Mr. EDMUNDS. I do not rise to make any general reply to the observations of my friendfrom Indiana, or the very interesting remarks of my friendfrom Maryland at this time, for I have not the physical ability to do it, but merely to say in reply for a moment to my friendfrom Indiana, that there is no very "great detriment to the public service which he has so glowingly depicted as that of allowing one branch of the Government to appropriate to itself or to absorb the exercise of the functions that properly belong to another branch; and in my opinion (assuming for the moment, as I expect to be able to prove by and by, that the functions which we attempt to protect the Senate in the exercise of by this hif properly belong to it,) there is no practical difficulty, there is no unpleasant conjuncture of affairs in the way of inconvenience and trouble, which would justify us for a moment in omitting to provide for the protection of those functions and powers that belong to us. If the Constitution has reposed them in us, it is our duty, at whatever expense of trouble and inconven ience, to perform them. It is the duty of the President, whenever the occasion arises in which it shall be necessary for him conjointly with us to perform them, it is his business to give us information of the fact and call us together to act. And I wish to say a single word further as a temporary reply to what fell from the Senfrom Indiana. He has stigmatized this measureas being one pushed forward for partisan purposes, reversing the settled construction of the Constitution, exposing the public service Well, it means that if it Mr. WILLIAMS. That expressly recog of the Government to great injury and inconvenience, in order that the political friends of the party in power may be protected or may be avenged if they have suffered anything, as the case may be. Now, sir, speaking for myself, and I think speaking for a majority of the party t, o whom I belong, I repudiate totally and absolutely any such accusation. The functions which we are endeavoring to protect will belong as much to the Senate (if that singular millennium should ever happen to come) when it shall be composed of a majority of the friends of the Senfrom Indiana, as they do as it is now constituted. We are not legislating for men; this is a Government of laws, not of men. We are merely protecting the functions of a body to whom the Constitution has intrusted in part the execution of the laws in being a coordinate branch with the President and a concurring branch in the selection of all the agents of the Government. That is what we are doing. I do not, therefore, choose to submit to the imputation for a single moment that there is either in this bill or out of it, in respect to the spirit in which it is proposed, any attempt to advance anybody's political views whatever or to aid anybody's friends. It is an attempt to restore the practice of the Government to its true original theory, and to preserve to this body, which Mr. Madison, one of the authors of the Constitution, declared to be the great anchor of the Government, some of those high powers and duties of which prac. tically it has been stripped.