The reason for putting them in is that the presenting of the petition by the one hundred persons is a jurisdictional fact. and. if it were necessary to make the whole proceeding valid. there should be no mistakes about the citizenshipof one of the persons who petitions. It might make very important proceedings wholly illegal. We had in the Senate the other day the case of an old residentof Washington who supposed he had been a citizen for a great many years. and it turned out thathe had never been naturalized. I think such a case happened in regard to a governorelect of one of the Western States. I may as well repeat. once for all. what I have said heretofore. that this provision of the one hundred citizens to a petition in one case and fifty citizens to a petition in another is not put in this bill with the idea that the hundred or the fifty men are to control the operations of the United States law.
Keywords matched
naturalized