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1876.] OF THE HOUSE OF DELEGATES. 1317
point, would dispel that doubt. The high character of the
Comptroller in the past, gave full warrant for assurance that
there must be misapprehension on the part of Col. Earle.
The testimony justifies that assumption, and fully vindi-
cates Col. Woolford. That this was the only bill for
relief or benefit of any person from Somerset county,
introduced at the Session of 1872, is further corroborated
by the entries on the Journals of the two Houses at that
Session, which furnish a complete history of this bill, and
make no mention of any other bill for the benefit of any per-
son from Somerset county.
It was also on proof by the testimony of Hon. Daniel
Fields, one of the members of the Committee on Pensions
in the Senate, and Samuel Storm, Esq., Clerk to the Com-
mittee on Pensions in the House of Delegates, as well as by
the testimony of the Senator, and all the delegates at that
Session from Somerset county, that no application for a pen.-
sion was made at that Session by any man from that county, .
and that this fact had been the subject of conversation at the
time.
Your Committee also examined Augustus Gassaway, Sec-
retary of the Senate, and Col. Milton Y. Kidd, Chief Clerk
of the House of Delegates at that Session, who testified that
it was in their opinion, utterly impossible that any bill pr
petition to grant a pension could be referred to a Committee
in either of the Houses and reported on, without some men-
tion of the same appearing on the Journals of one or the
other of the Houses.
The impression on the part of Mr. Claggett and the other
members of the Committee on Finance at the Session of 1872,
that the bill was a pension bill, was derived, as they all tes-
tify, from the representations of Col. Earle, and the impres-
sion of Col. Earle to the same effect was obtained, according
to his testimony, from what he understood to be the represen-
tations of Col. Woolford, and not from an inspection of the
bill itself, or the claim on which it was founded. Your
Committee are satisfied, from all the testimony, that neither
Col. Earle, nor any member of the Committee ever read the
bill, or the claim on which it was founded at "the Session of
1872.
It was in proof, that a bill in nearly the identical words
was again introduced at the Session of 1874, referred to the
the Committee on Finance, reported upon favorably in the
handwriting of Col. Earle, passed the Senate, and afterwards
the House of Delegates and became a law, as was shown
by the original bill produced before the Committee, with all
the endorsements upon it, and the claim attached.
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