Mr LINCOLN offered for adoption a resolution for a select committee to enquire into the causes of the large amount of the item of public printing, and to enquire into the possibility of reducing the expense &c.
Mr. LINCOLN in offering this resolution distinctly stated that he contemplated and intended no attack on any individual: his only object was to ascertain if it might be in the power of the House to reduce this heavy item of public expenditure.
Mr BENTLEY suggested that the committee on public accounts and expenditures was the proper committee to entrust with this enquiry, and moved to amend accordingly.
Mr LINCOLN objected to the shuffling off of responsibility, and said that as for himself, he would prefer not to be on the select committee to be appointed. He was not inclined to believe that more printing was done than was ordered, or that more was charged for than the law allowed. He was disposed to believe if there was any fault, it was at our own door. He had just read the message of the Governor of Indiana, in which he called the attention of their Legislature to the enormous expenditure of 12,000 dollars for public printing. Thus it would be seen that in our sister state, with a population doubling ours, 12,000 was called an enormous expenditure, whilst we, with only half the population, and doubly more embarrassed, were paying $23,000 for the same object! So far was he from wishing to make this matter a party business, that he would distinctly say, it was his desire that he himself should not be placed upon the committee to be appointed.
Mr ORMSBEE referred the House to a resolution now before the committee of which he was chairman, and which covered the whole ground of the resolution now offered.