John Quincy Adams Digital Diary

73 Washington Thursday 10. March 1842

10. IV:30— Thursday.

Heap Radcliff William Mrs Birch Dickens Charles Mrs Dickens Leavitt Joshua Torrey C. T. Elizabeth C. Adams

Settlement with Rothwel Treasurer of Columbian College
Due on the bond 1. June 1841	8410:74.
Interest to 5. March 1842	385 49.
	8796:23

Treasury Notes
6.	of 500 =	3000
7	100	700
16	50	800
1.	97.55	97.55
		4597:55 - 22:99 = 4574:56.
P. Force, note payable 20. May 1842		458 8.
Draft, S. Chapin on Merchants Bank. Boston		1000
Note of O. B. Brown, to J. Withers with Mortgage		1000
Washington Corporation Stock 1250		1096:94
Baltimore Bank Notes 300 Washington Patriotic Bank 100	- 10	390
Specie		276 65
		8796:23.

Mr Heap, Son of our late Consul at Tunis was again here this morning his father has been transferred from his Consulate, to be Dragoman to the American mission at Constantinople and Mr Hodgson has been appointed Consult at Tunis. But Mr Heap is exceedingly displeased at the transfer, and wishes to be reinstated, in his office as Consul at Tunis, for which his son solicits my interposition; which can be of no possible avail— Mr Radcliff was here and made some enquiries about Consular appointments, and made some remarks on the great amount of increased appropriations and expenditures of Consuls, for distressed American Seamen— Mrs Birch came to solicit again for a place for her husband to save them from being turned out of their house for non-payment of their rent. Mr Charles Dickens and his wife called and left cards, and a Letter of introduction from Mr Charles A. Davis of New-York.— Mr Leavitt and Mr Torrey were also here— At the house, no notice of the two Messages of yesterday— The appropriation bill was immediately taken up in Committee of the whole on the state of the Union— Briggs in the Chair; upon amendments proposed in relation to the public 74printing, and contingencies— In 1837—I had obtained the insertion among the rules of the house one, that no expenditure should be provided for in a general appropriation Bill, not authorised by Law— But the very next year an exception was added to the rule for contingencies, and for the continuance of works authorized by law, and from that hour the rule has been a dead Letter, and I had given up as desperate, all attempt to enforce it— Some days since Gentry of Tennessee moved to strike out of this bill, all items of appropriation not otherwise authorised by existing Law—thus falling back on my principle. This motion after much debate was carried by a large majority, but it has entangled the house in a snarl from which they will find it difficult to extricate themselves— In the item of contingent expenditure in the Department of State for printing the Laws in pamphlets and newspapers, Fillmore by direction of the Committee of Ways and Means proposed a proviso, requiring the job—printing to be done by contract with the lowest bidder, and Garrett Davis moved an amendment that the Laws should be published in the Newspapers having the largest circulation— This was a cut and thrust at the Madisonian, a Tyler Newspaper, with about 300 subscribers and kept alive only by the patronage of printing for the public offices— This was the stimulant of Wise’s furious onset upon Fillmore yesterday, met and repelled this day by Gentry amid numberless interruptions by Wise, and by the chairman Briggs himself truckling to the overbearing temper of Wise— Gentry Caruthers, Charles Brown, Gilmer, Everett and Cushing took part in this debate followed by one started by Giddings a touch upon Slavery which set all the South in a flame, till the Committee rose, and the house adjourned— Mr Nathaniel Tallmadge one of the Senators from New-York, came into the house with Charles Dickens and called me out from my seat and introduced him to me— I dined with Robert C. Winthrop and John P. Kennedy— They went expressly to Dickens’s lodgings at Fuller’s to prevail on him to come and dine with them; but he was at dinner and they did not see him— William S. Archer, Millard Fillmore, Pearce of Maryland, Mrs S. P. Gardner, Mr and Mrs F. C. Lowell were of the party— Mrs Winthrop did not appear till after dinner— Walk home. Elizabeth C. Adams arrived this evening.