Board of Longitude

“ At the first election of this Board, ten persons shall be elected for the term of one year, and a like number for terms of two, three, four, and five years respectively; and each year thereafter ten persons shall be elected for the full term of five years, and such others as may be needed to fill vacancies. ”

“ Leaving out of view the benefits that have resulted to the people by the mere fact of the existence of the Board, which has prevented many abuses that would have been committed save for its presence in the State, it has been at work, and useful. ”

“ To secure sufficient responsibility, no Board should be numerous: five or seven persons may be a full maximum, and no Board should have a vast constituency. Therefore our greatest towns ought to be divided into areas with suitable numbers, and have Boards separately independent. ”

“ For myself, to this hour, I never enter board meeting, committee meeting, or synod, without the queer question, what would happen should any one discover that this bearded man was only a big boy disguised? that the frockcoat and the round hat are none of mine, and that, if I should be spurned from the assembly, as an interloper, a judicious public, learning all the facts, would give a verdict, “Served him right.” This consideration helps me through many bored meetings which would be else so dismal. What did my old copy say?—
“Boards are made of wood, they are long and narrow.” ”

“ But if it were possible, in the nature of things, that the young should direct the old, and the inexperienced instruct the knowing,—if a board in the state was the best tutor for the counting-house,—if the desk ought to read lectures to the anvil, and the pen to usurp the place of the shuttle,—yet in any matter of regulation we know that board must act with as little authority as skill. ”

“ The sight of her makes the hearts of us old fellows beat, as we sit at the Council Board: and if we can't turn our eyes away from her, who can blame the young gallants if they stand staring like stone images when they meet her in the street ”

“ Even the very moderate powers granted the board of commissioners, which constituted the only organ of the league, tended to decline, and it can hardly be considered as other than a joint committee to consider matters of mutual interest and to proffer advice to the general courts of the several colonies. ”

“ He presided regularly at the weekly meetings, and when the executive business came to be done by several committees, he attended them also with the utmost assiduity. On this occasion, as on other occasions in his life, the acceptance of fresh work seemed to have an electric effect on him. After the lapse of seventeen years the operations of the Board are seen by all men to be vast, probably the largest of their kind under any one Board in the world ”

“ It is for this reason that, in times of disaster or alarm, communities feel the need of a Board of Government consisting of senior men. Often they have fetched back from the country |D| an old man who neither asked nor wished it, and have compelled him to put his hand to the helm and steer the ship of State into safety, while they thrust aside generals and popular leaders, despite all their ability to shout, to talk without taking breath, and also, no doubt, to make ‘sturdy stand and doughty fight’ against the enemy. ”

“ In March 1807 he was sworn of the privy council, and in April accepted a seat in the cabinet of the Duke of Portland as president of the board of control, a seat offered him rather on account of his father's great merits as an administrator and services to the tory party than for anything he had himself done. ”

“ I believe that the twenty-four gentlemen who constitute the Board of Directors would act just about as well as any other twenty-four persons elected by the same process, acting under the same influences, and surrounded by the same difficulties—having to act with another and independent body— the Board of Control. ”

“ Although under the ultimate supervision of Congress, it has a board of managers which exercises a general control over its affairs, and has a corps of other officers of its own, who are in immediate charge of its activities. ”

“ Those members who have been on the Council the number of years which is usually allowed, added to those who go out by their own wish, and by non-attendance, are, generally, more in number than can be spared; and the question is never, who shall retire?—but, who, out of the rest of the Society, is most likely to work, if placed on the Council? ”

“ That instead of an unpaid board of twelve members, appointed from the judicial districts, there should be a board of nine, of whom one should be a woman; three members should be paid and should give all their time to the work, one of the three to be president of the board, one the chairman of a bureau for mental deficiency, and the third, chairman of a bureau for dependent children; the six unpaid members were to be specialists in the special classes of work which is supervised by the board. ”

“ The remedies proposed in my bill are the following: in order to do away with the practice of appointing officers on recommendations so untrustworthy, and not unfrequently so completely worthless, the bill provides for a civil-service board, whose business it will be to examine the qualifications of candidates for office, with a single eye to their fitness for the performance of official duty and the discharge of public trust; and from the number of those whose fitness has been properly ascertained the appointments shall be made. ”

“ It was the legislative intention that the board of commissioners should be the body which should submit the question of subscription and issue of he bonds to popular decision, and they were also deputed to determine the result of the election,-we mean the board as it was constituted at the time when an election might be held. ”

“ This board that has been temporarily organized has given us these various reports which have been read in your hearing, which indicate their views and feelings in regard to these things. We wish a board of that kind to be organized upon a correct basis according to the order of this Church and Kingdom of God; and then as the people throughout the Territory send to purchase their goods from them, let the people that make these purchases be represented; and if there is anything not straight in their operations let them be made straight. ”

“ A board of medical survey is simply an executive instrumentality which the Secretary may use to obtain an expert opinion as to the physical capacity of an officer or man. Its recommendations involving retirement must always come to the Secretary for his approval. In the due course of business in the Navy Department applications for retirement dependent on disability must also come before the Secretary, who, acting for and in aid of the President, makes preliminary inquiry into the need of ordering a retiring board. ”

“ The Board was required by the Act of Congress to make a careful examination into the efficiency of every officer. Their whole working time was less than 140 hours, during which period they adjudicated upon the claims of 712 OFFICERS, so that the ‘careful examinations’ amounted to an average of about ten minutes for each, the result of which was to seal the fate of many a good fellow who had served his country long and faithfully. ”

“ Baronet proposes that the Crown should appoint six members of the Board who have been at least ten years in India, so that there may at all events be that number of gentlemen at the Board lit for the responsible office in which they are placed. ”

“ For seven miles the road must be built over a peat bog into which a stone would sink to unknown depths. To convince the committee, however, and secure the act of Parliament was more difficult than to build the road. ”

“ The Senate, Sir, is so constituted, that they are not only to compose one branch of the legislature, but, by the second section of the second article, they are to compose a privy council for the President; hence, it will be necessary, that they should be, in a great measure, a permanent body, constantly residing at the seat of government. Seven years are esteemed for the life of a man ”

“ That in case of the vacancy of the office of major by death or otherwise, it shall be the duty of the Executive Committee to appoint another whose duty it shall be to serve in the place of such removed officer, until the annual election. ”

“ Age has seniority, then married before single, maturity before immaturity. On the other hand, at a meeting or assembly, the younger men speak first on the supposition that their council is rashest and of least value, the old grey heads and deep thinkers having the last say. ”

“ The office involved powers which might become dangerous to the people, and, as it was elective, rotation was applied to protect them; when appointment was substituted for election, a definite term was provided to take the place of rotation. The justices of the peace were not usually elective, and, as their functions were such as might possibly become dangerous, it was provided that they should be commissioned for fixed periods. In both these cases limitation of term was clearly a substitute for rotation. ”

“ Snubbed by the department, snubbed by the Cabinet, snubbed at last by the chairman of a committee I was endeavoring to adorn, I yielded to persecution, cast far from me the perils and seductions of my great office, and forsook my bleeding country in the hour of her peril.
But I had done the state some service, and I sent in my bill:
— [Territorial delegates charge mileage both ways, although they never go back when they get here once. Why my mileage is denied me is more than I can understand.] ”

“ As no President has yet discovered a disposition to hold the office more than eight years, it may be considered by some as having grown into a law, that no one shall hold the office for a longer period. ”

“ As we marched from one petty district to another, each independent from the other, governed by its own chief and council of elders, exclusive from its own peculiar customs, habits, or passion, varying differently from the other according to the age, intelligence, and disposition of the chief, our duties and rule of conduct varied. ”

“ As it is, the Government contributes by the arrangements which it makes for conducting the business of the Legislature, as well as by the selection of members, to restrict the share taken by the Upper House in the work of legislation, and to render that restriction permanent. Under this system, the preliminary discussions in the Committees and current affairs are for the most part dealt with by members who reside in the capital, the majority of whom are retired officials, more or less dissatisfied on account of their retirement. ”

“ As their times of service expire, the House of Delegates shall fill them up by elections for years, and they shall fill all vacancies that arise from death, or resignation, for the time of service remaining of the members so dying or resigning. ”

“ The first difficulty the committee found was to organize a government without an executive. They could organize a legislative body, and appoint all the committees and officers and draft all the laws necessary, but the folly and absurdity of the effort without an executive, was so apparent, that the first thing decided upon, was, Shall we have an executive head, called a governor, or a committee with executive powers! ”

“ Even the ruling class of elders, being an unwieldy deliberative body or executive committee, is held by parliamentary inertia, as well as by a circumspect regard for their prescriptive rights, to a due observance of the customary law. ”

“ The President, all the elected Vice-Presidents, four clerical and four lay members of the ‘Twenty-four,’ the Treasurer, Proctor, and Solicitor, retire annually. The Council nominates to the vacancies, but any members of the Union may nominate one member instead of the candidate nominated by the Council. The election rests with the whole body of members. ”

“ Of course, you are furnished with the names of the friends in [pg 11] advance, and your private secretary (your right-hand man) makes it his special business to post you up in all that is necessary about them. The day arrives, and with it the deputation. If the House is sitting, you can see the Members in your own room. It looks well if you can show your accosters how small a chamber you occupy, and how hard at work you have to be at all hours of the day and night. Failing a meeting in Parliament, you can receive them in the Department itself. ”

“ Such men as the able Chairman of the late Anti-Corn Law League, cannot be forgotten in such a meeting, without giving offence to those who sent him, especially when the Committee brought forward, day after day, the same speakers, chosen from amongst the metropolitan delegation. ”

“ We were at the General Grant's house at noon and a telegram arrived that the last act of the expiring congress late this morning retired him with full General's rank and accompanying emoluments. The effect upon him was like raising the dead. ”

“ The term of office of the Councilors is to be for eight years, which is not to be affected by dissolution, but one-half of the Councilors shall retire in every fourth year and their seats be filled by a new election. ”

“ By the close of the eighteenth century the rule had become inflexible that the cabinet should be composed of men who were in sympathy with the party at the time dominant in the House of Commons, and that the returning by the nation to the representative chamber of a majority adverse to the ruling ministry should be followed by the retirement of the ministry. ”

“ Behind the Committee, who were as gay as a meadow, and as fragrant as a garden in spring, marched the learned societies of the town, the magistrates, the military, the nobles, and the boors.
The people, even among the respected republicans of the Seven Provinces, had no place assigned to them in the procession: they merely lined the streets. ”