Rensselaer Republican, Volume 18, Number 21, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 28 January 1886 — PLEADING FOB DAKOTA. [ARTICLE]

PLEADING FOB DAKOTA.

Senator-Elect Edgerton Presents Arguments for the Admission of the Southern Half of the Territory. [Washington Special.] The Dakota delegation, headed by Senators Edgerton and Moody, called upon President Cleveland by. appointment, and were heard upon the questions cf dililing the Territory of Dakota, admitting to Statehood the southern half, and organizing the northern pertion into North Dakota Territory. The President listened attentively to t e delegation for an hour. Senator Edgerton did most cf the talking. After reciting the steps taken by tne Territory which resulted in the meeting of tfie constitutional convention, he said: “It has been said that there was no authority for calling she constitutional convention; in other words, that the law enacted by the Legislature is without authority, and consequently void. I will not examine the question as to whether the organic, act passed by Congress investing the Legislature with the power to legislate upon all rights .il subjects of legislation not prohibited by’that act gave the Territorial Legislature power to provide by law for a constitutional convention or not. That is not necessary for our preßent'puipose. When statutes are silent, precedents' imtke law. While the Constitution of the United States provides that Congress shall have power to admit.now States, it nowhere provides, in direct terms or by implication, what steps shall be taken to bring the matter of admission of a new State to the attention of Congress, or how or with whom the first steps shall bo initiated. Precedents have varied in many instances. Congress has initiated proceedings I>y providing, for a convention in other cases, and not a tow conventions have assembled by authority of the people of the Territory.” _

A Louisville woman has complained to the Mayor that her two-story brick house has been stolen and carried away. Roscoe Conkling will, it is said, be invited by Congress to deliver the eulogy on Gen. Grant some time in March. Donald G. Mitchell (Ik Marveiyis to give a series of lectures olf English literature at New Haven this winter. Eli Perkins is reported about to write Tom Ochiltree’s life. Mux-ehausen turns uneasily in his graved Joseph Arch, M. P., an agricultural laborer, attended theopening of Parliament iai corduroy. La NATURE,cltums that a machine of onehorse power would keep 27,01'0,000 watches