Gerry’s speech as a whole was tactful and persuasive, but he made a blunder when he appealed to the recollections of the old members, men who had been in the Continental Congress, or else in some position where they could view its springs of action.  Their recollections now came forward to his discomfiture.  “My official duty,” said Wadsworth of Connecticut, “has led me often to attend at the Treasury of the United States, and, from my experience, I venture to pronounce that a Board of Treasury is the worst of all institutions.  They have doubled our national debt.”  He contrasted the order and clearness of accounts while the Superintendent of Finance was in charge with the situation since then.  If the committee had before them the transactions of the Treasury Board, “instead of system and responsibility they would find nothing but confusion and disorder, without a possibility of checking their accounts.”  Boudinot of New Jersey said he “would state a circumstance which might give the committee some small idea of what the savings under the Superintendent were.  The expenditure of hay at a certain post was one hundred and forty tons; such was the estimate laid before him; yet twelve tons carried the post through the year, and the supply was abundant, and the post was as fully and usefully occupied as it had ever been before.”  Of course there was an outcry against the Superintendent of Finance; “he rather wondered that the clamor was not more loud and tremendous.”  He remembered that “one hundred and forty-six supernumerary officers were brushed off in one day, who had long been sucking the vital blood and spirit of the nation.  Was it to be wondered at, if this swarm should raise a buzz about him?” Gerry fought on almost singlehanded, but he could not refute the evidence that he had invited.  He lost his temper and resorted to sarcasm.  If a single head of the Treasury was so desirable, why not “have a single legislator; one man to make all the laws, the revenue laws particularly, because among many there is less responsibility, system, and energy; consequently a numerous representation in this House is an odious institution.”

The case for the Treasury Board was so hopeless that nothing more was heard of it; but the battle over the removal question was renewed with added violence, when the bill for establishing the Department of Foreign Affairs came up for consideration.  White of Virginia now led the attack.  He had been a member of the Continental Congress from 1786 to 1788, and a member of the ratifying convention of his State.  Although he voted for a provisional acceptance of the Constitution, he had supported an amendment requiring Congress to collect direct taxes or excises through State agency, which would have been in effect a return to the plan of requisitions—­the bane of the Confederation.  In an elaborate speech he attacked the clause giving the President power to remove from office, as an attempt to impart an authority not conferred by the Constitution,