Mr. SUMNER. I do not know that there is any necessity for me to add anything to that petition. It speaks for itself. It states the whole case. at perhaps I should add one word at least with regar to one of the public servants there, the gentleman who hea s the petition, Mr. Hunter. He is one of the oldest public servants now connected with the government. He has been in the Dept of State for more than 30 years. He may be called the living INDEX to that Dept; and I believe I do not err if I say that in all the public service there is no person whose integrity is more absolutely above suspicion. Placed in a position of the greatest public trust where all the foreign correspondence of this government passes under his eye, that which comes “S to the Government and that which leaves the Government, I believe he has passed a life absolutely without blame. He has been in a position where, had his integrity been open to the leastseduction, he might have been tempted. No human being ima ines that he has ever for a moment yielded. c has discharged his very important trusts on a vei? humble salary. think the Senfrom It aine knows him well enough to know that he has brought to those functions an ability of a peculiar character and now, in the decline O life, he finds himself with simply the smallest salary of a clerk on which he can with difficulty subsist; and yet all the time rendering these important services and dischargin these very considerable trusts, absorbed in the business of the Office, so that he takes it home with him every night. It oes with him in the evening and it returns Wlffl him in the morning, and then it fills the whole day. I think that such a public servant does deserve recognition in some form. I have for a long time felt that his compensation was grossly inade note. I have then ht that his sala ought irectly to be raise; but after consideration of the question in committee, and after consultation with others who were supposed to be good advisers in the matter, it was thought best to make a recommendation such as I have now moved, being the addition of 20%. to the compensation of all the clerks in the Dept. The argument for that, let me add, seems to me to be completely enforced in the petition from these Gentlemen which has been read at the desk. I can see no objection to it, especially after what we have done for the clerks of the Treasur. Are not these public servants at the State Dept as worthy as those public servants at the Treasury?