Sir, the Senator has not done justice to the bill he undertook to criticize. It was evident that he spoke hastily, without having even read it. At least, this is not an improper assumption, when we consider some of his criticisms. It will be remembered how promptly I corrected him, while he was picturing the Assistant Commissioners as so utterly without restraint that they were not even obliged to make reports. I rose and read the clause in the bill expressly requiring not only “quarterly reports,” but “other special reports from time to time.” The Senator, surprised by this provision, replied, that it was at the close of the bill, and was evidently an afterthought. This, again, was a mistake. Had he read the bill carefully, he would have found, that, whatever its merits in other respects, everything is introduced in its proper place, and this provision is no exception. There is no afterthought in the bill. The Senator then complained that the Assistant Commissioner was not obliged to give a bond. Here, again, he was mistaken. By an amendment moved by myself this was required. All this was part of the attempt to show that the bureau had not been planned with sufficient care. Suffice it to say that there is no bureau of the Government constituted with more care, or surrounded with more safeguards against abuse. Much, in the last resort, must be confided to the honesty of public servants; but in the present case they are all placed under the observation of their superiors. Superintendents will be observed by the Assistant Commissioner, who will be observed by the Commissioner, and all will be under the observation of the Secretary of the Treasury, who himself is under the observation of the President; and I need not add that the whole will be subject to the oversight of a humane and enlightened people, awakening daily to a sense of obligation which cannot be postponed. I am not wrong, then, when I say that the Senator did injustice to the bill in his criticism on its structure and the machinery it establishes. But this was the smallest part of his injustice. He went further, and, following the Senator from West Virginia, asserted that it gave the Commissioner unlimited power and control, so as to hand the unhappy freedman over to Slavery under another name. I looked at the Senator to see if he were really serious, as he made this strange accusation against a measure conceived in a sentiment of humanity and equity, and, by positive provisions, guarding every freedman against the very outrage which the Senator professes to fear. He seemed to be serious, as he repeated the accusation. But as he had erred with regard to the restraints upon the Assistant Commissioners, so he erred in the graver impeachment which he launched here.