Mr. CONNESS. The honorable so. understands as well as I do that tho, ""; would not have stopped with the number of 400, nor until it had reached the utmost bounds, but for the fact that the senate had a say in the matter. The Senator tells us that they were entitled to a part. Who were entitled to a part? Not the party of which the honorable Senator is so distinguished a member, because I understood him to say that the effort of the President has been to confer these offices on men who were Republicans, not upon men who were Democrats, and that he has undertaken to do it only in less than the proportion of the number of votes that his supporters were shown to have polled in the last election, and he asks, Is it not fair that that shall be done? Mr. President, no one knows better than the honorable Senator that political parties never play for a part; they play for the whole. The citizens in this country who were advised by the honorable Senator to hold the celebrated Philadelphia convention played for the whole, not for a part, and they lost the whole. They should be satisfied with the verdict and the result. Mr. President, so far as my duty as a Senator is concerned in reviewing the President's nominations, when the time to exercise that duty shall come I am perfectly free to say that good nominations made by H. President for apparent cause and for sufficient cause will receive at least my support in confirmation. It is not my design to oppose every nomination the President may see fit to have made or to make; but the President cannot expect, nor the Senfrom Indiana, nor any Senator who has advised the decapitation of good men and the nomination in their place of men who only yesterday were opposed to the perpetuity of this Union, that such men shall confirmed to those places. The Senator has complained, and we have heard the complaint now I believe for the 1st time, that in the constitution of the committees of this body the Senate saw fit to exercise a discretion in the selection of the chairmen of the committees. It is not for me to make much reply to that part of the Senator's remarks. The question is well understood by the Senate; it is understood by the country. The gentlemen in question, as I before observed, played for all, and they lost all, and should be sat isfied; and, sir, I have not heard from themselves that they are not satisfied. If the President has the right, if it is proper that he should surround himself by persons who sympathize with him and who represent or can represent his views, I apprehend that it will not be denied that it is any less right and proper on the part of the Senate to select its mouth pieces in the prosecution of its business.