Mr. HUMPHREY. Mr. Speaker, this act authorizes an increase to a very great extent of the subordinate officers connected with the customhouse. It authorizes the collector and other officers to make appointments themselves; so the resultwill be they will appoint men for the purpose of performin the specific duty not of that high character of the man who would occupy the position of collector or deputy collector; and under the 3rd section these men are authorized to arrest any person and examine his trunks and vehicle tor the purpose of seeing whether there is any property which has been smuggled. But the officer can do this only where he has reason to believe the person or carriage has goods liable to duty. think that is at least an amount of caution which ought to be placed in this bill when we are to at such immense powers into the hands of sue men as will dou tless have the privilege of exercising them. but the 2nd section is a new one. Its object is to extend the extraordiuar powers of search and seizure of vessels, on it does extend those powers to all vessels in every port of the‘U.S. without requiiing that these men should have reason to believe or suspect that there is something on board that has been smuggled. Take, if you please, the port of NewYork, Boston, Philadelphia, or Buffalo; any of these officers may go upon a vessel that is already loaded and just upon the point of leaving on its regular trip and stop it. If the man who has command of the vessel refuses to stop he is liable to be indicted and punished severely. And not only may they sto the vessel, but they are authorized to call to their aid all the powers of the Government for the purpose of stop ping it. The may use a revenue cutter and call in the ai necessary to stop that vessel; and they may detain it while the officers are making an examination of every single pack age on board. Now, [submit that we ought not to do an act ‘which shall put it in the hands of irresponsible men at every port of the country to embar rass the commerce under the simple pretense of stopping smuggling. The evil would most undoubtedly outweigh any good that could possibly come from any such provision. Let this provision have the same check and guard that the provision has which authorizes these men to arrest an ipdividual. Because it is1,000 times more important that we should control these men in the exercise of a power which stops not only an individual, but stops 100s and 1000s of them when they are just ready to leave one of the ports of this country for another or for a foreign port; which stopsa vessel under circumstances where the damage may be 100s of dollars perhour. These men should have some reason to believe that there is something there which warrants them in sto ping the vessel. The interests of commerce iinperatively demand that at least this safeguard should be incorporated into this section. I am aware that, under the cry that there must be more efficient legislation for the purpose of stopping smuggling, we are liable to do just what was done once before by congress, when there was a great outery made in relation to the gambling in gold in the city of NewYork. This House, in a spasm of indig nation, undertook by law to settle the question, but in less than ten days thereafter it saw fit to unsettle it. It saw what was true; that the interests of trade and commerce were not to be regulated by this sort of legislation. One great and important object of legislation is to protect an encourage the interests of trade; and now, because there happens to be just at this time some pretense that there is a necessity of a little more stringent legislation, is it proper or expedient that we should go to work to overthrow the well settled principles which eve man understands must be maintained in or or that those interests may be protected? Inin in favor of making this law as eflicient as possible without infringing upon the rights of p citizens, of innocent citizens. Let us do no act that shall violate the principles upon which those rights are maintained and preserved. In addition, let us see to it that the interests of commerce, the great interests of the country, shall in no way be violated simply in‘ answer to an unreasoning cry, an unreasoning effort to get a more efficient law for the purpose of punishing a trivial crime. I believe that these 2 amendments ought, for the protection of the rights of the citizen and for the protection of the interests of commerce, to be incorporated into this bill. Ihope that the action of the House may be such as will at least do thus much toward protecting those interests.