Plainly the Senate Chamber is too big for our daily life. It is not proportioned to ordinary occasions or every-day business. We all know that anything in a common tone of voice is heard with difficulty, unless we give special attention. Now I cannot doubt that the chamber should be so reduced that a motion or question or remark in a common tone of voice would be easily heard by every Senator. This should have been the rule for the architect at the beginning; and I would have it followed now in the change I suggest. With seven hundred listeners in the galleries, and with the large corps of reporters, the public would be in sufficient attendance, and the business of the country would be transacted more easily and advantageously. Looking at these enormous spaces, adapted to the eye rather than to the ear, I turn with envy to that other chamber where the Senate sat so many honorable years, and listened to speeches which now belong to the permanent literature of the country. I doubt if any Senator who remembers that interesting chamber would not prefer it to this amphitheatre. For the transaction of daily business it was infinitely superior; and even on rare occasions, when the republic hung upon the voice of the orator, there were witnesses enough. The theory of our institutions was satisfied. The public was not excluded, and there were reporters to communicate promptly what was said. The amendment was agreed to. A SHIP-CANAL THROUGH THE ISTHMUS OF DARIEN. REMARKS IN THE SENATE, ON AN AMENDMENT TO THE CIVIL APPROPRIATION BILL, JULY 25, 1866. July 25th, the Senate having under consideration the bill making appropriations for sundry civil expenses of the Government, Mr. Conness, of California, moved the following amendment:-- “To provide for a survey of the Isthmus of Darien, under the direction of the War Department, with a view to the construction of a ship-canal, in accordance with the report of the Superintendent of the Naval Observatory to the Navy Department, $40,000.” In the debate that ensued, Mr. Sumner remarked:-- I have had the advantage of cursorily examining the able and interesting report on this work by Admiral Davis. It is learned and instructive, and develops the importance of such a canal to the commerce of the United States. I need not remind you that California is necessarily interested, because it is across the Isthmus of Darien that we reach the distant part of our own country. Therefore this is to increase and extend the facilities of communication with a part of our own country. Unhappily, we are obliged to go outside of our own borders, but I do not know that it becomes on that account any the less important.