The Senate having under consideration a bill to establish Assay Offices at Carson City, in the Territory of Nevada, and Dalles City, in the State of Oregon, Mr. Nesmith, of Oregon, moved to strike out the section establishing an Assay Office at Dalles City, and insert several sections establishing a Branch Mint there, instead. This was contrary to the recommendation of the Finance Committee, and also to communications from Mr. Pollock, the Director of the Mint at Philadelphia, and Mr. Chase, Secretary of the Treasury, sustained by Mr. Fessenden in the Senate. * * * * * April 29th, Mr. Sumner spoke. MR. PRESIDENT,--When this subject was under consideration before, I voted with the Committee, partly because it is my habit to vote with committees on matters within their special consideration, and partly because at the time I was under the impression that their report was justified by correct principles. Subsequent reflection has induced me to hesitate in this conclusion. Much dependence has been placed upon the report of the Director of the mint at Philadelphia. Now, Sir, if he had contented himself with giving an opinion against establishing a mint in Oregon, without assigning reasons, I might have respected his opinion; but when he puts forward as his first great objection that the multiplication of mints will tend to “national disintegration,” I confess that I join with the Senator from Oregon [Mr. NESMITH] in distrusting his conclusion. What confidence can anybody have in anything founded on such premises, which experience, if not reason, shows to be false? Why, Sir, the author of this opinion forgets that in the country most centralized in the world, where all the agencies of Government converge in a single capital,--I mean France,--there have been for a long time, even within its comparatively contracted borders, more than half a dozen different mints. Besides a magnificent central mint at Paris, there are, or were very recently, auxiliary mints at Lyons, Marseilles, Bordeaux, Lille, Rouen, and Strasbourg. I never heard that this multiplicity tended toward “national disintegration.” France still continues one and indivisible; and I doubt if there would be any difference in this respect, even if there were a mint in every one of her eighty-six Departments. Really, the Director of the Philadelphia mint ought to have borne in mind the famous instructions of Lord Mansfield to the colonial magistrate, and contented himself with an opinion without assigning reasons. There is a different consideration, to which I confess that I am not insensible. It is the importance of a correct and finished coinage, which it seems natural to suppose best promoted by a single mint. On this point I am disposed to agree with the Director. But our Government has not acted on this principle.