Mr. TRUMBULL. In reply to that I will appeal to Senators as to what the practice of this body is. When the petition comes here from some claimant it is presented in the moming hour, and nobody pays any attention to it, and it is sent without a vote or without aword either at the suggestion of the President to the appropriate committee or a motion is made that it go to the committee. It is no passing upon the matter by the Senate; and if the Court of Claims is for any purpose it is to bear just such a case as this. The Senfrom Oregon tells us that the Government violated its contract; that it is under legal obligation to pay these parties. Let them go to the court. These parties understood very well that the Court of Claims had jurisdiction of this case. Why not go there, where attorneys are employed upon both sides, where the testimony is not 0.1 parle, where every fact is submitted to a judicial test by cross examination, and where adverse witnesses are called? They did not want to go there. Now sir, I move that this case he referred to the Court of Claims. I am not disposed to argue it, but I hope the Senate will send it to the Court of Claims at once. If these parties are entitled to more than $60,000, et the Court of Claims give them more, and I shall be satisfied. While we have a Court of Claims for the investigation of just such cases, I insist upon it that the precedent is bad to undertake to act upon them in Congress. I presume every Senator, like myself, will admit that the vote he gives upon this claim is given entirely upon trust, not from any personal examination of his own. I have listened to this report, and I am not at all satisfied with the principle adopted as a rule of damages. I do not think it would do in a court of law to adopt such a rule. What is it? These parties are allowed by this report the difference between the price of iron in 1864 and its price in 1861. hcse contractors were only stopped one year; and are they, by running their contracts along for 3 years, to be alIOWed the enhanced price of iron the 3rd year, when, according to their own showing, they could have furnished the whole of it, and ought to have furnished the whole of it in one year, and that under the pretense that they could not get hands? We juow, as a general fact, that iron manufacturers made extravagant profits durinrr the years 1862, 1863, 1864, and found ban s. They could afford to pay high prices, because they made extravagant profits. I submit the motion that this claim he referred to the Court of Claims.