Mr. DAVIS. Mr. President, I understand that this difficulty has originated upon an item of ordinary appropriation for the salary of one of our foreign ministers. I agree with the Senfrom lifaine that, where a proper occasion arises, it is not only right, but it may be the duty of Congress to make no appropriation to pay salaries. I agree with the Senfrom Michi au in one of his positions, that if this minister had entered into a partisan communication, in the presence of the court or authorities of the country to which he was accredited, by which he took the side of the President or the side of Congress in our domestic political troubles, he would be an unfit representative of our country at that court but do not understand that this minister has been guilty of any such offense. If the honorable Senfrom Michigan, or any other gentleman, can show that these sentiments, which, according.to myjudgment, are just in truth and in principle in relation to domestic parties here at home, were expressed publicly and openly by our minister at Portugal to the Government or the authorities or the public there, I would say that he was unfit to represent the U.S.A. at that country. But I understand the case to be entirely different. I understand that this was a private communication from the minister at Portugal to the SecyState; and I have no doubt that if the secret annals of such correspondence, from the beginnin of the Government to the present time, con(1 be revealed to the public, the ge would be 10,000 instances of similar communications. NOW, 811's, uppose this letter, instead of taking the side of the President and adopting the line of reasoning and remark that it did, had taken the side of Congress, is anybody so simple minded and credulous as to think that it would, if it had been revealed to the House, been made the occasion and the cause of with holding his salary from that minister, if he had advocated the side of congress in precisely similar terms to those in which he has advo cated the side of the President? A partisan minister abroad writes to a friend of the President, of whom he is a partisan, a private letter, which is distasteful to the oppo site party. That is the whole of it; and irom every inference that we can make in relation to this letter, judging of its contents, it was never intended to be made public. It has been made public without any agency on the part of the writer; and both Houses of Congress seriously make it the subject of so far imeaching the minister abroad as to withhol from him the payment of all salary. If the secrets of different Administrations and their friends and partisans abroad, in relation to their correspondence, could have been obtained, there would be found innumerable instances, I have no doubt, for withholding appropriations upon precisely the same ounds that are now set up as the cause for Withholding the salary from this minister. Now, sir, I will advert to another fact. I am myself a friend to the freedom of speech, and I am willing to tolerate a considerable degree of licentiousness to maintain the freedom of speech. I have witnessed no effort upon the part of the majority in the Senate to control or to correct the licentiousness of speech or debate where it has been directed against the President. We have an officer of the Senate denominated its Secretary. He receives a large salary, and he performs no duties, so far as I have the means of observing his avocations. He publishes a paper in this city and one in the city of Philadelphia, dailies, and in those papers within the last few weeks the most ferocious and indecent dia tribes have been published against the President. Where, then, was the zeal of the honorable Senfrom Michigan and his friends? If they wanted the employes of the Government, those who are aid by it large salaries, to observe a decent ecorum toward the depts of the Government and especially toward the President, was not that a tit occasion and opportunity to rebuke and to correct the licentionsness of the Secretary of the Sea ate? I have not observed that any such attempt was made. It seems to me, sir, that the 2 Houses of Congress aregiving too much importance to this matter. As to the last suggestion made by the honorable Senfrom Maine, that an important bill should not be jeopardized by an impro or position or an improper hostility of one o the Houses of Congress to that bill, I will make simply this remark: the colloquy between the committees of conference when they met upon the subject of this bill has been in part detailed to the Senate, and it reveals to my mind what was not merely a menace, but a very improper and gross menace on the part of the committee of the House to the committee of the Senate: “We have with drawn from this appropriation bill one of the ordinary and usual items, the salary for the support of a minister abroad to the court of Portugal; you are to accc t the eradication of that appropriation from this bill, and unless you do so it is idle and useless to hold any conference on the subject.” Why, sir, could anything be more dictatorial, more improper? I do not think that the Senate ought to yield to any such throat. I do not think that the committee on the part of the House should ever have made it, or that they should have ever assumed that position, even if they expressed it in the most proper and qualified terms. I think that that position was alto gether unauthorized and the occasion for erasing that item of appropriation from the bill was altogether insu ciont. I was struck by the few, honorable, manly words of the Senfrom Ohio [Mr. WADE] on this subject at the opening of the debate. He said truly that this was a private letter; that it was not intended for publication; and not being intended for publication, without regard to the sentiments expressed in the letter, he was opposed to the writer of it, under such a state of fact, from being held to any responsibility; and I think such is the justice and the proriety of the matter. It