Mr. EDMUNDS. A night watchman and every other employe, except a day laborer, in the customhouse is appointed in that way, provided he is appointed in the way the law requires that he should be. I want to repeat again, for the information of my friends who are plunging this amendment into this bill, that every one of the appointees in the customhouse dept of the U.S., excepting day laborers and they have to be authorized by the SecyTreasury in advance is appointed by the SecyTreasury upon the nomination of the chief officer of the customs at the particular port, wherever it may be. That is what the law says. I do not say that persons are not sometimes appointed in some other way; but we ur are take it in general that they are appointea re. that way. Their name is not legion, to be sure; but they are a very numerous and a very necessary body of public servants. The great branch of the Government called the Senate would engage in a most dignified and useful occupation, indeed, if it spent its time in endeavoring to settle between the collector of customs at Burlington, Vermont, or at madison, Wisconsin, if there is a port of entry there, and the Secretary of the o;as to who was the best man for a sentinel over a ship that had just come in. The business of the Dept would get on famously in that way. No, Mr. President, it will not bear the test of investigation, and it is put forward, I ven ture to say with all respect to my friends, as a measure of feeling instead of as a measure of judgment which is founded upon any investigation into the grounds upon which it is to be carried out, or the circumstances which enter one extent and scope of the amendment itself. I do not claim, as my friendfrom Wisconsin very properly states, any patent for this bill which has been reported, or any copyright in it. It is not my bill; it is the bill of my honorable friendfrom Oregon, [Mr. WILLIAMs, I somewhat amended, and he does not claim any copyright. But we claim, as Senators having charge of a measure, and being in some degree responsible for the propriety of its details, that gentlemen who have not investigated another branch of the subject which is under consideration elsewhere should not, without a fair statement of reasons in opposition to it, cover it by an amendment which, in the 1st place, has nothing whatever to do with the bill, and which in the next place, cannot be under the kind of investigation we are making of it, properly understood, and to which, if it were properly understood, in my judgment, 3/4ths of the Senate would be opposed.