Rensselaer Republican, Volume 13, Number 26, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 March 1881 — The Member from Cat-fish. [ARTICLE]

The Member from Cat-fish.

By some overnight of the public printer, the following speech made at the last session, by a territorial delegate, was omitted from the Record : “Mb. Speaker— lt will not astonish me to oee the gentlemen on the other side attempt to fillibuster on this question, but let me tell them, sir, that the people who sleep in the glowing gush of the setting sud are gazing with glistening orbs on the fate of tills - measure. The people of the east may look disdainfully from beneath the L rims of their zenith-soaring plug hate upon the demands of the west, but the day has come, sir, when ihe proud denizen of the mountain passes that gave birth to the swelling waters of our rushing rivers, have come to know their rights, and they, sir, have sent me here to maintain them. The brave pioneer, who, taking biaflife in one hand, and American civilization in the other, stepped forth upon the prairies to plant them both, rests his arms upon his gun and looks to you for action. The lonely Indian stands by his wigwam and defies with threatening glances the gentleman on the other side. The voice of maidens comes over the plains, mingling with the grass that inhales the fragrance of their breath, and the prattle of children is caught up by the blizzard and wafted toward you, all joining in the cry of rage and indignation which the opponents of this bill have aroused. 0 Would you divide this nation? Would you have the swift Missouri a Seine, or would you make it a Danube? Would you have it a Thames, or would you make it a Rhine ? Taking its rise in the thunder-nursing peaks of the glistening Rockies, it pours its floods through fertile .prairies and plantations alike, cementing the grandest quarter spheres that ever conspired to constitute a hemisphere. Would you change its destiny? Then tell the people of the west that you hoot their pleas for justice to scorn, and the broad bosom of that stream will become the dividing line between your nation and mine, and states will crumble before the march of civilization, instigated by the life-giving, freedom-breathing territories whom you are seeking to crush. Already the east has decided that the age passes without the deal. Already the east has proclaimed that straights do not count and fix three of a kind as the next above two pair. But beware! Alexander, of Macedonia followed victory too far and his defeat at Parthenia gave Troy to the world and paved the way to English Jurisprudence. Beware! The hordes or the northwest are settling to the collar, and the flint of their rifles is echoed back from the rock-bound hills that bore them. Re-

fuse this measure, and you inject ruin where all is now peace. You blast the prairie flowers with hissing breath and Duild a monument of bones to the 1 short-sighted policy that denies the God-fearing frontiersman the rights which the elementary principles of constitutional government guarantee him in his birth. We do not ask much, sir. Our demands are small, but. in the language of our oofnmon Scripture, sir, I tell the gentlemen on the other tide, that until Heaven and earth pass hence, not one Jot nor even a title of the American eagle shall pass away until you have adopted some measure establishing a branch woodyard at the mouth of Cat-fish creek.” We wonder if the constituents of an Arkansan; legislator,desiring to eaH him a jackass, would be compelled to speak of him as a jackets* The dead-letter office received 2,906,518 letters last year.