2. Claims of American citizens, by award of commissioners under treaty of indemnity, by Naples. 3. Claims of American citizens, by award of commissioners under treaty of indemnity, by Mexico. 4. Accounts of salaries and expenses of commissioners on the part of the United States, for settling the aforesaid indemnities.

5. Accounts for compensation and expenses of commissioners for settling and running boundary lines between the United States and foreign nations.

VIII. The Fifth Auditor receives and audits Quarterly Accounts of disbursements by Consuls and Commercial Agents, for sick and destitute American Seamen in foreign ports, consisting of the following items, viz:

1. Disbursements for board, clothing, and medical attendance of sick and destitute American seamen abroad. 2. Disbursements (71) for the passage home, of American seamen from foreign ports.

3. Disbursements (71) on account of American seamen sent home under charge of crime against the laws of the United States.

(C)—GENERAL SUPERINTENDENCE AND SUPPORT OF THE LIGHT-HOUSE ESTABLISHMENTS OF THE UNITED STATES.

IX. The Fifth Auditor receives, examines, and records, and then transmits to the First Auditor for settlement, the Quarterly Accounts of Superintendents of Light-houses (collectors so officiating, except in a single instance) for the maintenance and support of the Light-house Establishments in their respective Districts, consisting generally of the following items corresponding with the different heads of appropriations, and he makes requisitions for the payment of said accounts, in part, viz:

1. Accounts in behalf of contractors for supplying oil, tube glasses, buff skins, whiting and cotton cloth, for two thousand six hundred and seventy-one lamps attached to light-houses and floating lights, and for keeping the lighting apparatus in repair.

2. Accounts in behalf of contractors for the construction and repair of light-houses, and buildings connected therewith.

3. Accounts in behalf of contractors for the construction and repair of beacons, buoys, chains, and sinkers. 4. Accounts in behalf of contractors for the construction and repair of light vessels, or floating lights.

5. Accounts in behalf of two hundred and thirty-six keepers and sixteen assistant keepers of light-houses, for their salaries.

6. Accounts in behalf of thirty keepers of floating lights, for their salaries.

7. Accounts in behalf of seamen employed in connection with floating lights, &c., for their wages.

8. Accounts in their own behalf, for expenses in visiting light-houses, annually, and examining and reporting the condition of each, in their districts.

9. Accounts in their own behalf, for their respective commissions on said disbursements at two and a half per cent., when ordered to pay the same.

10. The Fifth Auditor makes "requisitions" on the Secretary of the Treasury for warrants in favor of collectors whose receipts from the customs are not adequate to pay the aforesaid accounts, the amounts of which warrants are respectively transmitted to them by the Treasurer, in drafts or otherwise; but the light-house accounts of the few collectors whose receipts from the customs afford a sufficient surplus after defraying the current expenses of the customs, are paid by them out of such surplus, under the direction of the Fifth Auditor, thereby balancing said accounts, in the same manner as if remittances had been made them by the requisitions of the Auditor; and for which payments they are allowed a credit in their quarterly accounts current of the customs, as soon as their said light-house accounts are settled by the First Auditor and First Comptroller.

(71) These two items are seldom paid or advanced by consuls, but are deferred until the arrival of the vessel, when the commander presents his claims for the passage of the said seamen, with proper vouchers, for settlement.

(D)-REPORTS.

X. The Fifth Auditor makes Reports connected with the Settlements of Accounts, the support of Light-House Establishments, &c., as follows, viz:

1. A separate report to the First Comptroller for his decision thereon, of each settled account, consisting of an official statement of the account and balance, with a certificate of the same, accompanied with the vouchers.

2. Annual reports to the Secretary of the Treasury on the general condition of the light-house establishments. 3. Occasional reports to Congress, under special calls, in relation to matters connected with the light-house establishments.

4. Annual reports addressed to the Register of the Treasury, of estimates for the support of the light-house establishments for the fiscal year, in detail, corresponding in general with the heads of appropriations made in pursuance thereof, averaging from three to four hundred thousand dollars.

5. Annual reports addressed to the Register of the Treasury, of estimates for the salaries and contingent expenses of his office during the fiscal year.

6. Biennial reports addressed to the Register of the Treasury, giving a list of the persons employed in his office during the preceding two years, their birth place, residence, and compensation, &c., for insertion in the Biennial Register.

(E)-BOOKS KEPT IN THE FIFTH AUDITOR'S OFFICE.

I. The Fifth Auditor keeps the following Books in his office proper, (exclusive of those on Light-house business,) viz:

1. REPORT BOOK. This book contains the reports made by the Fifth Auditor to the First Comptroller, of all accounts adjusted in his office, for the revision and decision of the Comptroller.

2. LETTER BOOK. This book contains a record of all letters sent from the Fifth Auditor's office to individuals, in relation to accounts and claims received at said office for adjustment-together with incidental letters (or reports) to the Secretary of the Treasury, the Secretary of State, and to committees of Congress, in relation thereto, under special calls from them. (Letters received in relation to accounts are filed, but no registry of them is kept, as in some other bureaus.)

II. The Fifth Auditor keeps the following Books, appertaining exclusively to Light-house business, viz:

1. RECORD OF CONTRACTS AND AGREEMENTS, AND of Deeds and GRANTS. This book contains a record of all contracts and agreements entered into, with sureties, under the direction of the Fifth Auditor, and approved by him, for building or repairing light-houses, beacons, buoys, and light ships, &c., (said contractors being paid by the collectors as their work progresses, upon the certificate of its fidelity by an authorized inspector in constant attendance.) There are also recorded in this book, all deeds, and grants of jurisdiction, for light-house sites, (though forming a distinct class of subjects, proper for a separate record.)

2. REGISTER OF APPROPRIATIONS. This book contains a registry of the appropriations for the support of the light-house establishments, and the expenditures thereof, in the aggregate; but does not open a separate account with each head of appropriation, crediting the respective amounts thereof, and debiting the several expenditures under each, as is done in the appropriation ledgers kept in other bureaus-thereby reducing the several appropriations to a common fund, which is equivalent to a reciprocal transfer of them all from one head to another, contrary to law.

3. RECORD OF ACCOUNTS. This book contains a record of all light-house accounts, which are entered in detail, on being examined and approved; they are then transmitted to the First Auditor for adjustment, and report to the First Comptroller.

4. LETTER BOOK. This book contains a record of all letters sent from this office, on light-house business; it also contains all letters (or reports) to the Secretary of the Treasury, or to committees of Congress, on said business. (Letters received on light house business are filed, but no registry of them is kept!!!)

CHAPTER XI.

SIXTH AUDITOR OF THE TREASURY.

THE ORIGIN, FUNCTIONS, AND OPERATIONS, OF THE SIXTH AUDITOR'S OFFICE.

Summary of the laws, and regulations, relating thereto.

Although the office of "Auditor of the Treasury for the Post Office Department" was not established until the passage of the act of the 2d of July, 1836, the examination and adjustment of the Post Office accounts had been performed at the Treasury Department from the earliest period of its establishment, in obedience to the 5th section of the act of the 2d September, 1789, the 4th section of the act of the 20th February, 1792, and the 2d section of the act of the 3d March, 1817, in relation to and requiring all accounts to be settled at the Treasury Department. But, previous to the transmission of the accounts of the Post Office to the accounting. officers of the Treasury for settlement, an examination and settlement of them had always been performed in the Post Office Department proper-which examination and settlement might be presumed by some to have been merely for the sake of form, preliminary to the transmission of those accounts to the accounting officers of the Treasury, somewhat on the principle practised in regard to the accounts of the War Department by its military Bureaus, called "administrative examination," previous to their transmission to the accounting officers of the Treasury. But such is not the fact; and it is proper to observe, that this remarkable difference subsisted in relation to the degree of scrutiny and efficiency of the two processes alluded to in the pre-examinations in those two Departments, viz: that whilst the "administrative examination" of the accounts of the War Department by its military Bureaus consisted, as it still does, rather of a cursory survey of those accounts, in order to maintain a military surveillance over the official action of the disbursing officers and agents of the War Department, to keep a registry thereof, and to give a sort of official military sanction to the items of those accounts, or to suggest to the accounting officers of the Treasury the disallowance of any items that are flagrantly wrong, (for the thorough examination and settlement of which accounts, nevertheless, the officers of the Treasury are legally responsible, over and above such obviously superfluous intervention)-on the other hand, the examination and adjustment of the Post Office accounts, upon which by far the greater portion of the clerical force of the Department had always been engaged, was at all times substantial and complete, and consequently left little or nothing to be done by the accounting officers of the Treasury Department, on the transmission of them thither, but to turn them over, pass them, and register and file them, pro forma, as the very insignificant clerical force that was engaged in the Fifth Auditor's office in auditing these accounts, would sufficiently attest; showing at least that the proper authorities always acquiesced, in this case, to the settlements out of the Treasury Department, notwithstanding the requirements of law that all accounts shall be settled in that Department. So that, when the act of 1836 dispensed with the agency of the Fifth Auditor's office in auditing, the First Comptroller's in revising, and the Register's in registering and preserving the Post Office accounts and vouchers, and substituted the Auditor of the Treasury for the Post Office Department, to preside over and direct the examination and settlement of those accounts, as theretofore practised in the Department proper, but nevertheless with greatly enlarged powers and complication of additional duties, (as in relation to suits, authenticating transcripts, general superintendence of the collection of balances, &c., which previously appertained to the Postmaster General)-it did not actually change or transfer the settlement of the Post Office accounts to the Treasury Department, as will be manifest in the sequel. For, although the act of 1836, did, in words declare this office to be an office of the Treasury Department, it is but nominally such; whilst it is, in practice and in fact, an office or bureau of the Post Office Department: not, indeed, in the more simple form of any single bureau of the Treasury Department, but combining the various functions of all the provinces of the Treasury Department (except that of the Treasurer) within the immense scope of duties assigned to it, which necessarily arise out of the fiscal operations of the General Post Office, corresponding, in most respects, to those of the Treasury Department, though, in the nature of things, as essentially separate and distinct from them, as the intrinsic individuality of character and bearing of the General Post Office towards the government and the community at large, are different from the character and bearing of the Treasury Department-or, why concentrate the functions of Auditor, Comptroller, Register, and Solicitor, for the Post Office Department, in this office? [This query might be looked upon as the proximate to raising the question why a single officer could not as well preside over and superintend all those functions in the Treasury Department, with the aid of competent heads of divisions, as this single officer does for the Post Office Depart

ment, having almost as great a clerical corps under his direction as all those officers in the Treasury united?] Nevertheless, this office being declared by the act to be that of "Auditor of the Treasury, for the Post Office Department," I could not presume to read it out of the Treasury Department, by omitting the account of its organization and operations in that official connection here.

As the greater portion of "the Post Office act of 1836," is devoted to matters having close connection with. the Auditor's office thereby created, and as a very great portion of "the Post Office regulations" established by the Postmaster General also affect the functions of the Auditor for the Post Office Department, of either of which any attempt at abridgement would be attended with incurring a hazard to perspicuity, I shall be under the necessity of abandoning the plan pursued in regard to other bureaus of giving a mere abstract of the laws relative to them, and quote fully the several sections of this act, and the various "Post Office regulations," that affect the operations of this office-otherwise I should fail in doing it that justice which its peculiar position between two great Departments of the government imperiously demands. The sections of the said act which affect the action of the Auditor's office in any manner, leaving out the enacting clauses, are as follows, viz:

"1. The revenue arising in the Post Office Department, and all debts due to the same, shall, when collect'ed, be paid, under the direction of the Postmaster General, into the Treasury of the United States.

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"2. The Postmaster General shall submit to Congress at the next and each succeeding annual session, specific 'estimates of the sums of money expected to be required for the service of the Department' in the subsequent ' year, commencing on the first day of July, under the following heads, viz: 'compensation of postmasters,' transportation of the mails,' ship, steamboat, and way letters,' wrapping paper,' 'office furniture,' 'advertis'ing,' 'mail bags,' 'blanks,' 'mail locks, keys, and stamps,' 'mail depredations and special agents,' 'clerks for offices,' and 'miscellaneous.' And the Postmaster General shall render an account to Congress, at each suc'ceeding annual session, of the amounts actually expended for each of the purposes above specified.

"3. The aggregate sum required for the service of the Post Office Department,' in each year, shall be 'appropriated by law out of the revenue of the Department, and all payments of the receipts of the Post Office 'Department into the Treasury, shall be to the credit of the said appropriation.

4. The sums appropriated for the service aforesaid shall be paid by the Treasurer in the manner herein 'directed: Provided, that the compensation of postmasters, the expenses of post offices, and such other expenses of the Department for which appropriations have been made, as may be incurred by postmasters, may be de'ducted out of the proceeds of their offices, under the direction of the Postmaster General: provided, also, 'that all charges against the Departinent by postmasters, on account of such expenses, shall be submitted for ex'amination and settlement, to the Auditor herein provided for; and that no such deduction shall be valid, unless 'the expenditure so deducted, be found to have been made in conformity to law: provided, also, that the Post'master General shall have power to TRANSFER debts due on account of the Department by postmasters and others, ' in SATISFACTION of the legal demands for which appropriations have been made, of such contractors who may be creditors of the Department, as shall have given bonds, with security, to refund any money that may come into their hands over and above the amount which may be found due to them on the settlement of their ac

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counts.

"5. The Treasurer of the United States shall give receipts for all moneys received by him to the credit of the appropriation for the service of the Post Office Department; which receipts shall be endorsed upon warrants drawn by the Postmaster General, [covering such moneys in the Treasury,] and without such warrant no acknow'ledgment for money received as aforesaid shall be valid.

"6. The appropriations for the service of the Post Office Department shall be disbursed by the Treasurer out of the moneys paid into the Treasury for the service of the Post Office Department, upon the warrants of the Postmaster General, [called pay warrants,] registered and countersigned as herein provided, and expressing ' on their faces the appropriation to which they should be charged.,

"7. The Treasurer shall render his accounts of the moneys received and paid by him on account of the Post Office Department, quarterly, to the Auditor for the Post Office Department, hereinafter provided for, and shall transmit copies of the same, when adjusted by him [the Auditor], to the two houses of Congress.

"8. There shall be appointed by the President, with the consent of the Senate, an Auditor of the Treasury for the Post Office Department, whose duty it shall be to receive all accounts arising in the said depart'ment, or relative thereto; to audit and settle the same, and certify their balances to the Postmaster General : provided, that if either the postmaster General, or any person whose account shall be settled, be dissatisfied therewith, he may, within twelve months, appeal to the First Comptroller of the Treasury, whose decision shall be final and conclusive. The said Auditor shall report to the Postmaster General, when required, the official forms of papers to be used by postmasters and other officers or agents of the department concerned in 'its receipts and payments, and the manner and form of keeping and stating its accounts. He shall keep and preserve all accounts, with the vouchers, after settlement. He shall promptly report to the Postmaster General, all delinquencies of postmasters in paying over the proceeds of their offices. He shall close the accounts of the Department, quarterly, and transmit to the Secretary of the Treasury quarterly statements of its receipts ' and expenditures. He shall register, charge, and countersign all warrants upon the Treasury for receipts and

'payments issued by the Postmaster General, when warranted by law. He shall perform such other duties in ' relation to the financial concerns of the department, as shall be assigned to him by the Secretary of the Treasury, or the Postmaster General, and shall make to them respectively, such reports as either of them may require respecting the same. The said Auditor may frank, and receive free of postage, letters and packets under the regula'tions provided by law for other officers of the Government. And all letters and packets to and from the chief engineer, which may relate to the business of his office, shall be free of postage.

"9. It shall be the duty of the Postmaster General to decide on the official forms of all papers to be used by the postmasters, and other officers or agents of the Post Office Department concerned in its receipts and pay'ments, and the manner and form of keeping and stating its accounts; to enforce the prompt rendition of the returns of postmasters, and of all certificates, acknowledgments, receipts, and other papers, by postmasters ' and contractors relative to the accounts of the department; to control, according to law, and subject to the 'settlement of the Auditor, the allowances to postmasters, the expenses of post offices, and all other expenses 'incident to the service of the department; to regulate and direct the payment of said allowances and expenses for which appropriations have been made; to superintend the disposition of the proceeds of post offices; and 'other moneys of the department; to prescribe the manner in which postmasters shall pay over their balances; 'to grant warrants for money to be paid into the Treasury, and out of the same, in pursuance of appropriations by law, to persons to whom the same shall be certified to be due by the Auditor: Provided, that advances of 'necessary sums to defray expenses may be made by the Postmaster General to agents of the department em'ployed to investigate mail depredations, examine post routes and post offices, and perform other like services, to be charged by the Auditor for the Post Office Department, and be accounted for in the settlement of their

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' accounts.

"10. The Auditor for the Post Office Department shall state and certify, quarterly, to the Postmaster Gene'ral, accounts of the moneys paid pursuant to appropriations in each year, by postmasters, out of the proceeds ' of their offices, towards the expenses [service] of the department, under each of the heads of the said expenses [appropriations] specified in the second section of this act; upon which the Postmaster General shall issue warrants [called warrant and counter warrant] to the Treasurer of the United States, as in case of the receipt and payment of the said moneys into and out of the Treasury, in order that the same may be carried to 'the debit and credit of the appropriation for the service of the Post Office Department on the books of the [Treasury kept by the] Auditor for said department.

"11. The Postmaster General shall, within sixty days after the making of any contract, cause a duplicate. thereof to be lodged in the office of the Auditor of [for] the Post Office Department. Upon the death, resig'nation, or removal of any postmaster, he shall cause his bond of office to be delivered to the said Auditor; and shall also cause to be promptly certified to him all establishments and discontinuances of post offices, and 'all appointments, deaths, resignations, and removals of postmasters, together with all orders and regulations 'which may originate a claim, or in any manner affect the accounts of the department.

"12. The accounts of the Post Office Department shall be kept in such manner as to exhibit the amounts ' of its revenues, derived respectively from letter postages,' newspapers and pamphlets,' and 'fines;' and the amount of its expenditures for each of the following objects, namely: 'compensation of postmasters,' 'transportation of the mails, ship, steamboat, and way letters,' 'wrapping paper,' 'office furniture,' advertising,' 'mail bags,' 'blanks,' 'mail locks, keys, and stamps,' 'mail depredations and special agents,' clerks for offices,' and 'miscellaneous.'

"13. The bonds and contracts of postmasters, mail contractors, and other agents of the Post Office Depart'ment, shall hereafter be made to and with the United States of America; and all suits to be commenced for 'the recovery of debts or balances due by postmasters and others, or upon bonds or contracts made to or with the present or any former Postmaster General, or for any fines, penalties, or forfeitures, imposed by the laws respecting the Post Office Departinent, or by the Postmaster General pursuant thereto, shall be instituted in 'the name of the United States of America; and the demands in such suits shall have all the privileges and 'priorities in adjudication and payment secured to other claims of the United States by the existing laws: Provided, that actions and suits which may have been instituted in the name of the Postmaster General, 'previous to the passage of this act, shall not be affected by the provisions of this section.

"14. The Auditor of [for] the Post Office Department shall superintend the collection of all debts due to 'the department, and all penalties and forfeitures imposed on postmasters for failing to make returns, or pay 'over the proceeds of their offices; he shall direct suits and legal proceedings, and take all such measures as 'may be authorized by law, to enforce the prompt payment of moneys due to the department.

"15. Copies of the quarterly returns of postmasters, and of any papers pertaining to the accounts in the 'office of the Auditor for the Post Office Department, certified by him, under his seal of office, shall be admit'ted as evidence in the courts of the United States; and in every case of delinquency of any postmaster or con 'tractor, in which suit may be brought, the said Auditor shall forward to the attorney of the United States 'certified copies of all papers in his office tending to sustain the claim; and in every such case, a statement of the account, certified as aforesaid, shall be admitted as evidence, and the court trying the cause shall be there