Mr. my experience here has been short; but I have learned this: that the oppo nents of a measure are not the safest persons to amend it; they are not its best friends; they are not the ones to be relied on ordinarily to make amendments that are really acceptable and profitable to the measure itself. I do not desire to go into the various topics that have been suggested by the Senfrom NewHampshire. I desire merely to say to the senate that twice already it has voted down by a vote nearly unanimous a proposition substantially like that proposed by the Senfrom NewHampshire, only in a less objectionable form. Yesterday the Senate voted down a proposition to make the discharge dependent upon the debtor getting a majority of the credit ors. The proposition of the Senfrom NewHampshire is to require that he should have 3/4ths. I can say in reply to this proposition, as I said to the one that came up yesterday, the principle of this bill is that a man who is unable to pay his debts, who has not sufficient property to pay his debts, may go into bankruptcy, surrender all the property he has, have that distributed among his creditors, and get a discharge by law. The principle of this amendment is to remit him to his credit ors. If he is obliged to get the consent of his creditors to obtain his discharge, he can get it as well without a bankrupt law as with. A word in relation to the bankrupt law of 1841. It is said that this bill will share the fate of that law. The bankrupt law of 1841 undoubtedly was very loosely drawn. It did not provide as strictly as it ought to have done against fraud. There were undoubtedly some cases where fraudulent bankrupts went through, got their discharge, while still retaining property. The bill now before the Senate has very much stricter provisions on that subject. It authorizes the creditors within 2 years after a discharge is obtained, if they find the bankrupt has been guilty of any fraud, any concealment of property, to apply and get the discharge itself set aside and their debts again restored to full life. I do not design now to go at all into the history of that act of 1841 or the reasons of its unpopularity; but we all understand that the bankrupt law of 1841 came up as one of a series of political measures. It was passed through Congress by the votes of one party against those of the other party. I believe there was in the House but a single instance of a vote in favor of the bankrupt bill except by members of the then dominant party.: was passed with a series of other measures the national bank bill, the land distribution bill, &c. The party that passed the bankrupt bill very soon met with political reverses, and the bankrupt bill shared the fatee of the party and of its associate measures. The cry that was got up against that bankrupt bill was rather a political cry than one that grew out of any fault with the working of the law itself; and I never had any doubt myself that if that law had continued upon the statute book for another year until it could have been amended, until some of its imperfections could have been provided against by subsequent legislation, it would have stood and have become a perma mentbankruptlaw, such as all commercial countries have and such as in my judgment this country ought to have.