HOUSE.
Somebody introduced a bill to pension the soldiers of 1812. Somebody else wanted to amend it by providing that no soldier of 1812 who aided and comforted the recent rebellion should get any pension.
Even Mr. BUTLER showed gleams of good feeling. He said that the lot of these men was hard. They were liable to be brought out upon platforms every Fourth of July, and obliged to sit and blink under patriotic eloquence for hours. It was their dreadful lot subsequently to eat public dinners in country taverns, which brought their gray hairs down in sorrow and indigestion to the grave. The notion of these senile and patriotic duffers aiding and comforting the rebellion was preposterous. Their eyes purged thick amber and plum-tree gum, and they had no notion of doing anything but drawing their pensions, and getting three meals a day, with a horrible fourth on the glorious Fourth.
Mr. LOGAN said this position was outrageous. He knew that some of these hoary wretches in his own district were so fully in sympathy with the rebellion as actually to refuse to vote for him, when carriages were sent to convey them to the polls. Such men ought not to receive a dollar.
Mr. BUTLER not only reaffirmed his previous statements, but reintroduced his resolution to annex Dominica.
Mr. KELLEY desired to abolish the income tax. He said that some of his most influential constituents disliked it. They would not pay. To lie they were ashamed. If a sufficient tariff were put upon pig-iron there would be no need of providing for this petty Tacks.
Mr. BUTLER was in favor of the abolition of the tax. It had never seen anything but a tax on paper, and it was not worth a paper of tacks. But he considered the most feasible method of reducing it was to annex Dominica, and he introduced a resolution to that effect. As his friend KELLEY had suggested, if they did not remove the tax, their constituents would remove them. He did not consider it practicable, however, to bring a movement to abolish the tacks on the carpet until Dominica should be ours.