The Republicans and Know-Nothings were strong enough, with the aid of a few Democrats, who had fine-spun constitutional objections to it, to prevent the passage of this excellent bill by the House, but Mr. Kelly’s argument was not successfully answered by any of the opponents of the measure.
An interesting debate took place in the House, May 3, 1858, in relation to the Bureau of Statistics of the State Department, in which Mr. Kelly took a prominent part. This Bureau was established by Congress upon the recommendation of Mr. Marcy during the last Administration. The urgent necessity for such a Bureau was originally pointed out by Mr. Webster in 1842, when he was at the head of the Department. Several volumes upon the Commercial Relations of the United States with all other countries were issued during 1856 and 1857, prepared ostensibly by Edmund Flagg, Superintendent of the Bureau, but in reality Flagg had very little to do with the work. Hugh C. McLaughlin of Virginia, Mr. Flagg’s assistant, and who was soon after appointed his successor as Superintendent, was the real compiler, translator and editor of the valuable materials contained in those volumes. But Flagg was Superintendent, and he not only contrived to get his name printed on the title page as such, but to monopolise the whole credit to himself for the work. The volumes were received with remarkable favor by the leading commercial authorities in this country and Europe. Hunt’s Merchants Magazine spoke highly of them. In a notice of the fourth volume, the London Athenæum of February 20, 1858, said: “The highest praise is due to the House of Representatives for publishing this comprehensive and really national report, which brings into one view the commercial status of the United States with the entire world.”[46] The celebrated M. Rouher, then Minister of Agriculture and Commerce in France, who subsequently figured so conspicuously under the Empire of Napoleon the Third, expressed unqualified praise of this work of the State Department at Washington. To a friend who sent him one of the volumes, M. Rouher wrote: “This document is executed under the direction of the Secretary of State, by Mr. Edmund Flagg, an officer of the State Department. The Minister of France at Washington had already communicated to the Imperial Government the remarkable Report of Mr. Flagg to Mr. Marcy. It contains abundant and useful information; and I am happy to recognize in it marked improvement over works of the same character previously published by the American Government. A further improvement will be accomplished when, in accordance with the wish of Mr. Flagg, Congress shall prescribe a continuous, periodical and practically useful publication, like that which my Department has constantly issued for many years.”[47]
If M. Rouher was in the habit of following the proceedings of the American Congress, his surprise must have been great to find this same Mr. Flagg, who but a few months before had expressed so earnest a desire for the continued and regular publication of the Commercial Relations by the State Department, now haunting the lobbies of Congress, and supplying specious arguments to the opposition or Republican members against the further publication of the work, and in favor of the abolition of the Bureau itself. That which he proclaimed a work of national importance yesterday, he declared to be a useless encumbrance to-day. Flagg’s sudden change of mind was easily explained. Certain irregularities in his accounts had been discovered, and Secretary Cass had compelled him to send in his resignation. Hinc illae lachrymæ. The opposition members were always ready to attack the Administration, and Mr. Flagg plied them with frivolous arguments against the Bureau from which he had been discharged. Mr. Nichols of Ohio, and Mr. Washburne of Illinois, two Republican Congressmen, perhaps unaware that Flagg was a man with a grievance, espoused his cause, and while the Appropriation Bill for the legislative, executive and judicial branches of the Government was under consideration, May 3, 1858, they declared that it would be a waste of money to make any appropriation for the Bureau of Statistics in the State Department, and Mr. Nichols made this a pretext to denounce the extravagance of the Administration. After he had made his attack, and elicited no reply, Mr. Nichols was emboldened to go farther, and indiscreetly began to cross-question the members of the Committee of Ways and Means, of which Mr. Kelly was one, and by which the Appropriation Bill had been brought in, and to extol Flagg as a disinterested patriot, who had resigned his office, because he could not conscientiously draw a salary for work that was wholly useless. This was a fatal line of attack for Nichols to pursue, as he soon discovered to his cost. Senator Clay of Alabama, Chairman of the Committee on Commerce in the Senate, had investigated Flagg’s case in the State Department, and Mr. Kelly afterwards had become acquainted with the doings of the latter individual. Challenged to defend the appropriation, Mr. J. Glancy Jones, Chairman of the Committee of Ways and Means, and Mr. Kelly, a member of the same Committee, completely turned the tables upon Mr. Nichols and Mr. Washburne and after Kelly’s crushing rejoinder, Mr. Nichols, the would-be-champion of Flagg, dropped him as he would have run away from the contagion, and made a most ludicrous retreat from the field of his own selection.
To quote Mr. J. Glancy Jones, in his able defense of this item of the Appropriation Bill brought in by his Committee, would occupy too much space here; but the spicy debate between Messrs. Nichols, Kelly, and Washburne cannot be entirely omitted in a memoir of Mr. Kelly’s life.
Mr. Nichols: “I cannot take my seat without paying a just tribute to the late Mr. Marcy, and Mr. Flagg, who had charge of the preparation of the volume known as the ‘Commercial Relations.’ I would enquire of the gentleman (Mr. J. Glancy Jones) whether the former Superintendent did not resign his office under the express declaration that a discharge of the duties of the office was no longer necessary; and whether after that, and during this year, a successor was appointed?”
Mr. J. Glancy Jones: “I do not know what induced the gentleman alluded to to resign the office.”
Mr. Kelly: “I have made some enquiry on this subject, and from the best information I could get, I learned that Mr. Flagg was compelled to resign because there were charges made against him, to the effect that he had employed women ostensibly at four dollars a day, and only paid them at two dollars a day, requiring their receipts for four dollars a day. This fact was ascertained by the gentleman who represents the Committee on Commerce of the Senate. When he found that such was the case, he went to the State Department and said, that if Mr. Flagg was not turned out of that office, he would expose the matter to the country. This was the reason that Mr. Flagg was compelled to resign. So far as the Bureau itself is concerned, every gentleman knows that there is no Bureau in the Government that has been so effective in giving the country valuable statistical information. But Mr. Flagg being compelled to resign, now comes to Congress, and makes the effort to abolish a Bureau which has been of so much benefit to the country.”
Mr. Nichols: “I beg leave to say that so far as my action here is concerned, Mr. Flagg has nothing to do with it whatever. He has been connected with that Bureau, but I have spoken to him hardly half a dozen times.”
Mr. Nichols, but a few minutes before, had been extolling Flagg, and coupled his name with that of Secretary Marcy in what he called a “just tribute.” Now he wriggles out of the debate in the following amusing style:
Mr. Nichols: “I desire to conclude what I have to say. I wish the gentleman from New York to understand that, in reference to anything he may say about troubles in the Democratic camp which may have led to the removal of any of its children, I desire to enter into no discussion. I have nothing to do with it, then, or the difficulties of this happy family.”