Mr. EDMUNDS. The seduction did not last, unfortunately for the gentleman, or for myself. My friendfrom Illinois is very desir ous to know what the expedient is that we are resorting to, and ap cals to me rather than to the chairman of the ‘ommittee on Finance, who stated yesterday what was the expedient, for an answer. I will give it as far as I am able. The expedient to which I refer, as distinguished from a permanent principle, is an immediate necessity for this extra work that this is to pay for, and which it is not exedient.(nsing the term in another sense which my friend will understand) should be made permanent as the salaries of all these clerks for all time to come. It is precisely the same expedient, that tein orary method of citing over an emergency, which. I assume, the Senfrom Illinois voted for when he clothed Mr. Secretary Chase with the same power exactly. Now, my friend says the war is over; we have a new Secretary; have done with expedi eats. The war is over, it is true; but. the settlement of the accounts in the Treasury growing out of the war is not over; and if we are to judge from what my friendfrom Illinois has told us heretofore, in every other sense.except the technical one the war is not over. We are. plunged in the same confusion in a financial sense and in a business sense that we have been all the time. It requires extra effort on the part of the Treasury Dept. The business of the countr' demands that these accounts shall be settle promptly, and by men whose skill and fidelity is beyond question; does it not? I appeal to the Senfrom Illi bpiis if the business of the country does not require that the matters in the Treasury Dept should be conducted with promptness, with dispatch, with fidelity, just as much as it‘did last year; and whether the extra press ure which the war brought upon the Dept is yet over? I think my friendfrom Illinois will be obliged to answer that it is not. Now, what is it preposed to do? It is proposed to do for this one year more precisely what has been done for the year last past; and that is, to leave in the hands of the financial agent and treasurer of the Government money enough to stimulate merit and to reward extra labor and faithful and skillful and come tent men for work which they do beyond what their salaries will reasonably support them in doing, for the time being. that is what I meant when I said it was an expedient; to carry us over for this present time, without a general and permanent increase of pay, the fix Sto use a homely phrase) in which we are. "he Senfrom Illinois asks me why it is not necessary for the InteriorDept. I find in this bill substantially the same provision to the amount of over 80,000 dollars, in a different form of words to be'sure, but substantially a grant of precisely the same sort of power to the Interior Dept. Why does not. the Senfrom Illinois attack that? Is it because the SecyInterior did not make a speech the same midnight that the SecyTreasury did? Is that the reason? My friend disclaims it, inferentially at least; so do I. Whatever may be the faults of the gentleman who occupies the office of SecyTreasury, it has never been charged that anyone of his faults was unfaithfulness inside the wall of his Dept in the performance of his duty. If his religion does not happen to suit me, if his tastes do not happen to suit me, if his polities do not happen to suit me, I will not cripple his power to perform the duties that the law impses upon him by refusing either to raise the salaries of his clerks, so that he can do it, or to give him the money to stimulate extra effort in the performance.