Mr. EDMUNDS. It will only take 10,000 blacks to use up $1,000,000, and 100,000 won (1 use up $10,000,000, and 50,000 at $100 would use up $5,000,000. According to the statement which was read the other day from the Treasury Dept, there was only, as I understood, about 7 million dollars of a balance in the Treasury instead of $9,000,000, as I understood the Senfrom Massachusetts to say. The final footing in that statement, I am sure, was only $7,000,000 and something, after deducting $2,000,000 that have been appropriated to some other pay 0:0 or paid out for this very purpose, which do not recollect. What the law of 1864 required to be done was, that there should be awarded to each loyal person to whom a colored volunteer should owe service, a just compensation. The Senfrom Massachusetts says that that just compensation is to be diminished below what it would otherwise be by the fact that at some indefinite period afterward, ii year or two, slavery was abolished. Now, if it related to any other species of property as it is called, that certainly could not e a sound proosition, because, I take it, if a man’s horse had been taken in this way, or any other species of property, subsequent events would not alfect the valuation, which must be rated according to the state of things at the time the property was taken. Therefore, in my judgment, if a slave holder was entitled to $300 when his slave was taken, he continued to be entitled to $300, al thotmh slavery was abolished 2 years after war. I do not admit, for one, that the slaveholder was entitled, as a just compensation, to any sum whatever, because I think that, according to the theory of our Government, these slaves were so for persons as that the Government had a just claim upon them as upon all other persons for military service, and therefore that their owners were not entitled to any compensation in the nature of property any more than they were for their sons, or their white hired servants, or their free colored servants. But perhaps it is not the proper time to debate that question now. My only present proposition is, that taking this law of 1504 just as it stands, and taking the admitted fact that we do not know now, and cannot now ascertain, except by an indefinite estimate amounting to nothing more than amere guess, how much will be required to fulfill the socalled obligation of this act, we ought not to make any provision for the payment out of the Treasury of this money until all the claims of these persons shall be ascertained and brought forward. Then will be time enough to provide for an appropriation to pay them.