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# THE PIL THE NEWS.
Washington Gossip.
The United States supreme court declare issued leval tenders to be still legal tenders.
The United States supreme court denies habeas corpus in the Georgia ku klux cases.
A bill was intreduced in the senate to constitute Seattle Washington Territory, a port of delivery within the collection district of Puget Sound.
The house committee on military affairs ordered a favorable report on the bill giving army telegraph operators, who served as such in the late war, the same right to homestead entry allowed enlisted men.
The grand jury has reported to the court that they had examined witnesses regarding the alleged unlawful acts of Mrs. Belva A. Lockwood in connection with the prosecution of the pension claim of one Jane Dorsey, and had ignored the charge.
The house committee on invalid pensions has agreed to report a bill to allow the widow of Gen. Frank P. Blair of Missouri $5,000 and a pension of $50 per month for money expended and services rendered the Union cause by her husband during the war.
A bill introduced in the senate by Mr. Beck to regulate the retirement of army officers provides that hereafter all officers who may be recommended for retirement by disability by a retiring board shall be placed upon the retired list in the order of the recommendations by said board.
The memorial to congress petitioning for an investigation of the official conduct of Comptroller Knox, and Bank Examiner Needham, in connection with the Pacific bank collapse, has been forwarded from Boston to Washington. It bears the signatures of about 100 stockholders, of the defunct institution.
The following postoffices have been assigned to the third class, presidential, and salaries of postmasters fixed at amounts stated: Carlisle, Ky., $1,100; Flemingsburg, Ky., $1,000; Aitkin, Minn., $1,000; West Plains, Mo., $1,000; Windsor, Mo., $1,200: North Bend, Neb., $1,000; Weeping Water, Neb., $1,100; Greenville, Tenn., $1,000.
The senate committee on railroads have reported favorably Mr. Sawyer's bill, granting the right of way to the Cinnabar & Clark's Fork Railroad company. Petitions very largely signed have been forwarded from Livingston, Cinnabar and Cooke City, strongly urging that congress grant a right of way through the park to this company.
Senator Ingalls' bill to relieve from the obligation of secreey the surviving members of the court martial that tried Fitz John Porter is a bill to allow Gens. Hunter and Ricketts to tell all they know about the trial, as they are the only survivere. Mr. Ingalls is an opponent of Porter, and he is not at all the man to introduce a bill without knowing precisely what he could accomplish with it.
The house committee on 'Indian affairs are considering Mr. Washburn's bill to open the Indian reservations in Minnesota and consolidate the Indians on White Earth reservation. Mr. Washburn and Capt. Blakeley have had hearings before the committee in behalf of the bill, and Joseph Robert of St. Paul has spoken in opposition to it, and in the interest of the Mille Lac Indians.
The naval bill, which has passed the senate authorizes the president to construct seven steel vessels for the navy, consisting of one cruiser of 4,500 tons displacement, one cruiser of 3,000 tons, one dispatch vessel of 1,500 tons, two heavily armed gunboats of 1,500 tons each, one light gunboat of 750 tops, and one gunboat of of 900 tons, It further authorizes the construction of one steel ram, one cruising torpedo and two harbor torpedoes.
The treasurer of the United States has prepared a statement showing that the total coinage of standard silver dollars under the act of Feb. 28, 1878, to March 1, 1884, was $166,125,119; held in the treasury offices and mints, $126,822,399; outstanding, $39,302,720. Of the amount held by the treasury, there are held to redeem outstanding silver certificates, $96,247,721, leaving owned by the treasury, $30,574,678.
Additional steps toward enlarging the pension lists is taken by a bill introduced into the house: That all persons actually engaged in the suppression of the Sioux Indian war in Minnesota, in 1862 and not belonging to any organized militia, but called into service by the sheriffs of the several counties of Minnesota, be and they are hereby placed, in regard to pensions, on an equal footing with persons provided for by the act of Julv 4, 1864.
Gen. Horatio G. Wright, chief of engineers, will be retired from the army this week, after forty years of active service, and will probably be succeeded by Gen. Newton, who has had charge of the Hell Gate improvements at New York. Gen. Wright has a brilliant military record and stands very high as an engineer. Although over sixty years of age, he is in excellent physical condition, and might serve for several years longer, for the good of the service.
For the third time since the war the supreme court on Monday decided that the much-abused greenback was constitutional money and legal tenders for all debts, public and private. The decision rendered to-day was to the effect that treasury notes reissued under the act of 1878 was as good as the originai money. The first decision in this particular was by Chief Justice Chase in 1866, the second in 1871, and to-day the opinion was read by the Justice Gray, which was coneprred in by entire court.
A decision was rendered in what are known as the Ku Klux cases, which stand on the original docket under the title ex parte in the matters of Jasper Garborough and others. They are patitions for writs of babeas corpus to release a number of persons now imprisoned under judgment of the United States circuit court Sor the Northern district of Georgia, rendered after the trial and conviotion of the prisoners for the offense of heatening beating and otherwise intimidating colored voters at elections in Georgia for members.of congress. The petition was denied.
W. A. Burleigh, formerly delegate in congress from Dakota, and now a resident of Montana, was before Spingor's committee on March 1st., and examiped relative to the official conduct of Judge Conger, one of the district judges of Montang, recently succeeded by Judge Coburn of Indiana. The witness testified that Judge Conger was under the influence of liquor so often that business suffered. Barleigh has seen him go to sleep on the bench while insportant cases were being thed.
