Rensselaer Republican, Volume 18, Number 38, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 27 May 1886 — WASHINGTON. [ARTICLE]

WASHINGTON.

The House Committee on Judiciary has instructed Chairman Tucker to report favorably an amendment to the constitution declaring polygamy unlawful. The bill provides that the marriage relation between a person of either sex and more than one person of the opposite sex shall be deemed polygamy. Any polygamous association or cohabitation shall be unlawful, and every State must prohibit the same and enforce the law. The judicial power of the United States shall extend to the prosecution of the crime of polygamy, and Congrt ss shall have power to declare the punishment therefor. 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, bnt had purposely remained silent on the subject. He denied ever having visited Mr. Young at his rooms, and said that he did n<?t 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 remember what they were. I was determined to cut the matter off, and I mav 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 splashed it—Mr. Garland said it had-been conceded on all sides that he hod no Droper 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 he 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 f to investigate the difficulties at that port. Meantime the Secretary expects American captains to observe every local regulation.” The Acting Secretary of the Treasury has issued the 137th call for the redemption of bonds. The call is for $4,000,009 of the 3 per cent, loon 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.