Mr. BRANDEGEE. I am very much obliged to the House for its courtesy. Mr. Speaker, there is nothing I dislike so much and my experience, though short, has brought that conviction home to my mind very forcibly; nextto apersonal explanation, which gentlemen sometimes indulge in with newspa pers in their hands, there is nothing I detest so much as to have controversies arise in discussion as to the action of a committee. In the 1st place, as everybody knows, it is unparliamentary to allude to anything that has happened in committee; and in the 2nd place, it always arises from a misunderstanding or misrecollection; there is apt to be, at any rate, a hesitaucy about stating the private conversation that has occurred which makes it a very delicate business. HQWever, inas much as this matter did not, as I understand, occur in the committee, but in the House among the members of the committee, I think I ought to state what my understanding of it is. I was absent from the committee at the time the vote was taken. I was present and took part in the discussion and examination of witnesses. But when the day came which had been fixed upon for taking the final vote I was necessarily absent to attend the election in Connecticut and with the permission of the committee I’was to record my vote and to send a proposition from home embodying my views as to the result the committee ought to arrive at. I sent in my proposition. Iwas not present when the vote was taken, and I am bound to believe that the Gentfrom Pennsyl vania was authorize to report his bill. I was not authorized to report my substitute as the result at which the committee had arrived. On my return, after seein the bill and notin the objections to it towhic I have alluded, I rew up the substitute I have now offered believing that the House would not reject so thira prop position. committee and of t There was just this difference betwcen the substitute which I have now offered and the one which I submitted to certain gentlemen of the committee about whidi we may perhaps hear from the chairman of the committee, [Mr. RICE, of Massachusetts] In my original substitute I proposed that the report ol this commission should be final; that is that it should not be submitted to Congress, but that the SecyNavy should be authorized, indeed that he should be directed, to accept the title to that site in vfitvor of which the commission should report, and I consulted with the members of the committee, and very generally with the members of the House in regard to it. I thought then I was authorized to say and I now believe I was authorized to say, that a majority of the committee favored my substitute; I do not wish to embarrass the committee at all, but I think they will so show their reference when they come to vote here; and I) informed the Gentfrom Pennsyl vania [Mr. KELLEY] that by acce ting my substitute a fight might be prevente here, and I knew what a fight on this subject was, for I had been in one. I