He thus presented his calculation of the cost of carrying out the bill as an argument against it: "In 1822 the ordinary expenses of the Government were $9,827,643, and in 1823 the expenses amounted to the sum of $9,784,154. Now, sir, who could have thought at that day that in the comparatively short time of forty-three years it would require the sum of even $12,000,000 to fix up a machinery alone for the benefit of three or four million negroes, and more especially, sir, when it is understood that in 1820 we had a population, including white and colored, of 9,633,545. Mr. Speaker, how long will it be at this rate--when we take into consideration the fact that our Government proper, besides this little bureau machine, is now costing us hundreds of millions of dollars--how long, sir, will it be before we have to call in the services of Mr. Kennedy, of census notoriety, to estimate the amount of the debt we owe?" Mr. Rousseau, of Kentucky, in defining his position, said: "I am not a Republican; I was a Whig and a Union man, and belong to the Union party, and I am sorry to say that the Union party and the Republican party are not always convertible terms." Mr. Rousseau urged, against the Freedmen's Bureau Bill the wrongs and oppressions which its abuses heaped upon the people of the South. In the course of his speech Mr. Rousseau quoted what he had said on one occasion to an official of the Freedmen's Bureau: "I said to him, 'if you intend to arrest white people on the _ex parte_ statements of negroes, and hold them to suit your convenience for trial, and fine and imprison them, then I say that I oppose you; and if you should so arrest and punish me, I would kill you when you set me at liberty; and I think that you would do the same to a man who would treat you in that way, if you are the man I think you are, and the man you ought to be to fill your position here.'"