PROF. MORSE BEFORE CONGRESS.
[Bro. Smith: As I use the following in my discourse on the wonders of this time, many are anxious to see it in the Review. Please insert.
J. N. Loughborough.] At an Atlantic Cable glorification in Indianapolis, ex-Gov. Wallace gave the following interesting account of the first Telegraph bill in the House of Representatives of the United States. Mr. Wallace said: Some sixteen years ago I had the honor of a seat in Congress as the Representative of this district. The Whig party had just achieved a great victory. They held possession of the Government. In the midst of the political strife around us, two remarkable persons appeared—Espy, the “Storm King,” and Morse, the Electrician. Each was asking for assistance. Each beverted that laugh into a roar and a shout. I was more than satisfied. I picked up my hat and bowed myself out of the crowd, and as I passed along the halls and passages of the Capitol, that shout followed me. As a matter of course, I voted in the affirmative of the motion then pending before the Committee, and it prevailed. The chairman reported the bill. The House, if I mistake not, passed it nem con, without asking the Yeas and Nays. And thus concurring, the Whig portion of that Committee, and that old New Yorker, played the part of Isabella toward Mr. Morse in this his last struggle to demonstrate the practicability of the most amazing invention of the age, the Magnetic Telegraph! If the Committee had ignored the proposition, there is no telling what would have been the result. That the experiment would have been finally made, no one can entertain a doubt. But when or by whom, is the question. It was not within the range of individual fortune to make it, and, if it was, none but Prof. Morse would have hazarded it. Had he failed, it might have shared the fate of the Ocean Telegraph. Although conceived years ago, as I read in a Cincinnati paper a few days since, by the editor of The Commercial, and application was made to Congress for assistance, which was entirely disregarded, yet English sagacity seized with avidity what American supineness had neglected, and took the initiative in this magnificent enterprise, and plucked from American brows the glory of the achievement. Party demagogues in Indiana, says an exchange, used the telegraph vote of Gov. Wallace to his disadvantage, and succeeded in making the people generally regard it with utter contempt. One old Shelby County farmer urged the Governor to deny having voted for the telegraph, and a Jerry Johnson, to show his contempt for the humbug, suggested that “We would next hear of the people driving the Almighty’s lightning across the ocean to split Europe into fragments.”