Sentinel Of The Valley

CONGRESS.

Both branches of congress were engaged to-day (to use a printer's phrase) in working off the ordinary bills, and finishing the matured business of the session. To complete this work, the Senate had a recess, at the dinner hour, under an order to meet again at 6 o'clock, for a night session. Possibly the body, some time during the night, may go into conclave on the President's new nominations—Mr. Wise, for Minister to France; Mr. Cushing, for the Secretaryship of the treasury, &c., &c.: but we think it most likely that the Senate may wait until the last night of the session, so that the President may be compelled to show his whole hand at once, and the Senate be enabled to advise with an eye to the great and small appointments at once—but especially in the construction of the whole Cabinet—and not by piecemeal. Mr. Cushing's confirmation to the treasury Department seems almost incompatible with Mr. Webster's holding the State Department; and yet still holds it, and, it may be, 'will continue to hold it. Mr. Cushing, everybody knows at home, is but a satellite within Mr. Webster's Boston orbit; and at Washington, has continually obeyed the influence of the greater wandering light of Federalism. To put Mr. Cushing in the second department of the Government, with Mr. Webster in the first, would make a sort of consolidation of the two departments.

In the Senate, there was in the morning a little jousting between the Senators from Georgia, on the subject of the instructions received by Mr. Berrien from his State Legislature, and which he did not present to the Senate. His colleague (Mr. Cuthbert) brought the subject up, and very strongly characterized the want of good faith on the part of Mr. Berrien to those whom it was his duty to represent. There were some circumstances which rendered the contemning course of Mr. Berrien to his constituents a most striking breach of trust.