In granting pensions, or bounties of a kindred nature, it has been the habit of the Committee to require evidence of all essential facts and circumstances,--not, indeed, according to the rigorous forms of a court of law, but with substantial fulness and authenticity. Applications for pensions are constantly rejected for defect of testimony. But this reasonable practice, which is a necessary safeguard against abuse, has been disregarded in the present case. No evidence of any kind--not a shred or particle--was produced. The majority of the Committee undertook to act at once, on loose and general report, gathered from the public press at a moment of excitement. In this report they have obviously proceeded with more haste than discretion. Such a course cannot be in conformity with approved precedents. In itself it will be a bad precedent for the future. But this proceeding seems more obnoxious to comment, when it is known that it appears, from the very sources on which the Committee relied, that the facts in question are all at this moment the subject of judicial inquiry, _still pending_, in the courts at Boston. Several citizens have been indicted for participation in the transaction to which reference is made, and in which Batchelder is said to have been killed. Their trials have not yet taken place, but are near at hand. Under these peculiar circumstances, the indiscreet haste of the Committee, thus acting in advance of authentic evidence, and _lite pendente_, is enhanced by possible detriment to the grave interests of justice, which all will admit should not be exposed to partisan influence from abroad. The report accompanying the bill, without any aid from human testimony, undertakes to pronounce dogmatically on facts which will be in issue on these trials. Anticipating the court, and literally without a hearing, it gives judgment on absent persons, as well as on distant events. On grounds irrespective of the merits of the case, the undersigned object to any action upon it on the present evidence, and in the existing state of things. They object for two reasons: _first_, that such action would become a bad precedent, opening the way to a disregard of evidence in the distribution of pensions and bounties; and, _secondly_, that it would be an interference--offensive, though indirect--with the administration of justice, in matters _still pending_, and involving the fortunes of several citizens. These reasons are ample. But on other grounds, of a different character, and vital to the merits of the case, the undersigned must dissent from the majority of the Committee.