Mr. HENDRICKS. I Presume so; and I suppose the last clause of the proviso means I ask the Senfrom Ohio, who is familiar with such matters, whether that will not be the construction that the Secretary will be required to classify them according to the class ifications already known in the Dept as 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th class clerks. If so, there can be no objection to it; it will secure good and competent men to discharge important dutieS.R.JOHNSON. I do not exactly know whether there is any question before the senate except that which is Presented by the amendment itself which the committee proposed. The honorable member from Massachusetts has made no motion that I have heard to strike that amendment out in whole or in part. He has made an attack, as he supposed of course he had a right to make, upon the administration of the SecyTreasury. It is therefore, I suppose, conceded that that appropriation is necessary, that extra clerks must be employed, and as they can only be employed upon providing compensation for them, the compensation must be voted. New, how are the clerks to be employed? For what are they to be employed? Are they all to do the same duty? Does the honorable member from Massachusetts suppose that that is the condition of the Treasury Dept? They must be assigned, if employed, to relatively separate duties; they must therefore be classed. The intelligence and ability which are required for the higher class are not required for a lower class; that which is required for the lower class is incompetent to discharge the duties of the higher class. Well, if you strike out the proviso which authorizes the SecyTreasury to classify them in the manner all clerks are now classified in the Dept, and that is to be considered as taking from him the authority to classify them, are all to be paid alike without any reference to the service that they render? Mr. President, these assaults upon the higher officers of the Government, unless they are founded upon well ascertained facts, serve no purpose whatever, attain no. result whatever injure the good name of the country. The idea that a SecyTreasury would abuse his office, as he is supposed to have done in what to us is the anonymous letter which the Gentfrom Massachusetts has read, is to suppose that he i, s wholly unfit, and the sooner he is displaced the better. Now, without any intimate personal acquaintance with the Secretary, and judging of the manner in which he has discharged the duties of that office, I take pleasure in stating that as far as I know him and know the manner in which he has discharged the duties of his office, he is not justly subject to the slightest reproach. If appointments of a political character have been made such as the member from Massachusetts supposes, he has not made them himself by dismissing from employment those who were competent to discharge the duties. I have reason to know, and I think the Senate, if they have read the papers of the day, would know, that he has been urged from time to time to make changes in the higher officers of his Dept, and has sternly refused and has succeeded in retaining them. such was said to be the case. I believe it to be true with regard to the Asst SecyTreasury and the ComrIntRev. An amount of influence was brought to bear upon him which it was supposed he could not resist, but standing firmly to what he believed to be his duty he owed to his office and owed to the country he sternly refused, and the men are now in office. Why did he refuse? Not because he agreed in one particular politically with the Asst SecyTreasury, as I understand that gentleman to be politically, or with the ComrIntRev, but because he was satisfied that they were both good officers. The men who were urged upon him as their successors were subject to no justoOn account of character or ability; but he said, and as I think properly said, and, in my judg ment, no office can be properly administered upon any other ground, that he would not turn a competent officer out upon political grounds. The vice, not beginning with this Administration, but going ages back almost, years back certainly, has been to dismiss on that account the subordinate officers of the several Depts, the result of which has been in many cases to bring into office men who were almost entirely incompetent to discharge their duties, who had nothing to recommend them but mere party services in some ward controversy or some county controversy, wholly unfit to discharge properly, and many of them without the integrity to discharge, the duties of the high trusts conferred upon them. but I do not see that the Secretary's character is involved in this discussion. I should not have said a word upon the subject but for the remarks which fell from the honorable member from Massachusetts and from the honorable member from Wisconsin. In private life, before he came into the service of the country, he was above reproach. He administered all the affairs of the banking institution of which he was President with a rare ability; carried it successfully through the financial storms to which the whole country was subjected, and at the end of the existence of that bank, after dividing some ten or 12%. annually, returned more than dollar for dollar of the capital, and no man breathed a suspicion of his integrity.