Mr. WADE. The amendment which I have offered contains no more offices, or but one more, I believe, “than we have had in the senate heretofore. It gives the Sergeant at Arms a clerk, and the reason was that as he performs his duties now, he is performing the duties of several officers. I have not. examined the law to ace whose duty it is to make these purchases; but I conclude, from the very fact that there is a dispute on that subject, and that it is claimed by both these officers, that the law is not very definite about it, and it is not very certain, perhaps, whose duty it is. There has never been a complete code on the subject of the duties of these employees that I know of; they are not very well specified; but their duties are well enough known by‘ prescription and the manner in which the have been done heretofore. I do not think there is any great difficulty on that subject. I believe the Sergeant at Arms has made most of the purchases, and I am not aware that there has ever been any complaint about the manner in which the purchases have been made. As to the keeping of the stationery room, whose clerk this bill endeavors to dispense with, I beReve I can truly say that the same force is now provided in that room that always has been there. I know that the Senfrom Maine [Mr. Fassssnns] the other day said he believe that under Mr. Clubb it was very different from. what it is now; butI have made some inquiries upon that subject, and I find that it is the same now as it was then. senators all know the officer who presides over that dept, Mr. Jones. I believe there is no Senator who will say he is not an exceedingly faithful and obliging man. He attends to all the disbursements of money for Senators, I believe, and no man here has any fault to find in him. He is faithful, prompt, eager, ready always to perform his duties; and his duties take him out of that room a very considerable part of the time but then he has clerks there and Mr. Clubb had clerks there, to deliver to Senators whatever they called for. If there is any fault in that regard, it is not so much in the manner that your clerks perform their duty, as‘in the fact that there is no limitation] upon the powers of members of the Senate to get whatever they please there. The ComContingent Expenses say they wanta rigid account kept, an that for everything you got you must give an order, or sign a receipt every time you go there. I believe this blll rowdes for that. It is a very good way for doing business, and if you want to be exact about it, it is all well enough; but the Senate of the U.S. did not believe originally that it was necessary for them to come down to these minute particulars that shopkeepers resort to in carryin on their business. It has been the habit of the Senate from the earliest times not to do that; and it was the habit of the House not to do it for a great many years; but they have finally changed their entire system of stationery, and instead of being furnished in kind, each member is furnished with a certain sum of money to select his own purchases with. I am not prepared to say that we ought not to adopt the some system; but until we do that it is idle to talk of reducing things to anything like an absolute certainty of account keeping in that room. I do not believe that any Senator has ever abused the privilege he had of going there and gettin Whatever he wished to have. I never hear of any such thing, nor do I believe it. It is not insinuated on the other side; but it is said there is not that rigid account keeping that would be desirable by those who administer upon those accounts. I have no doubt that is so; and the reason is because we have not got ourselves down to that rigid way of keeping these accounts. I do not think we are prepared now to make a code on this subject at this late period of the session. I do not think this bill is prepared for it. It seems to me to be a very cumber some thin. Here is a clerk for purchases to be established; and who is he? Why. sir. the committee will not trust even the Senate to nppoiuthim. The preserve in their own hands the nomination ofy the man that is to be the clerk of purchases, and he is to be a new officer with an additional salary. If you are to change this system, I do notthink this is necessary. I thin that either the SecySenate orthe Sergeant at Arins may do as they have done heretofore, make all these purchases and make them well, and be charged with the duty of doing it; and if gentlemen want them to give bond for the rigorous accountability of what they do, I have no objections to that. But I do not think we have time to go into all these things now. I think we ought to begin it ear lier in the session and reduce it to a perfect sys tem. I think it would be well to do so; butI do not think this bill does that any more than the amendmentl have offered. It certainly does devolve the duty of making these purchases upon a new oliicer instead of the old olIicers wh0 have been heretofore making them. If it is necessary, let us charge one of our present officers with this duty and then lay him under such responsibilities as you please; but at this stage of the session I do not think it is necessary to do this. All that is mommy to do now is to take the old employees, who know their places, whom we do not displace, where we leave no gaps, try no experiments, and go on in the way we have been going on hereto fore during the session and at the next session let the ComContingent Expenses get up a perfect code, reduce it to a system, which they certainl have not done now. The amendment that I have offered follows the old line of business, and barely undertakes to give an additional compensation to the employes as they formerly existed. I think it is the safest way now; and that if we undertake to get up a new system we shall not perfect it so that it will work well, and we shall not be perfectly sure that in skipping over or leaving out some of these officers their duties will be as well performed as they have been. Iprefer the amendment that I have offered to this amendment, because I understand what I have done better. They have attempted to reduce it to a system, but it seems to me they have failed to perfect it.