Mr. FESSENDEN. While I am up I wish to make an explanation which, perhaps, may be due to one of the officers of the Senate. I have received a letter from the SecySenate indorsing in very decided terms the integrity and capacity of Mr. Jones, the messenger who is the superintendent of the stationery room. I wish to say that in the remarks I made the other day I did not mean to be understood in the slightest degree as impugning the integrity or the faithfulness of Mr. Jones, the super intendent of that room. I remembered that when Mr. Cliibb was there he was always to be found at his eat as superintendent of the room, and was Ill) ays there himself, personally supervisin everything that was done in the room. Whether he had any asstI do not now recollect. But I have observed recently that the gentlemanwho receives tho pay of super intendent of that room and makes purchases, &c., does not, so far as my observation is concerned, personally supervise it, so far as the delivery of the articles is concerned. I do not know that it is necessary. I stated the fact. Whether the present system is the proper one or not is for the Committee on ontingent Expenses to decide; but in the remarks that I made with regard to the stationery I did not have reference to Mr. Jones, the superintendent of the room. Under our rule, every Senator can take what he pleases; it is left to his own sense of propriety and personal honor; and the superintendent can exercise no discretion about it. He can only deliver it when called for by Senators and others entitled to call according to their own statement of the necessities of their office, whatever that may be; and, therefore, what I said with reference to the abuses which I supposed to exist had no reference whatever to the conduct of the superintendent, as I know nothing against it, and) presume it to be perfectly correct and houestin all particulars, but applied to the system itself, which is liable to great abuses, and which I am satisfied has been subject to eat abuses, not on the part of the superinten out, who has no will in the matter, but on the part of others, who ought to exercise a different discretion from what they do with relation to the power given under the rule itself. I make this explanation injustice to Mr. Jones, he being an officer of the Senate against whom I know nothing, and who I believe to be devoted to his duties under the Secrethry, and such as the Secretary assigns him, as much asany other man. I have nothing against him whatever, and therefore regret to have been understood as imputin anythin wrongly to him. I had no occasion to mate any such imputation. MARGAILETTE ANN LAURIE.