Mr. CONKLING. Thel lWhlCh has been read, at the instance of Gentfrom Maine, from the Lieutenant General has no reference whatever to this section of the billor no a provision like this. It is a letter written on the 14th of December, when the Provost Marshal Generals Bureau was and was for the time to remain in existence, and it refers chiefly to what had better be done with desert ers, and the statement of the Lieutenant General amounts to this: that such an officer being in existence it is his appropriate business to take charge of deserters, an he recommends that he should do so, and attend to recruiting beside. That is all. There is no recommendation whatever favoring the retention of this bureau permanently, or of having any such odicer in the standing Army. It comes to the SecyWar a pended to an argument made by General hry himself, an elaborate argument made to show that he is essential to the Government and although it is appended for that purpose, I repeat that it has nothing to do with this subject, but relates wholly to what the Provost Marshals Bureau had better be set to do for the time being. The letter which I have presented from the Lieutenant General was written to a member of the Military Committee of the Senate, writ ten in answer to a question in reference to this identical section proposed there, and in answer to the specific inquiry whether he was or was not in favor of continuing this bureau and he says in so many words that in his judgment there is not the slightest occasion for it that bureaus ought not to be multiplied, and that this one ought to be discontinued. Therefore, Mr. Speaker, upon the authority not only of the Lieutenant General, but of all the generals who constituted the military council, because this section was omitted in the bill which they approved, I have made this motion. Now, sir, as to the official conduct of this officer, I have deemed it proper to refer to it because the practical and real question is whether he personally is to continue in his present place. I have stated but a very small part of what I knowfrom my own investigation of the matter and Iwant it distinctly under stood that in my judgment no officer of this Government holding a similarposition has done so much harm and so little good as the officer of whom Iam speaking. If that is offensive to anybody, so beit. To the particular individual to whom it may give most offense, I will an swer not here but elsewhere, when it becomes necessary.