The

public and private, was all gone through, with most uncommon despatch and promptitude. No session has witnessed a more complete clearing off and finishing of the subjects before us. communications from the other House, whether bills or whatever else, were especially attended to in a proper season, and with that ready respect which is due from one House to the other. I recollect nothing of any importance which came to us from the House of Representatives, which was here neglected, overlooked, or disregarded.

On the other hand, it was the misfortune of the Senate, and, as I think, the misfortune of the country, that, owing to the state of business in the House of Representatives towards the close of the session, several measures which had been matured in the Senate, and passed into bills, did not receive attention, so as to be either agreed to or rejected, in the other branch of the Legislature. They fell, of course, by the termination of the session.

Among these measures may be mentioned the following, viz.

THE POST-OFFICE REFORM BILL, which passed the Senate unanimously, and of the necessity for which the whole country is certainly now most abundantly satisfied;

THE CUSTOM-HOUSE REGULATIONS BILL, which also passed nearly unanimously, after a very laborious preparation by the Committee on Commerce, and a full discussion in the Senate;

THE JUDICIARY BILL, passed here by a majority of thirty-one to five, and which has again already passed the Senate at this session with only a single dissenting vote;

The bill indemnifying clAIMANTS FOR FRENCH SPOLIATIONS BEFORE 1800;

The bill reGULATING THE DEPOSIT OF THE PUBLIC MONEY IN THE DEPOSIT BANKS;

THE BILL RESPECTING THE TENURE OF CERTAIN OFFICES, AND THE POWER OF REMOVAL FROM OFFICE; which has now again passed to be engrossed, in the Senate, by a decided majority.

All these important measures, matured and passed in the Senate in the course of the session, and many others whose importance was less, were sent to the House of Representatives, and we never heard any thing more from them. They there found their graves.

It is worthy of being remarked, also, that the attendance of members of the Senate was remarkably full, particularly toward the end of the session. On the last day, every Senator was in his place till very near the hour of adjournment, as the Journal will show. We had no breaking up for want of a quorum; no delay, no calls of the Senate; nothing which was made necessary by the negligence or inattention of the members of this body. On the vote of the three millions of dollars, which was taken at about eight o'clock in the evening, forty-eight votes were given, every member f the Senate being in his place and answering to his name.

This

is an instance of punctuality, diligence, and labor, continued to the very end of an arduous session, wholly without example or parallel.

The Senate, then, sir, must stand, in the judgment of every man, fully acquitted of all remissness, all negligence, all inattention, amidst the fatigue and exhaustion of the closing hours of Congress. Nothing passed unheeded, nothing was overlooked, nothing forgotten, and nothing slighted.

And now, sir, I would proceed immediately to give the history of the Fortification Bill, if it were not necessary, as introductory to that history, and as showing the circumstances under which the Senate was called on to transact the public business, first to refer to another bill which was before us, and to the proceedings which were had upon it.

It is well known, sir, that the annual appropriation bills always originate in the House of Representatives. This is so much the course, that no one ever looks to see such a bill first brought forward in the Senate. It is also well known, sir, that it has been usual, heretofore, to make the annual appropriations for the Military Academy at West Point, in the general bill, which provides for the pay and support of the army. But last year the army bill did not contain any appropriation whatever for the support of West Point. I took notice of this singular omission when the bill was before the Senate, but presumed, and indeed understood, that the House would send us a separate bill for the Military Academy. The army bill, therefore, passed; but no bill for the Academy at West Point appeared. We waited for it from day to day, and from week to week, but waited in vain. At length, the time for sending bills from one House to the other, according to the joint rules of the two Houses, expired, and no bill had made its appearance for the support of the Military Academy. These joint rules, as is well known, are sometimes suspended on the application of one House to the other, in favor of particular bills, whose progress has been unexpectedly delayed, but which the public interest requires to be passed. But the House of Representatives sent us no request to suspend the rules in favor of a bill for the support of the Military Academy, nor made any other propositions to save the Institution from immediate dissolution. Notwithstanding all the talk about a war, and the necessity of a vote for the three millions, the Military Academy, an institution cherished so long, and at so much expense, was on the very point of being entirely broken up.

Now it so happened, sir, that at this time there was another appropriation bill which had come from the House of Representatives, and was before the Committee on Finance here. This bill was entitled "An act making appropriations for the civil and diplomatic expenses of the Government for the year 1835."

In this state of things, several members of the House of Representatives applied to the committee, and besought us to save the Academy by annexing the necessary appropriations for its support to the bill for civil and diplomatic service. We spoke to them, in reply, of the unfitness, the irregularity, the incongruity, of this forced union of such dissimilar subjects; but they told us it was a case of absolute necessity, and that, without resorting to this mode, the appropriation could not get through. We acquiesced, sir, in these suggestions. We went out of our way. We agreed to do an extraordinary and an irregular thing, in order to save the public business from miscarriage. By direction of the committee, I moved the Senate to add an appropriation for the Military Academy to the bill for defraying civil and diplomatic expenses. The bill was so amended; and in this form the appropriation was finally made.

But this was not all. This bill for the civil and diplomatic service being thus amended, by tacking the Military Academy upon it, was sent back by us to the House of Representatives, where its length of tail was to be still much further increased. That House had before it several subjects for provision, and for appropriation, upon which it had not passed any bill, before the time for passing bills to be sent to the Senate had elapsed. I was anxious that these things should, in some way, be provided for; and when the diplomatic bill came back, drawing the Military Academy after it, it was thought prudent to attach to it various of these other provisions. There were propositions to pave the streets in the city of Washington, to repair the Capitol, and various other things, which it was necessary to provide for; and they, therefore, were put into the same bill by way of amendment to an amendment; that is to say, Mr. President, we had been prevailed on to amend their bill for defraying the salary of our ministers abroad, by adding an appropriation for the Military Academy; and they proposed to amend this our amendment, by adding to it matter as germain to it, as it was to the original bill. There was also the President's gardener. His salary was unprovided for; and there was no way of remedying this important omission, but by giving him place in the diplomatic service bill, among chargès d'affaires, envoys extraordinary, and ministers plenipotentiary. In and among these ranks, therefore, he was formally introduced by the amendment of the House, and there he now stands, as you will readily see, by turning to the law.

Sir, I have not the pleasure to know this useful person; but, should I see him, some morning, overlooking the workmen in the lawns, walks, copses, and parterres which adorn the grounds around the President's residence, considering the company into which we have introduced him, I should expect to see, at least, a small diplomatic button on his working jacket.

D*

When these amendments came from the House, and were read at our table, though they caused a smile, they were yet adopted, and the law passed, almost with the rapidity of a comet, and with something like the same length of tail.

Now, sir, not one of these irregularities or incongruities, no part of this jumbling together of distinct and different subjects, was, in the slightest degree, occasioned by any thing done, or omitted to be done, on the part of the Senate. Their proceedings were all regular; their decision prompt, their despatch of the public business correct and reasonable. There was nothing of disorganization, nothing of procrastination, nothing evincive of a temper to embarrass or obstruct the public business. If the history which I have now truly given, shows that one thing was amended by another, which had no sort of connection with it, that unusual expedients were resorted to, and that the laws, instead of arrangement and symmetry, exhibit anomaly, confusion, and the most grotesque associations, it is, nevertheless, true, that no part of all this was made necessary by us. We deviated from the accustomed modes of legislation only when we were supplicated to do so, in order to supply bald and glaring deficiencies in measures which were before us.

But now, Mr. President, let me come to the Fortification Bill, the lost bill, which not only now, but on a graver occasion, has been lamented like the lost Pleiad.

This bill, sir, came from the House of Representatives to the Senate, in the usual way, and was referred to the Committee on Finance. Its appropriations were not large. Indeed, they appeared to the committee to be quite too small. It struck a majority of the committee at once that there were several fortifications on the coast, either not provided for at all, or not adequately provided for by this bill. The whole amount of its appropriations was 400,000 or 430,000 dollars. It contained no grant of three millions, and if the Senate had passed it the very day it came from the House, not only would there have been no appropriation of the three millions, but, sir, none of these other sums which the Senate did insert in the bill. Others, besides ourselves, saw the deficiencies of this bill. We had communications with and from the Departments, and we inserted in the bill every thing which any Department recommended to us. We took care to be sure that nothing else was coming. And we then reported the bill to the Senate with our proposed amendments. Among these amendments, there was a sum of $75,000 for Castle Island, in Boston, $100,000 for defences in Maryland, and so forth. These amendments were agreed to by the Senate, and one or two others added, on the motion of members; and the bill, being thus amended, was returned to the House.

And now, sir, it becomes important to ask when was this bill, thus amended, returned to the House of Representatives? Was it unduly detained here, so that the House was obliged afterwards to act upon it suddenly? This question is material to be asked, and material to be answered, too, and the Journal does satisfactorily answer it; for it appears by the Journal that the bill was returned to the House of Representatives on Tuesday, the 24th of February, one whole week before the close of the session. And from Tuesday, the 24th of February, to Tuesday, the 3d day of March, we heard not one word from this bill. Tuesday, the 3d day of March, was, of course, the last day of the session. We assembled here at 10 or 11 o'clock in the morning of that day, and sat until three in the afternoon, and still we were not informed whether the House had finally passed the bill. As it was an important matter, and belonged to that part of the public business which usually receives particular attention from the Committee on Finance, I bore the subject in my mind, and felt some solicitude about it, seeing that the session was drawing so near to a close. I took it for granted, however, as I had not heard any thing to the contrary, that the amendments of the Senate would not be objected to, and that when a convenient time should arrive for taking up the bill in the House, it would be passed at once into a law, and we should hear no more about it. Not the slightest intimation was given, either that the Executive wished for any larger appropriation, or that it was intended in the House to insert such larger appropriation. Not a syllable escaped from any body, and came to our knowledge, that any further alteration whatever was intended in the bill.

At 3 o'clock in the afternoon of the 3d of March, the Senate took its recess, as is usual in that period of the session, until 5. At 5, we again assembled, and proceeded with the business of the Senate until 8 o'clock in the evening; and, at 8 o'clock in the evening, and not before, the Clerk of the House appeared at our door, and announced that the House of Representatives had disagreed to one of the Senate's amendments, agreed to others; and to two of those amendments, viz. the 4th and 5th, it had agreed, with an amendment of its own.

Now, sir, these 4th and 5th amendments of ours were, one, a vote of $75,000 for the castle in Boston harbor, and the other, a vote of $100,000 for certain defences in Maryland. And what, sir, was the addition which the House of Representatives proposed to make, by way of " amendment" to a vote of $75,000 for repairing the works in Boston harbor? Here, sir, it is:

"And be it further enacted, That the sum of three millions of dollars be, and the same is hereby appropriated, out of any money