The New York Herald

Washington, August 7, 1846.
The two Houses have been working to-day, as if their salvation depended upon passing a given amount of bills and resolutions.
The Senate met at ten, worked hard till four— took a recess till six, and from that hour till half past ten, with the exception of a territorial bank bill, that they stumbled upon, and which required four several experiments before they could lay it upon the table—with this single stumbling block excepted, they turned out without interruption, private and local bills at the rate of a score an hour, and at half-past ten went into executive business, as supposed, upon a lot of sub-treasury nominations, the most conspicuous of which is the nomination of W. C. Bouck, the Old White Horse, as the guardian of the sub-treasury at New York. Major Smith, of another class of officials, is nominated as postmaster at Buffalo, overslaughing Dorsheimer, the original nominee. In both these nominations, the barnburners are superseded and set aside by the old hunkers. Among other nominations, we understand that two of the European embassies are filled by selections from the North.
The Executive sessions, reported to be upon a decisive basis for a speedy peace with Mexico were over-estimated in their importance. The question under consideration was the offer of peace to Mexico, and the despatch of a special minister; in both of which points we understand the President has been left to his discretion, so that, unless Mexico should offer plausible terms in the interim, the probability is that the war will be carried into the heart of the country.
News having been received by the Executive Department of the resort by the Mexican Congress to letters of marque, a bill of retaliation (in such a contingency on the part of Mexico to take effect) was introduced by Mr. McDuffie in the Senate to-day, and passed. This, in itself, foreshadows the impression of any very immediate conclusion of the war.
The House, as anticipated, curtailed the diplomatic bill in committee of the heavy items of appropriation interpolated by the Senate, including the $250,000 to Massachusetts, the $64,000 to Virginia, and the $861,000 on account of Mexican indemnities. The extra allowance to Benjamin E. Green, for services as Charge at Mexico, are also expunged. They have yet to be finally passed upon by the House, which gives Benjamin and our indemnity men a last and despairing chance.
The South, on the results of the session, have been singularly successful, and the West most deplorably unfortunate.
They were routed on the Oregon question.
They were out-generaled on the tariff bill.
They were completely swamped among the rivers and harbors.
While upon the land graduation, though a draw game, they were just as signally defeated.
Mr. Walker, of the Treasury Department, is the greatest live general of the age. A word for a friend deceased is here suggested Mr. Samuel Walker, one of the Intelligencer reporters for the Senate, died to-day, after an illness of only three or four days, of congestion of the brain. We had scarcely missed him from his accustomed seat, when the melancholy intelligence of his death was announced in our presence. But a few days ago he appeared to be in most excellent health, and good for a long life. He was an amiable and courteous young man, a gentleman in all his associations, and in general esteem by the corps, as well as by a large proportion of friends and acquaintances. He was a friend of ours; and though, from his retiring character, we came not often into collision with him, yet his company and conversation were ever agreeable and entertaining. Modest and unpresuming in his manners, he was not the less remarkable for his elegance of speech and general intelligence. We regret him as a friend, as a man, and as one of the corps; and yet how many do envy him the rest at his journey's end!
This subject of regret, and others that oppress us, to say nothing of the skeleton to which the duties of a long session have reduced us, interrupt a further dissertation with your readers to-night.
Respectfully, The Doctor.