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Official "castles" At Washington

Official "castles" At Washington image
Parent Issue
Day
12
Month
December
Year
1873
Copyright
Public Domain
OCR Text

The President having recommended the building residences at Washington for Cabinet oflicers, and suggested that the St"ate would do well to provide residences for the Senators (and Representativo too, we presume), the N. Y. Evening Post is moved to remark : " We do no think it wortb while to argue this proposition of the President's, or even to ridicule it. If he had suggestod houses in London and Paris, for the United States Ministers, it would have been in conformity vvith European custom, and we mayadd, with comraoa sense. In Europe, at least, it is well to do as the Europeans do, and it would bo well also to have houses where the archives of the legations could besafely kept. But we are in no hurry even-about tliis. ïhe reasons for the other proposition we are at a loss to conceive. They have never built houses for Senators in Europe, so there is no traditional authority for the suggestion. The polioy and propriety of it would be difficult to fiud. Tha houses, we suppose, must all be fine. Ouly a rich mau can afford to keep up a fine house. It would therefore folio w that oi:ly rich men should be Seuators. And yet the excuse of tho 'salary grab' was, we believe, that poor nien could not be Senators. "So far as we see, it would snit ueithcr rich legislators nor poor ones. Suiiïes would wrealhe the faces of the family of the Senator elect when they thought of that mansion amid the splendors nf the metropolis, Tho children would ask innumerable questions, and dream of it, and vainly endeavor to imagine it ; arul what deliglited trepidation would seize the heart of the lady who was to be its mistress ' But, to go back to unsytnpathetic common sense, the Senators could not afford a fine house, and the rich would rather have one of their own choosing. "There would be no great likelihood that the new mansions would greatly beautify the city. The sense of the beau--' tiful which transfigures and elevites corporations is in some way rarely fortunate in expressing itself. The governmect puts down buildings all over Washington at intervals of a raile apart, while the people of New York have made snoh streets as Broadway and Fii'h avenue. - But we did not mean to argüe this. A ' house for a Senator' is one thost concrete conceptions which stand out amid dreary abstractions in such a way as to take the eye of everybody "

Article

Subjects
Old News
Michigan Argus