Mr. DAVIS. I now move to strike out the 6th section as amended, and I desire to say a word or 2 upon that motion. Sir, I know how vain and useless any humble exertions I can make will be to defeat this measure; but I am determined to endeavor to do my little mite toward unveiling it, and toward exposing its monstrous deformity to the country. My honorable friends from Indiana and Delaware [Mr. Hssnarcus and Mr. DAVIS. Now, Mr. President, here is a bill that establishes a great system of, a great system of poorhouses for the support of lazy negroes southern States. but is to be the cost of this system no political economist or statesman can tell. I Colbert were here, or Necker, or Turner, or any of the great financiers that Europe has produced, they could not tell within millions and tens of millions, probably 100s of millions, of what is to be the cost of this system. What will be its? There are a certain class of men in this body, and in the other House, who think they know all about the negro; and not only that, they think they know all about all creation and all its concerns, and that if anybody presumes to put up opinions against theirs the are or neophytes or oops, an they are the Solomons. [Laughter] characteristic national conceit, they are pulling down the rest system of constitution and of policy and of legislation which was established by our fathers, the wisest and most virtuous men that ever lived. They have dared to rush in where angels would not tread and when they see the confusion and ruin and bankruptcy that is about to result to the nation from their enormous mistakes in the conduct of this war, and in the administration of affairs since the war has closed, they are throw in themselves about like the blind Samson, an threaten to pull down the pillars of the State upon them and upon us. A of mine remarked to me yesterday that there were some men here who were going to destruction very fast. I replied, “It is too true, but the misfortune is they are taking us and the country with them.” Said he, “Suppose we were to unhitch ourselves and the country and back out, and let them go on to their destruction.” I exclaimed, “In the name of God, let it be so; but we cannot dispose of them in that way. They are moving on; they have us hitched to their chariot, and the are dragging us with resistless force and within calculable speed to that destruction which they are bringing on our common country. My honorable friend Pennsylvania, It is 16 dollars a Cowss, whom I do not see in his seat, has presented various memorials here; for what purpose? The early enlisted soldiers in the late war, who met the storm of battle in its onset, and who received but $100 bounty, that great mass of meritorious patriots who saved the Union and the Government, without whose services and toils and suffering it would have perished are now knocking at the doors of Congress and asking that their bounties be equalized, and that they be allowed the same bounty that the negro has received. Sir, what are you going to do with these propositions? What is this lack Republican party going to do with the propositions? What are you going to do with the Treasury of the U.S.? Who can tell now what is the amount of the debt that is justly due, liquidated and unliquidated, by the Government of the U.S.? If I recollect aright, the chairman of the ComWays&Means of the other House, during the past summer, then estimated it at at least $4,000.000,000. The interest of that would be $240,000,000 annually. You have a negro bureau before on that will produce another draft upon the treasury of from $50,000,000 to $250,000,000, say $100,000,000 at least. You have a pension roll, which, if justice is done to the noble patriots who bare their bosoms to the iron storm of war, will call for another $100,000,000 at least. You have the maimed, the wounded, and disabled who took part in this late war, and the widows of those who have fallen, now knocking at your doors to have their pittance of a raised from 8 dollars so as to give him barely bread and raiment an shelter. When they come here and ask that the pittance of 8 dollars a month shall be raised to 12 or 13 or 16 dollars a month, where is the man in the Senate or the House that dare get up and speak or vote against such a just proposition? I believe some with the War Dept says that the claim for the increase o bounties will amount to about $400,000,000. I think that is an exaggeration; but an pose it amounts to $200,000,000, and then when you increase the pension roll $50,000,000 more, making $250,000,000, are you willing to incur a further expenditure for the establishment of negro poorhouses? A negro will never work when he can keep soul and body together without work. I know the negro nature better than all the Yankees in this bod, or that live on this continent. [Laughter] I know that he can live without work, he will not work. If he can live by begging, he will not work. If he can live by stealing. he will not work. If he can live in the southern States upon the spontaneous fruits and vegetables of the land that grow up by the force of the climate and of a luxuriant soil, he will not work. He will bask, with his wife and children in squalid rags and poverty, in the sunshine; but so long as he can hold body and soul together he will never work. What are you offering to do now? To give him subsistence, transportation, asylums, schoolhouses, school teachers, churches, and I suppose somebody to preach in their churches. All these supplies yon propose to give to the negro. Do you not think that there will be a general pilgrimage of all the negroes in the U.S. toward these establishments? There will be, just as certain as you and I live. Here, then, Mr. President, is $350,000,000 for increased pensions and for the increase of the bounty of the 1st soldiers of the war, and then comes in $250,000,000 more to be expended under this bill, making $600,000,000 to be added to our expenditures. Where is the money to come from to pay it? Where is the people on earth more ground to the dust by taxation than the people of America? Are the gentlemen from California and from the gold and silver mines of Nevada ready to pay an advalorem rate of taxation upon the products of their lands to meet all these burdens upon the Treasury? I appeal to the hardy farmers of the Northwest, those gallant and hardhanded men, who live upon small tracts of land of 100 acres, or something like that, and who have to toil day in and day out and live economically to make the 2 ends meet at the close of the year, to educate their children and give their families the ordinary comforts of life and many of them have no surplus to lay up for old age and for the wintry (lay of life; are they ready and willing to pay an adtax, or a direct tax, upon their lands for the purpose of meeting the expenses of this, this great system of negro poorhouses? It will come to that. Sir, you must stop expenditures. you must retrench, reform. economize; instead of increasing your expenditures you must. greatly reduce them; otherwise repudiation will be inevitable. I want no repudiation, but I want the severest economy practiced by the Government, to bring the burden of the people, which they have to meet in the form 01 taxation, within such a limit that they can shoulder and move along with it with the proud and erect step of free men, and still live, and not to be bowed down in penury and vassalage to the millionaires who own the public debt. I call for the yeas&nays upon the amendment that l have proposed. The yeas&nays were ordered.