it not supply ample justification for the petitions? But on general principles vox popull should be sovereign sov-ereign enough to. arrest the attention of the United States Senate at any time it is raised and the members should be especially attentive to it for if their particular province is to act for the states, they should see to it that not one of those states should ever nurse within itself something which might become an apprehension or menace to the i others. |