MR. SUMNER said he was the friend of the oppressed. That, as was well
known, was his regular business. Unfortunately, the Fifteenth Amendment
had rendered the colored man incapable of being hereafter regarded as an
oppressed creature. He was sorry, but it could not be helped. He was
therefore forced to go down the chromatic scale of creation and find
another class of clients. He found them in cattle. HOMER had sung about
the ox-eyed Juno, and WALTER WHITMAN about bob veal. COWPER had remarked
that he would not number in his list of friends the man who needlessly
set foot upon a cow. He mentioned these things merely to show that
railway companies had no right to starve cattle. He proposed an
amendment to the Constitution, to provide that a dinner of at least
three courses should be given to cows daily. Mr. DRAKE was heartily in
favor of the proposition. He had got his feet in a web, so to speak, by
paddling in the political waters of Missouri, and some people had gone
so far as to call him "quack." He demanded redress.
Mr. WILSON didn't see the use of all this legislation to protect
animals. Animals had no votes, although he admitted a partial exception,
in that every bull, it had its ballot. But he had something practical.
Here was a jolly job, the Pacific Railway grant. There was a good deal
more in it than they had made out of any other GRANT. Mr. THURMAN'S
suggestion, that this land ought to be occupied by actual settlers, he
scorned. "Actual settlers" were of a great deal more use to him in
Massachusetts, where they could vote for him, than in the territories,
where that boon would not be extended to them. It was much better that
they should be occupied by imaginary settlers, who could pay and not
vote. Actual "settlings" were the dregs of humanity.
The Georgia bill came up, as it does every day with much more regularity
than luncheon. The Senate has succeeded in muddling it to that degree of
unintelligibility that nobody has the slightest notion what it provides.
It is, therefore, in a condition to give rise to infinite debate. After
several senators had said enough for a foundation for thirty columns
each in the _Globe,_ they let it go for the present. The present was the
one promised by Senator WILSON in return for the Pacific Railway grab
grant.