which all uncovered amounts should be credited after they had been uncovered for a certain length of time. These duplicate certificates, some of them never did come in.

Q. But five months had elapsed between the close of the fiscal year and the date of this report ?-A. Yes, sir.

Q. Was not that time enough to get in all such items?-A. The books are always kept open for each quarter, sixty days, and then the quarter is closed, and all not covered in at that time is treated as outstanding or uncovered amounts. During the year 1862 the organization of the Treasury Department was inadequate to the business it had to do. We were conducting an enormous war, and doing business on an enormous scale, and we were doing that business with a very inadequate force of competent men to do it.

Q. That being so, take the year 1869, there was no war then, and see whether the difference there is not very much greater than $10,000,000. Tell me the difference between the statement of the Secretary and the statement of the Register for the year 1869?-A. For the year 1869 the Secretary's statement of the debt, according to the table before the committee, is $99,000,000 greater than it is as stated by the Register. Q. There was no war then?-A. No war then, I believe.

Q. And yet the difference had increased from 9,000,000 in round numbers up to 99,000,000 seven or eight years afterwards! You understand those to be running balances, do you not?-A. Yes, sir; those are running differences.

Q. Then really if, in 1862, there were nine or ten millions difference, it would run on, and that would be included in the 99,000,000, would it not?-A. It would vary backwards and forwards; every year must be taken by itself, and each item must be explained by itself. One item does not in any manner connect itself with any preceding item.

Q. You stated that there was a difference between yourself and Mr. Bristow, originating previous to his being Secretary. Do you desire to make any further explanation of that?-A. O, no. Mr. Bristow and myself were not friends.

Q. Did your difference grow out of official duties?-A. Yes, sir. Q. You have said that you examined the books and that there were no erasures or scratches upon them?-A. That I made none.

Q. You referred to that matter in some way. In your examination of the books did you discover or see any erasures or scratches upon any of the books?-A. Yes, lots of them; alterations and erasures; and it would be impossible to keep books without making erasures, in my opinion.

Q. What was the character of those you saw?-A. In the nature of erasures and corrections made in the course of the business, where a clerk probably had made a mistake, transposed a figure or had entered a wrong amount or a wrong number, and discovering his error had erased and corrected it.

Q. Was that in the day-books or journals only, or was it carried on into the ledgers?-A. I will say that in all the examinations I made of the accounts of the department I never was able to find a correction and alteration or an erasure that was not justified by a careful examination of all the material that went to make the basis of the entry. I mean by that that taking a single erasure or alteration and tracing the occasion for it through all the papers which related to that entry, I never found that the same erasure had been made in all the papers relating to that one entry. The erasures were all evidently the result of discovered errors subsequent to the making

of the entry. Whenever an erasure was made, it always had an object in view. I will say that when I first came into the Treasury Department, I had an idea that it was very wrong to ever make a change on a public book without explaining right on the book itself why it was done; and if you have examined the books I have kept when I first came into the department, you will find that wherever there is an alteration or erasure that does not explain itself there is a red-ink note explaining it, until I found that it was absolutely labor that I could not perform.

Q. Are you speaking now of the day-books and journals or of the ledgers?-A. The day-books, journals, and ledgers, but mainly the registers, or day-books, as they might properly be called.

Q. Do you think it would be good bookkeeping to carry erasures into the ledger? Of course a ledger is made up from the day books and journals, and do you think it would be good bookkeeping to make "lots" of erasures and alterations, as you expressed it, in the ledgers?—A. I should not call it good bookkeeping. I would not employ a bookkeeper who did much of it.

Q. While it might occur frequently in the day books or journals, ought it to occur in the ledgers ?-A. It ought not to occur very often in the ledgers unless there is some reason for it. When I said "lots,” I did not have reference to the volume of the business. When you consider the alterations and erasures in relation to their proportion to the volume of business done, there were very few erasures comparatively. The erasures were numerous; but, in proportion to the volume of business done, they were very few.

Q. Was it your business during the time you were in the department to prepare and issue warrants? Was that under your supervision ?—A. When I went into the department I was assigned to duty in the War Warrant office, and from that time on it was my duty to issue warrants and supervise the accounts, either in part or in whole, of the Warrant office; during the first few years only a part of the business, and subsequently the entire warrant business of the department was under my charge.

Q. From your experience, ought the warrants to contain erasures or alterations ?-A. We made it a rule to have the warrants contain no erasures or alterations if it could be avoided. Occasionally it could not be avoided.

Q. Why not?-A. As, for instance, a warrant was issued to pay a man an amount which was found to be due him, and certified in the usual way, and an error was made in the body of the warrant perhaps, or some other slight error which would not be discovered until some time afterwards when the Treasurer's accounts were settled. In the mean time the officer who signed the paper was dead, or there were other reasons which made it impossible to make a new paper to take its place. In cases of that kind the safest and only way to do was to alter the original document to make it correct.

Q. Would you alter it or write upon it ?-A. Usually we tried to alter it as neatly as possible so as to make it look right.

Q. Is there authority, to your knowledge, anywhere that will permit any person to alter a warrant after it has been signed by the Secretary? -A. No; I think there is no written authority to that effect, no authority of law. Custom is the only authority.

Q. Do you say it is customary to alter warrants?-A. No; I say custom would be the only authority.

Q. Have you ever altered a warrant ?—A. I presume I have; but I do not know. If I ever did alter a warrant, it was with the authority of

the officer who signed it. I never altered a warrant without the authority of the Secretary of the Treasury to do it.

Q. If the Secretary of the Treasury was there to give you authority, could you not make a new warrant?-A. A new warrant could have been made to take the place of the old one.

Q. Would not that have been the proper way?-A. I think it would have been much the best way.

Q. Would you, as chief of the Warrant Division, have sent an appropriation warrant, for example, to the Secretary of the Treasury with erasures on it?-A. An appropriation warrant would not necessarily be altered, and probably never was altered. It would hardly ever be necessary to alter appropriation warrants, because they are based on the acts of Congress appropriating money.

Q. Suppose it is permanent or indefinite warrant ?-A. That would not be altered in any material matter; if it was altered in figures or language, or anything of that kind, the Comptroller would refuse to sign it, and the register would refuse to record it, if there was an alteration or an erasure on it that was not self-evidently proper.

Q. Would you, as chief of the Warrant Division, knowing there was an apparent alteration of a figure upon a warrant, cause a new warrant to be made, or would you send that to the Secretary to be signed?— A. I should, probably, send the altered warrant to be signed; I do not know what the Secretary would do; if the alteration was an immaterial one, I do not think I would require the whole thing to be written over; I have frequently seen times when I had to work twenty-four hours out of the twenty-four, and had no time for casuistry.

Q. You spoke of transpositions of figures and one thing and another in the reports; would such things change the total amount of the debt or of the expenditures in any instance that you found?-A. That I cannot say; they would probably explain items of difference.

By Mr. DAWES:

Q. Suppose a clerk who makes a draft of a warrant finds when he has done that he has written a word that he did not mean to write, what is the natural course pursued in the department? It may be a warrant covering an amount in the Treasury or authorizing a payment out. While he is in the act of writing out the warrant he writes by mistake a word that he did not mean to write, does he erase it and write another in its place, or is he required to make a new draft?—A. The rule in force when I was here was never to allow an alteration of that kind to appear upon an original paper. I always made it a rule to require the clerks to tear up the paper in which the error was and substitute a new one, where it was a warrant; but, where it was a draft, it was very different. If an error was made in a draft, that draft had to be accounted for, because it became money.

Q. Clerical errors were not corrected by erasing the word and inserting the proper one?-A. Not ordinarily.

Q. Do you say they were never?—A. I would not say they were never made so.

Q. Clerical errors in entries upon books so made are often corrected? -A. They must be corrected.

Q. Mr. Davis has called your attention to the statement of the public debt in 1862 by the Register, and also the statement of the public debt in 1862, made by the Secretary several years after, and has called your attention to the difference between those two statements made by two officers at different times as being a little over $9,000,000. Are you

able to state how that difference arose ?-A. I could not state exactly how it arose; that is to say, I could not give you the details of that difference, but the probabilities are that the item is largely made up of uncovered amounts in the Receipts and Expenditures account.

Q. Amounts that were not covered in when the Register made his statement?-A. At the date the Secretary's statement purports to be for. They may have been covered in when the statement was made, but they do not appear in the books and accounts for the period covered by the date at which the statement of the debt appears to have been made.

Q. You mean to say that there were items brought into the debt statement of 1862, made by the Secretary at a subsequent time, which were not in the statement as made by the Register at the time he made it?— A. No, sir; I do not mean that; I simply mean this

Q. Take those two statements and give us all the information you can as to why the Secretary's statement made at a subsequent period differs from the Register's statement made at a former period.-A. The statement of the public debt by the Register of the Treasury is made from the account of Issues and Redemptions of notes and bonds without any reference whatever to the cash transactions of the government. That statement is the Issues and Redemptions up to the hour at which it is made. The statement of the public debt as made in the Secretary's report of 1871 is the statement of the debt as made from the books showing the Receipts and Expenditures for each fiscal year; and the difference be tween the two statements is largely, if not wholly, accounted for by the outstanding and uncovered (as they are technically called) amounts which had been deposited in the Treasury as subscriptions for loans and upon which bonds had been issued to subscribers, and which money had not been covered into the Treasury as a receipt, and, therefore, did not appear upon the books and accounts of the department relating to receipts for the period covered.

Q. When you say, therefore, that both statements are correct, what do you mean?-A. I mean simply that they are suscepible of explanation; they are susceptible of being brought together by a detailed explanation that the books of the department will enable a competent person to make

Q. Is each correct according to the method taken by each to state the public debt?-A. Each is correct according to the method upon which each proceeds, and the data from which each office derived its information. The only difference is the variation in data and method.

Q. Is the same true of each of the other discrepancies to which Mr. Davis has called your attention?-A. The same statement is true of every discrepancy that has been called to my attention. They are not discrepancies that affect the accuracy of the accounts or the integrity of the officers of the government. They are simply discrepancies that grew out of the methods of doing business and keeping the accounts.

By Mr. INGALLS:

Q. During your connection with the Treasury Department, from 1861 to 1873, did you ever know of any fraudulent transactions by which any wrong was practiced upon the government, or of any loss suffered by the fraudulent or improper issue of bonds or otherwise?-A. I have never known of an instance in which any transaction in relation to the public accounts or public moneys has lost the government a cent of money by fraud or collusion or alteration or erroneous issue of warrants or any other thing, except thefts of money entrusted to clerks, or, in

one instance, the forgery of requisitions by a man by the name of Cooper.

Q. During the examination that you made of the books and accounts of the Treasury Department, did you ever discover any evidence whatever of any fraudulent alteration, erasure, change, or substitution by clerks or officers of the department?-A. I never; not even in one single instance.

Q. I will again call your attention to table F, which appears first on page 12 of the printed evidence, reappears on pages 23, 24, and 25, and is alluded to on pages 56 and 57. The chairman of the committee examined the statements of the public debt for the years 1869 and 1870, where in the former case the difference appears to be $99,000,000 in round numbers, and in the latter $94,000,000 in round numbers. State, if you can, from what that apparent discrepancy arose.-A. That I can. not do without an examination of the books of the department.

Q. Do you know William Guilford ?-A. Yes.

Q. Did you know him at the time when these statements were made?— A. I did.

Q. In what capacity was he acting at that time?-A. He was a clerk in the Treasury Department, and examined all the corrections I made in the debt statement, and found them to be as I alleged they were.

Q. Do you remember in whose charge the public-debt statements of 1869 and 1870 were at the period to which I have called your attention? Who was the head of the division having that subject in charge?-A. I cannot be positive, but I think it was Mr. John P. Bigelow in the Secre tary's office, and a Mr. Jennison, in the Register's office. I may not be correct.

Q. Are you able to say from recollection, after I have called your attention to these facts, whether those discrepancies did or did not result from the fact that the clerk who made the compilation included the items of cash in the Treasury and interest upon the public debt, which should not have so appeared?-A. An examination of, the books would show that very clearly; but I am not able to state the fact from recollection. Q. You are not able to say whether or not that statement included, n addition to the debt, the interest and excluded the cas h in the Treasury?—A. I presume it did, but I am not able to state the fact as of my own knowledge.

Q. In case of an error or an erroneous statement being made in any given year, would that item reappear in every successive year thereafter?-A. Not necessarily. It would depend on how the subsequent statements were made. If the subsequent statements were made in the manner in which the published statements were made from 1862 to 1869, they would reappear every year.

Q. Examine the table to which I have called your attention, and state what the aggregate of increase of the Secretary's statement as compared with the Register's appears to be?-A. $332,843,895.54 is the aggregate of increase.

Q. What is the aggregate of decrease?-A. The aggregate decrease is $85,076, 553.88.

Q. Making the apparent difference, what?-A. Making the apparent difference $247,767,341.66.

Q. Now, state to the committee whether under any circumstances that ever did exist there ever was any such difference as that, or whether that apparent aggregate is not delusive and false and deceptive?-A. It is absurd in the last degree. It is self-evidently absurd.

Q. Why?-A. It is the difference between the sum of a running in