Mr. POLAND. the 1st objeetoft isamendment to remedy the acts of the Depts in relation to their construction of the statute of July 4, 1864, as to who was a proper officer, seems to me to be quite unnecessary. This bill is almost in exact words the act of July 4, 1864, providin for payment for quartermaster’s stores and subsistence furnished to the Army by loyal persons in loyal States; but this bill extends the provisions of that not over the whole country, including the rebel States as well as the rest of the country, and it makes further alteration. By the act of 1864 claims for supplies that were furnished by persons in the loyal States were to be audited by the QuarterMGen for uartermaster's stores, and b the Commissary General of Subsistence for ensistence stores, and their action was to be reported to the 3rd Auditor of the Treesury. y the action of the Deptstho findingsof the QuarterMGen and the Commissary General of Subsistence were treated as conclusive, and the duty of the 3rd Au ditor as merely ministerial. This bill provide! that all claims above $500, instead of how presented to the QuarterMGen an the Commissary General of Subsistence, shall go to the Court of Claims. The committee regarded that as a safer tribunal, both for the claimants and for the Government, than that they should be audited by some subordinate in some of the Executive depts. Now, in reference to the 1st objection that this amendment is designed to meet, it is true, as I understand, that in the QuarterMGen’s office they hold that the language of the law, “taken byaproper officer, or recei ted for bya proper officer, ” means an officer of the Quartermaster’s dept; and they have held that although these supplies may have been taken by a military officer or by his command, still, if he was not an officer of' that particular dept, he was not a “proper officer, " within the meaning of the act. I am very free to say thatI think that is an erroneous construction of the law, and that when this bill is passed, if it shall be passed, and these cases for larger amounts are presented to the Court of Claims, an entirely different construction will be put upon it, and it will receive the construction which this amendment proposes to give it, that wherever supplies were taken by virtue of the direction or command of an officer having competent authority to give the order, he will be heldto be a “proper officer” within the meaning of the statute. A word, sir, in reference to the merits of this bill. lts object is simply to pay loyal persons in the rebel States for supp ics that have actually been received and used by our Army. I am aware that some gentlemen have expressed fears in reference to this bill, that if it should pass, some disloyal person in the rebel States may get pay for something that he has furnished the Army. Of course it will be necessary that very great caution should be exercised in administering this law. It undoubtedly will be true that persons in the southern States who were really disloyal will attempt to prove that they were loya and get claims allowed under it. The administration ofitwill necessarily require strict examination; but it seems to me that this is really no argument against having a law of this kind. The government certainly should not decline to say for supplies which our Army have had an used furnished by persons who were really loyal, and loyal in those States where it was at the peril of their lives to be loyal, and who have been left destitute and in a suffering condition by the war. I think the amendment that has been offered is Unnecessary; that the bill will really accomplish all that the honorable Senfrom Indiana desires to accomlish by his amendment, without having thata opted; and I fear that the adoption of it would jeopardize the passage of the bill.