When the account was suspended or disallowed in the proper office of the Treasury Department or explanation or evidence required from the officer the regulations direct the officer to be notified thereof by the Quartermaster-General and all vouchers, evidence, or explanation were required to be returned to the Treasury Department through the enable the Secretary of War, through the head of the Quartermaster-General's Department and of the other military bureaus, to control the officers of the War Department in the expenditure of the appropriations for the Army.

If the accounts are sent direct from the disbursing officers to the Treasury they may be settled there without any knowledge on the part of the Secretary of War, or of the head of the bureaus, of the manner in which the disbursements have been conducted. The Quartermaster-General would have no control over, no knowledge of the prices paid for, the various supplies which it is his duty to procure for the Army; no knowledge of the cost of transportation of troops, of the prices at which vessels are chartered, and, in fact, no control over the expenditure and application of the public money within the department. The officers of the Treasury are not supposed to be skilled in the technical knowledge of all the various departments, and their examination of accounts has heretofore, except as to correctness of forms, figures,and receipts and proofs, been guided by the administrative examination of the several bureaus.

This administrative examination appears to be, by the new law, dispensed with; at least, the law provides no means to enable the Quartermaster-General to accomplish it, and permits the Auditor, who is to receive the accounts directly from the officer, to settle them without any reference to the War Department or the Quartermaster-General. Some accounts transmitted direct to the Auditor have been by him referred to the Quartermaster-General, with a request that they may be submitted to such examination.

Believing that some supplemental law would be necessary to carry out the intention of Congress and to secure a proper control over the expenditures of this department by its head, its officers have, with your approbation, been required, while transmitting their accounts, in compliance with the new law, direct to the Auditor to send triplicate copies to this office for examination. This increases the labor of keeping accounts, already onerous; but the law permits it to be required, and there seems to be no other way by which the department can have knowledge of or control over the expenditures for which it is accountable. The administrative examination being preliminary, and the Treasury examination and settlement final, time is lost by sending the accounts first to the Treasury.

The plan of requiring all disbursing officers to transmit by every mail direct to the head of the department in which they serve, duplicates of all paid and certified vouchers, in their hands, has been suggested, and it is respectfully recommended to your consideration. It is believed to possess many advantages, both to the Government and to the disbursing officer, over both the present methods, which requires them to be transmitted monthly, and the quarterly transmission heretofore required.

In so large a business as is now transacted under the direction of the Quartermaster's Department many legal questions arise, for the settlement of which some officer of legal skill and knowledge should be provided. Claims for damages by the breach of contract; suits for