About the BREVIER LEGISLATIVE REPORTS.
"No man's particular services shall be demanded without just Compensation [Article I, section 21, Constitution of Indiana.
For thirty-five years W. H. Drapier has compiled the BREVIER LEGISLATIVE REPORTS comprising the Debates of the General Assembly of Indiana; he acting as stenographer in the Senate and his father in the House of Representatives.
The State paid for this work for twenty years - up to the date of his father's death - since which, most of the time, two short-hand writers have reported the House Debates; and as Mr. Drapier editorialized their work his duties were so greatly increased that he has been unable to get these Reports authorized for each session till too late to have a bill passed to pay him for former services; and shrank from pushing his claim earlier in each session for fear it would hazard the continuation of the work; and so he has continued for some fifteen years to invest his money in this work under the constitutional guarantee in Art. I, section 21, of the organic law.
Twenty four volumes of his work have been authorized, ordered, accepted and bound by the State - the binding of several of the later volumes being paid for by special act of the Legislature. During these thirty-five years service Mr. Drapier has rendered the State of Indiana by reason of the "demand" of one or both Houses of the General Assembly, he has not sold a single copy nor received pay from any other source than the State Treasury for a single copy of paid BREVIER LEGISLATIVE REPORTS. Every one of the thousands of copies printed have been ordered, authorized, accepted, bound and distributed to officers and agents of the State by special direction of the upper or lower or both Houses of the General Assembly - each member being entitled to eleven copies.
For the first time in these these thirty five years the Senate at a late session rejected these Reports; - the session previous they were ordered but as the Journal snows the requisite number of votes were not recorded till the day after the ballot the sessions since have not been printed, though the Debates of were both taken down in short-hand and are preserved - it being the intention of the Compiler, if his life is spared, to use the monies he receives from the State first in printing the Debates of the current session, and then in reprinting from the twenty-four volumes published since 1857 all matters of public interest now, and worthy of preservation in the Archives of the State, and publishing a "Thirty-five Years View of the Indiana General Assembly" at his own expense,from stereotyped plates, so that other and subsequent editions may be printed as a prefix to the Debates of each succeeding General Assembly, that the entire record of the sayings of the representative men of Indiana for a life time past - they can be found no where else may be in the hands of each Legislator hereafter.
The member of any Legislative body who votes against preserving a record of the Debates therein, places himself in direct opposition to the judgement of the ablest and most experienced Statesmen in every enlightened country on earth; in direct opposition, to the long established custom and the expressed will of the highest and most dignified Legislative bodies in all Nations; and in direct opposite to the axiom that the honor and the glory of a State is in her history.
The BREVIER REPORTS is by far the cheapest job of work of the kind ever done for ANY State; - this statement should go unquestioned inasmuch as one else in the past has even offered to do it.
