Mr. Wallacehad to mention a matter which appeared to him a question of privilege. He had seen in several of the newspapers that morning an allegation reported respecting him, which appeared to him derogatory to his character as a Gentleman, and as a Member of that House. Through a private friend he had since been given to understand that the observation was not applied to him in a personal way. The case was this:—It had been charged against him that he had made it matter of complaint against the Post-office two years ago the a letter inclosing a petition had not been duly forwarded to him from the Post-office, although, as it was stated, he at the time had both the one and the other actually in his possession. Now, the facts were, that he had never received the petition at all, and that he did not discover the letter which he considered had accompanied the petition till a long time afterwards, and it was then only by mere accident that he found it among a number of his papers. The moment he discovered the letter he sent and made the Postmaster-General acquainted with the fact; but he would repeat that he had never seen the petition at all. Again, it 477 had been insinuated that he had made his own alleged careless way of sealing his letters a pretext for charging the Post-office with a systematic violation of the seals of the letters intrusted to its agency; but he repelled the insinuation with the disdain it merited. He would take upon himself to assert that in every instance he sealed his letters as carefully as any gentleman who ever sent a letter to the Post-office, and he was well satisfied that the violation of any sealed letter he had ever forwarded through the post was attributable to no carelessness of his. He had never made any imputation against the Post-office which he was not thoroughly prepared to justify at the bar of the House or elsewhere.
§ The matter dropped.