The force of this office has not been sufficient to examine the accounts and returns promptly, or even to compel their regular rendition, and doubtless the public Treasury and the public creditors have suffered in consequence.

I recommend that Congress be requested to authorize the employment of three officers, to be styled "auditors of the Quartermaster's Department," who, under the direction of the Quartermaster-General and acting by his authority and in his name, may take charge of the administrative examination of the accounts and returns of both money and property in this office. The duty is one of high importance, and though technically and legally the examination is required to be made by the Quartermaster-General, and should be made by his authority and under his direction, it is not physically possibly for him to inspect all the papers in person, or to take action on any but the more important questions arising on their examination. The unsettled accounts now in this office amount to $105,000,000, and over $5,000,000 are in the hands of officers who not yet made their returns or transmitted their accounts.

The auditors of the Quartermaster's Department, here proposed, should be persons of high reputation, of business capacity and experience, and the salary should be such as to secure the services of well qualified men.

The accounts of the department divide themselves into classes as follows:

1. Clothing, camp and garrison equipage.

2. Transportation by land and water, with all its means and supplies, as animals, wagons, ambulances, forage, steam and sail vessels, boats, and the men necessary to take are of and manage them.

3. Regular and contingent supplies of the department-hospitals, barracks and quarters, fuel, mileage of officers, expenses of courts-martial, military boards and commissions, stationery,&c.

With a sufficient addition to the clerical force of the office, with the three officers above named to assist the Quartermaster- General it is believed that it would, be possible to dispatch the business relating to settlement of accounts with that promptness required alike by justice to the interests of the Government and of the officers of the department.

CHANGE IN MODE OF SETTLING ACCOUNTS.

By the law of July 17, 1862, to provide for the more prompt settlement of accounts of disbursing officers, all disbursing officers are required to transmit their accounts monthly direct to the proper accounting officer of the Treasury. The regulations heretofore in force required officers to transmit, their accounts direct to the heads of the several departments or bureaus under whose direction they served. It was made the duty of the Quartermaster-General to cause the returns and accounts of officers serving in that department to pass through a rigid administrative scrutiny before transmitting the money accounts to the proper officer of the Treasury Department for settlement.

The decision of the Quartermaster-General was to be indorsed on each account. It was his duty to bring to the notice of the Secretary of War all accounts or matters of account which required and merited it; to notify the disbursing officer of all suspensions or disallowances, that he might have early opportunity to submit explanation or take an appeal to the Secretary of War.