Senate had overruled him. He voted for the conference report, voted for the final passage of the bill. That bill gave back pay for a year and five months. Was John Sherman denounced as a thief and robber for that? Was Benjamin F. Wade called a thief and robber? “At that time I was not chairman of the committee, and had no other responsibility than that of an individual representative. I voted against the increase of salary then; at all stages I voted against the conference report, but it passed through the House on final vote by just one majority. I don’t remember that any body ever praised me, particularly, for voting against that report, and I never heard any body blaming John Sherman for voting for it. “Now, in 1873, the conditions were exactly the reverse. I was chairman of the committee that had charge of the great appropriation bill. There was put upon that bill, against my earnest protest, a proposition to increase salaries. I take it there is no one here who will deny that I worked as earnestly as I could to prevent the putting of that increase upon the bill. I did not work against it because it was a theft or robbery to put it on there; I worked against it because I thought it was indecent, unbecoming, and in the highest degree unwise and injudicious to increase the salaries at that time. First, because they had been increased in 1866, and in proportion to other salaries, Congressmen were paid enough—paid more in proportion than most other officials were paid. Second, the glory of the Congress had been that it was bringing down the expenditures of the Government, from the highest level of war to the lowest level of peace; and that if we raised our own salaries, unless the rise had been made before, it would be the key-note on which the whole tune of extravagance would be sung. I believed, too, that it would seriously injure the Republican party, and on that score I thought we ought to resist it. I did all in my power to prevent that provision being added to the bill. I voted against it eighteen times. I spoke against it, but by a very large vote in the House, and a still larger vote in the Senate, the salary clause was put upon the bill. I was captain of the ship, and this objectionable freight had been put upon my deck. I had tried to keep it off. What should I do? Burn the ship? Sink her? Or, having washed my hands of the responsibility for that part of her cargo I had tried to keep off, navigate her into port, and let those who had put this freight on be responsible for it? Using that figure, that was the course I thought it my duty to adopt. Now on that matter I might have made an error of judgment. I believed then and now that if it had been in my power to kill this bill, and had thus brought on an extra session, I believe to-day, I say, had I been able to do that, I should have been the worst blamed man in the United States.