of Congress. So it will be hereafter. The law will be positive that nothing but gold and silver shall be offered; yet paper will be offered, and often taken; and just such contests will arise as that which arises in this case; the Government officers insisting that the paper was voluntarily received, and the party receiving it, on the other hand, insisting, and making oath, that he resisted the receipt of it as long as he could, and took it at last simply because he could get nothing else. I think any man must be short-sighted who does not perceive that occurrences of this sort will be constantly happening under a system in which the Government uses, or pretends to use, one currency, and the People another.

But, sir, there is another important matter disclosed in this report, to which I wish to call the attention of the Senate.

It is known that during the existence of the Bank of the United States, the United States' pensions were paid by that bank, without cost or charge; and as the bank was a safe depository, no losses happened to Government or to individuals.

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When the bank charter expired, Congress was called on to make some other provision for paying pensions, and the act of April 20, 1836, was passed. That act provides that, in future, payments of pensions shall be made by such persons or corporations as the Secretary of War may direct, but no compensation or allowance shall be made to such persons or corporations for making such payments, without authority of law."

This act was passed under that clause of the Constitution which authorizes Congress, by law, to vest the appointment of such inferior officers as they think proper in the Heads of Departments.

Under this law the Secretary of War appointed these officers, and a list of them has been recently sent by him to the Senate. It will appear from the report from the War Department that, like other disbursing officers, they have been called on to give official bonds; and there is no manner of doubt that, to all intents and purposes, they are officers under the Government of the United States.

But now to their pay. The act of April 20, 1836, creating the office and providing for the appointing of the officer, declares, as I have already said, that no allowance or compensation shall be made to them, without authority of law. Now, Congress has passed no further law on the subject; and yet how stands the matter of their pay?

It will be remembered that, in 1834, the President, or Secretary of War, before the bank charter expired, undertook to transfer the pension funds from the Bank of the United States to the deposit banks; and on that occasion, those deposit banks were told, as will be seen by this report, that in consideration of the benefits

which they would derive from the deposits, no commission or salary would be allowed.

The same course was adopted after the act of 1836 passed; so that, from that time to the present, pension agents, appointed by the Secretary of War, get their pay by the use of the Government funds in their hands. And I find, by inquiry at the proper source, that the general rule is, to advance the necessary funds six months before they will be needed; so that the agent has the use of the money for that period; and when the time comes for paying it to the pensioners, he pays it, and immediately receives from the Treasury an advance for the next six months; so that he has, the whole year round, the use of a sum of money equal to one half the whole annual amount of pensions paid at his office.

For instance, the whole annual amount of pensions, paid at Boston, is three hundred and twenty thousand dollars, or thereabouts. One half this sum is one hundred and sixty thousand dollars; and the agent, as his compensation for paying the pensions, actually enjoys the use of this sum the whole year.

Suppose the use of the money to be worth six per cent. per annum; the compensation thus made to the pension agent in Boston is more than nine thousand dollars.

So in New Hampshire, where there are two pension agencies, one at Portsmouth, and one at Concord. At the Portsmouth agency, thirty-three thousand dollars, or thereabouts, is annually paid out. The agent, therefore, has usually on hand the one half of this sum, say fifteen thousand five hundred dollars, the interest of which would be near a thousand dollars.

At the Concord pension office, the amount of annual payments is sixty-six thousand dollars. One half of this sum being usually on hand, the agent receives, for discharging the duties of his office, the use of that one half, say of thirty-three thousand dollars, which, at the rate of six per cent. per annum, amounts to nineteen hundred or two thousand dollars. These sums are taken from official statements, and I believe are correct; and the other general facts are obtained from authentic sources.

It will probably strike the Senate, in the first place, that these rates of compensation are exceedingly large, especially in these days of professed economy and reform; and, in the next place, all will admit that this mode of making compensation is the worst in the world, as it places the funds of the Government every day at hazard. How this mode of making compensation, or this amount of compensation, can be reconciled to the words of the act of Congress, which declare that there shall be no compensation without authority of law, I hope some gentleman will undertake to explain. In most cases, but I believe not in all, the list will show these

agents are presidents of State banks; but the appointments, nevertheless, are personal appointments, and the banks themselves are not responsible for the agents' fidelity. As I have already said, the agents, like other disbursing officers of Government, give bonds for the due discharge of the duties of their office. I trust, sir, that the Committee on Finance will see the necessity of some further legal provision on this subject.

Since I am speaking on this subject, I will (said Mr. W.) take leave to make a remark or two on a personal matter. The Globe of Saturday, still pursuing a course of meddling with the private concerns of public men, which course, nevertheless, it admits is exceedingly despicable, reiterates charges of my having had paper dishonored at this Commonwealth Bank. The obvious object of all this, as of the former article, it is evident, is to hold out an appearance that I owe the bank, or have owed it in times past. I think it very likely that, by the time this statement of the Globe gets a hundred miles from Washington, it will be so amplified as to represent me as an acknowledged debtor to the bank to a great amount; and, by the time it gets over the mountains, the failure of the bank will be mainly ascribed, very possibly, to its loans to me. I repeat, therefore, that I never owed the bank a dollar, so far as I remember, nor ever had any pecuniary transaction with it whatever.

The statement is, that a bill drawn by me, and accepted, was sent to the bank for collection, and not duly paid by the acceptor. It was of course returned upon the drawer, and duly paid and taken up by him. All this is very unimportant and innocent; but it is stated as if with studious design to represent me as a debtor to the bank; whereas, in the first place, the bank had no interest in it whatever; and, in the second place, it was duly paid by the drawer on the acceptor's neglect. As to any acceptance of my own, sent to that bank for collection, being protested, I never heard of it, to my knowledge. If such a thing happened, it must have been accidental, and owing to some mistake as to the day, which was seasonably corrected. Nor can it be true that any note or bill with my name on it was handed over to another bank on the failure of this Commonwealth Bank, unless it was some dead note or bill which had been already paid to those who were entitled to receive payment. This apparent and obvious purpose of representing me as a debtor to the bank, or as ever having been a borrower at it, is founded in sheer misrepresentation and falsehood.

I perceive that the directors, or officers, of this bank have been busying themselves to help out the statements of the Globe; yet no one of them says I ever owed the bank a dollar in the world ; they might, I think, be better employed. It has been stated publicly that these officers have helped themselves to loans, from their own bank, to an amount exceeding the amount of all its capital, and

then failed, bank and all, leaving a prodigious mass of unredeemed paper upon the hands of the Public. I know not how this may be; but, until the charge is cleared up, one should think they might find better employment than in attempting to bolster up slanderous imputations against their neighbors, and attacking people who have not the misfortune to owe them any thing.

In reply to Mr. NILES, Mr. WEBSTER remarked

The law says, in so many words, that these pension agents shall receive no compensation without provision by law; and the Secretary, in making compensation, has of course done it without law. I have a right to the fact. The Secretary makes the appointments, generally, of the president or some other officer of a bank, and the appointment is entirely personal; the bond is personal; the bond was directly to the United States; and this proves conclusively that the officer is an officer of the United States. No bank is named in the bond; in those which I have seen, - and I have obtained the common form from the office,-I do not find that the agent is named or described as president or cashier of any bank. The appointment is simply of A B as agent for paying pensions in a certain place; and A B gives his own bond, directly to the United States, with sureties, for the faithful discharge of his duties. If the agent, in any case, be connected with any bank, and desire to leave the money on deposit in that bank, instead of using it himself, that is matter of arrangement between him and the bank. All this makes no difference; it does not diminish the amount of compensation; it does not change the nature of the office. The agent is an officer, appointed by authority of law, and ti. under bonds to the United States, and receiving, as it appears by this report, a very large compensation. I have nothing to do now with the deposit system; all I say is, that this kind of management ought not to go on, making, as every one must admit, a very great allowance for compensation, far too large. And what occasion is there of hazarding all this money? I speak, however, only of the existing state of things, as a subject which the Senate must perceive requires a remedy. There is a personal appointment of a certain officer by law; and therefore there is in effect a personal emolument to the amount which I have stated; at least it is as large as that at Boston, and may be larger elsewhere.

REMARKS

ON THE PREËMPTION BILL, MADE IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES, JANUARY 29, 1838.

The following bill to grant preemption rights to actual settlers on the public lands being on its passage, viz. :

A BILL TO GRANT PREEMPTION RIGHTS ΤΟ SETTLERS ON THE

PUBLIC LANDS.

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That every actual settler of the public lands, being the head of a family, or over twenty-one years of age, who was in possession, and a housekeeper by personal residence thereon, on or before the first day of December, eighteen hundred and thirty-seven, shall be entitled to all the benefits and privileges of an act, entitled “An Act to grant preemption rights to settlers on the public lands," approved May twenty-ninth, eighteen hundred and thirty; and the said act is hereby revived and continued in force two years, Provided, That where more than one person may have settled upon and cultivated any one quarter section of land, each one of them shall have an equal share or interest in the said quarter section, but shall have no claim, by virtue of this Act, to any other land: And provided, always, That this act shall not be so construed as to give a right of preemption to any person or persons in consequence of any settlement or improvement made before the extinguishment of the Indian title to the land on which such settlement or improvement was made, or to any land specially occupied or reserved for town lots, or other purposes, by authority of the United States; And provided further, That nothing herein contained shall be construed to affect any of the selections of public lands for the purposes of education, the use of salt springs, or for any other purpose, which may have been or may be made by any State under existing laws of the United States; but this Act shall not be so construed as to deprive those of the benefits of this Act, who have inhabited, according to its provisions, certain fractions of the public lands within the land district of Palmyra, in the State of Missouri, which were reserved from sale in consequence of the surveys of Spanish and French grants, but are found to be without the lines of said grants.

MR. WEBSTER rose and said, that whatever opposition might be made to this bill, in his opinion, some provision of this nature was necessary and proper, and therefore he had supported it, and he should now vote for its final passage.

Although entirely indisposed (said Mr. W.) to adopt any measure which may prejudice the public interest, or trifle with this great subject, and opposed at all times to all new schemes and projects, I still think the time has come when we must, from necessity,