ful person; but should I
see him, some morning, overlooking the workmen in the lawns, walks,
copses, and parterres which adorn the grounds around the President's
residence, considering the company into which we have introduced him, I
should expect to see, at least, a small diplomatic button on his working
jacket.

When these amendments came from the House, and were read at our table,
though they caused a smile, they were yet adopted, and the law passed,
almost with the rapidity of a comet, and with something like the same
length of tail.

Now, Sir, not one of these irregularities or incongruities, no part of
this jumbling together of distinct and different subjects, was in the
slightest degree occasioned by any thing done, or omitted to be done, on
the part of the Senate. Their proceedings were all regular; their
decision was prompt, their despatch of the public business correct and
reasonable. There was nothing of disorganization, nothing of
procrastination, nothing evincive of a temper to embarrass or obstruct
the public business. If the history which I have now truly given shows
that one thing was amended by another, which had no sort of connection
with it; that unusual expedients were resorted to; and that the laws,
instead of arrangement and symmetry, exhibit anomaly, confusion, and the
most grotesque associations, it is nevertheless true, that no part of
all this was made necessary by us. We deviated from the accustomed modes
of legislation only when we were supplicated to do so, in order to
supply bald and glaring deficiencies in measures which were before us.

But now, Mr. President, let me come to the fortification bill, the lost
bill, which not only now, but on a graver occasion, has been lamented
like the lost Pleiad.

This bill, Sir, came from the House of Representatives to the Senate in
the usual way, and was referred to the Committee on Finance. Its
appropriations were not large. Indeed, they appeared to the committee to
be quite too small. It struck a majority of the committee at once, that
there were several fortifications on the coast, either not provided for
at all, or not adequately provided for, by this bill. The whole amount
of its appropriations was four hundred or four hundred and thirty
thousand dollars. It contained no grant of three millions, and if the
Senate had passed it the very day it came from the House, not only would
there have been no appropriation of the three millions, but, Sir,