6 These considerations were inseparably connected with the defeat of this appropriation bill. I knew that if it failed from any act of mine, the responsibility for its failure would rest more heavily on me than upon any other member. I had been made responsible for its management, but was in no way responsible for the adoption of the salary amendment. After weighing the case as well as I could, I concluded it was my duty to stand by the bill; and I did so. I remained in the conference, and did what I could to perfect the bill and reduce the amount appropriated by it. On my motion the following proviso was made a part of the bill: “ Provided, That in settling the pay and allowances of members of the Forty- Second Congress, all mileage shall be deducted, and no allowances shall be made for expenses of travel.” The sum deducted from the additional back pay under this proviso amounted in the aggregate to nearly $400,000 ; and the pay to the members of the late Congress is made less than those of the next Congress by the total amount of actual travelling expenses. The other sixty-four amendments to the bill were satisfactorily adjusted, after many hours of deliberation. Having done what I could to perfect the bill, I signed the conference report and presented it to the House ; but in doing so I stated that I alone had opposed the salary clause in the conference committee, and had done what I could to strike it out, and that I had signed the report rather than run the risk of losing the bill. I then voted for the bill, not for the increase of salaries nor for the retroactive clause, for I was opposed to both, but for the bill as a whole. It is clear that it would have passed if I had voted against it. But believing that it was better to pass the bill, even with the salary amendment included, than risk the consequences of its failure, I voted for it. It would have been an inconsistent and cowardly act on my part to vote against it merely to escape criticism. If the bill as reported from the conference committee ought to have been defeated, there was one well-known and very easy way to do it. One-fifth of the members present, by dilatory and filibustering motions and calling the ayes and.noes, could have prevented a vote on the report till the end of the session. Should the ninety-six members who voted against the conference report be censured for not preventing its adoption ? Less than half of their number could easily have done so, But no one of them, so far as I know, thought it his duty to defeat the bill. Certainly I did not think it the duty of the chairman of the Committee on Appropriations to lead such a movement. It has been said that the conference report might have been recommitted for a further attempt to strike off the salary clause. The answer to this is, that the House, on an aye and no vote, by nineteen majority, ordered the question to be put on the adoption of the report.
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