Punchinello, Volume 1, No. 18, July 30, 1870 eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 54 pages of information about Punchinello, Volume 1, No. 18, July 30, 1870.

Punchinello, Volume 1, No. 18, July 30, 1870 eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 54 pages of information about Punchinello, Volume 1, No. 18, July 30, 1870.

Mr. McCREERY had had the abominable impudence to introduce a bill relieving the disabilities of a few friends of his in Kentucky.  Mr. CAMERON objected upon the ground that one of these persons was named SMITH, and used to be a New York Street Commissioner.  Any man who had been a New York Street Commissioner ought to be hanged as soon as any decent pretext could be found for hanging him. (Murmurs of approbation from the New York reporters.) Still this was not his main objection to SMITH.  The SMITH family had furnished more aid and comfort to the rebel army than any other family in the South.  No SMITH should, with his consent, be permitted to participate in the conduct of a Government which so many SMITHS had conspired to overthrow.  Moreover, this was an incorrigible SMITH.  It was an undisputed fact that SMITH had given up a lucrative office to follow his political convictions.  Such a man could not be viewed by Senators with any other feelings than those of horror and disgust.  Let them reflect what would be the effect of polluting this body, as by this bill it was proposed to make it possible to do, with a man so dead to all the common feelings of our nature that he would set up his own conceits against the practice of his fellow-Senators, and the rewards of a grateful country.  This settled the fate of SMITH, but the rest of Mr. McCREERY’s friends, being obscure persons, were let in, in spite of the “barbaric yaup” of DRAKE, who said that the next thing would be a proposition to enact a similar outrage in Missouri, and thereby abet the efforts of the bold bad men who were trying to get him out of his seat.

HOUSE.

SCHENCK insisted upon the Tariff.  He had been visited by delegations from the great heart of the nation, who assured him that the great heart of the nation yearned for an immediate increase of the duty on various articles which competed with the articles manufactured by the members of the delegation.  No longer ago than yesterday a manufacturer of double-back-action jack-planes had assured him that the single-forward-action jack-planes poured upon our shores by the pauper labor of Europe, were, so to speak, shaving off the edge of the national life.  A gentleman whose name was known to the uttermost parts of the civilized world, who had shed new lustre upon the American name by the great boon he had bestowed upon mankind in the American self-filling rotary Bird of Freedom inkstand with revolving lid, had said, with the tears of patriotic shame and sorrow in his eyes, that there were recreant writers who preferred to purchase the Birmingham inkstand, which required to be filled, did not rotate, and had no revolution to its lid, at fifty cents, than to secure his own triumph of American ingenuity at ten dollars.  Such misguided men must be taught their duty to their native land.  Mr. SCHENCK moved an increase to 4,000 per cent, ad valorem on the foreign jack-plane, which he characterized as a Tool of Tyranny, and the Birmingham inkstand.  The thing was done.

Copyrights
Project Gutenberg
Punchinello, Volume 1, No. 18, July 30, 1870 from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.