Democratic Sentinel, Volume 10, Number 17, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 28 May 1886 — WASHINGTON. [ARTICLE]

WASHINGTON.

Attorney General Garland was again summoned before the telephone investigating committee at Washington last week. He testified that he had never expressed any opinion as to the proper method of Van Benthuysen’s application to Mr. Brieson, but had purposely remained silent on the subject He denied ever having visited Mr. Young at his rooms, and said that he did not believe that he had attended a Pan-Electric meeting after the Presidential election of 1884, certainly not since the inauguration. In reply to Mr. Ranney’s question, “What did those four men want?” referring to the visit of Brieson and others to the department, witness said: “What they really wanted I don’t know; what they said they wanted was: 'We want the name of the United States to test the Bell telephone patent.’ I remarked in reply that I could not consider the application; that I was a stockholder and attorney for a rival company, Then there was a question or two about the procedure. I don t rememlter what they were. I was determined to cut the matter off, and I may have been a little abrupt I am afraid.” Referring to Mr. Dana’s testimony, who had said that the Attorney General should have protected his department against this suit—that he should have smashed it—Mr. Garland said that it had been conceded on all sides that he had no proper authority to act in the matter because of his being a stockholder in a rival company, and his relationship to the country had not changed in his absence from July to October, when ho found the action had been taken. The same disability existed as when he had declined to act in the first instance. If that same disability existed, then he put the question to Mr. Dana and the committee how he could have smashed the suit if he did not have the ability to institute it. “Secretary Bayard,” says a Washington dispatch, “has lost no time in negotiating with the British Minister for the protection of American fishermen on the coast of Canada. Consul Phelan has been ordered to Digby, to investigate the difficulties at that port Meantime the Secretary expects American captains to observe every local regulation. ” The President has appointed the fol-lowing-named gentlemen members of the Board of Visitors to West Point for the present year: Prof. W. G. Sumner, of Yale College; Hon. Kemp P. Battle, LL. D., President of the University of North Carolina; Mr. 'Wilson S. Bissell, of New York; Gen. William H. Blair, of Pennsylvania; Gen. George B. Cosby, Adjutant General of California; Gen. Francis T. Nichols, of Louisiana; Col. Thomas C. McCorvey, of Alabama. The President has approved the bill providing for the study of the nature of alcoholic drinks and narcotics, and their effects, to be pursued in the public schools of the District of Columbia, the Territories, etc. The taking of evidence in the telephone inquiry at Washington has been brought to a close. The Acting Secretary of the Treasury has issued the 137th call for the redemption of bonds. The call is for $4,000,000 of the three-per-cent loan of 1882, and notice is given that the principal and accrued interest will be paid the Ist day of July, 1886, and that the interest will cease that day.