Mr. GRIMES. Very much against my will I have been for the last 3 or 4 months a member of the ComContingent Expenses, and I desire to state, in a Wor or two, why I assented to the introduction of the bill which has been proposed by the Senfrom Missouri as a substitute for the proposition of the Senfrom Ohio. In the 1st place I understand that the office of Sergeant at Arms is as chief executive of this body. He is the head of the police of the Senate. His place is there, at the right hand of the President of the Senate, [pointing to the chair of the Sergeant at Arms] and we used to see him there as regularly as we saw the President of the Senate in the VEEP’s chair. Wc were in the habit of seeing him there; and I suppose the reason why we are not now in the habit of seeing him there is because he has encroached, ps I undertake to say, upon the jurisdiction of other officers of the Senate, and drawn to himself an authority which was not exercised before he became the Sergeant at Arms. I speak thus plainly because all these officers are my personal and political friends, and it is due to them and to myself that I should state what are my honest convictions upon the subject. I am satisfied from all the investigation that I have been able to make, that up to the last 5 years the Sergeant at Arms did not make purchases. That business was confided to the SecySenate. During the illness of Mr. Dickius, the former Secretary, the late VEEP gave the Sergeant at Arms, as I understand, authority, which he had no right to give, to make purchases; and out of that authority bestowed by Mr. Hamlin has grown the practice of making purchases on the part of the Sergeant nt Arms. I do not say that there is an express, absolute declara 11. m., uu. wetion of statute saying that nobody shall make these purchases except the SecySenate; but such had been, as I am informed by those who are familiar with the practice, the invariable custom up to within the last 4 or' 5 years. But when I became a member of the comContingent Expenses I found that there were 4 or 5 different persons who made purchases, each of whom certified to the bills as being correct, and we were called upon to iudorse and order the payment of those bills, certified to by 4 or very differenet persons. We found that the same kinds of articles were purchased; as an illustration we found that since the 1st of January there had been purchased by the Scrgeant at Arins and Doorkeeper of the Senate and by the SecySenate, somewhere from 70 to 90 hair brushes. I only allude to this one article as an evidence of the variety of articles purchased and the method in which they were purchased. What was the remedy for such a condition of things as this? And mind you, Mr. President, our purchases are not made on such terms as you and I would make if we went to buy for our own individual