Mr. KELLEY. Mr. Speaker, the bill now under consideration is one reported by the ComNavAffrs of this House after very mature consideration and elaborate examination for the purpose of ivinw legislative sanction to a well considered an often expressed wish of our late President and of the present SecyNavy. Indeed, I may say the entire avy as well as the dept deem the acquisition of the magnicent donation offered by the city of Philadelphia a question of almost vital importance to the lutnre Navy of the country. The attention of Congress was called to this question by the SecyNov as early as the 25th of March, 1862. by a etter addressed by him to the Naval Committee; and from that time to this he has made no annual communication to Congress in which he has not pressed upon its attention the importance of no subject. In addition to these annual communications he has twice communicated specially with the Naval Committee, and once with the House through the Speaker, to ur e the acceptance of League Island fora fres water naval station. This is not a local project. It was not suggested by the constituency I have the honorto represent, or the great city of which it is a part. The attention of that community was drawn to it by the Navy Dept, which, having sent forth a COIDIDISSIODto ascertain the most avail able site for an establishment for the repair and laying up iron vessels, the one that combined the most advantages with the fewest disadvantages, and having had its attention directed to League Island by that commission, inquired of the mayor of Philadelphia as to how title could be acquired to the islan‘d. the a espouse of the mayor, in the name of the city, not only gave the requisite information but was coupled with a ten or of the island as a gift to the Government for naval purposes. The question was then brought to the attention of Congress b the Secretary and President, and was acts upon; but unhappily for the country it was, in view of certain local, and, as 'was supposed, rival interests, coupled with a provision for a commission of inquiry, such as I am informed will be again‘suggested to the House today as a dilatory measure. The commission resulted in a report made by lion orable and intelligent gentlemen, and honestly made by the majority of them, which for ludicrousness of misstatement if it were not for the gravity of the matter has never been equaled in a state paper. The report was false in fact, false in inference, and false in conclusion, and was regretted, sir, by several of the distinguished men who signed it as profoundly as it can be by any man. Do gentlemen ask how such a result could be obtained at such hands? I answer, we know something of the eflect of a skillful resort to !parliamentary rules; we know something of the results of political jugglery or shrewd political management; and‘ we understand how resolutions adopted by that commission in the outset of its investigations that all questions of engineering and of physical facts should be referred to a corrupt or partisan engineer, led to the unhappy results to which I allude. I will illustrate, air, the oorruptuess, for he is not ignorant, of the engineer to whom those questions were referred. One of them was the question of the relative population lying within a given area adjacent to 2 designated points, NewLondon and Philadelphia. fliat engineer reported (and this error runs through and colors the whole report) that NewLondon had a much larger population within the given area than Philadel] in, because it embraced the immense population of the city of NewYork as a contiguous city; while there is not a gentleinan on this floor who does not know that from Philadelphia to NewYork the distance is 90 miles, while from NewYork to NewLondon the distance is 150 miles; that the running time between Philadelphia and NewYork is less than 4 hours, while the running time between NewYork and NewLondon is about 6 hours.