of a long day, yet they never complain of their toil, but cheerfully attend to all the wants of the visiters.--This room is opened very early in the morning, and not closed until a late hour. If any officers of the government deserve all their salaries, and more too, they are the Meehans, father and son, Stelle and Kearon. Their salaries are small ones, and their labors are great and fatiguing all day long, during the whole session of Congress. During the intervals between the sessions, their labors are not so fatiguing, but they are even then constant, unremitting and useful to the visiters, who are always all day long in this library. Having known these gentlemen fourteen years and upwards in their present stations, I take a real pleasure in bearing this testimony in their favor. How many messengers, assistant messengers, doorkeepers and assistant doorkeepers, clerks and assistant clerks, postmasters and assistant postmasters, paperfolders, pages, &c. &c. there are here, I cannot tell, because I do not know, but their numbers must be very large, and they cost the nation a great deal. All the officers of government in the city must amount to one thousand at least, and their salaries would support probably all the State governments in the Mississippi Valley. I make no complaint of this vast expense, but we must not find fault with the expenses of monarchical government in many of the minor governments in the old world. Take from those governments, in the north of Europe, their standing armies, rendered necessary, perhaps, by their peculiar position, and it is possible that their governments might be cheaper than ours. That we have many useless officers, many members of Congress seem to think, but whether they can be cast off, because they are useless, is doubtful. This army of smaller officers are always on the alert, when retrenchment and reform are talked of by members--these creatures crying out: “penny wise and pound foolish.” They have some influence on Congress, and would be glad to have more. So far as the House of Representatives are concerned, there is a strong disposition to reduce the expenses of the government, but the Senate has not yet acted finally on that subject.