was:

"Beyond these matters your committee find the books of the Treasurer
to have been kept in an orderly manner; the disbursements have been
regularly entered, and the cash presently all accounted for up to the
first of January, 1877, to which period this report alone extends.
These vouchers and orders are all on hand and the warrants for each
payment are properly canceled....

"These figures do not of necessity import proof absolute and
conclusive of any undue favoritism, although by circumstances and
legitimate inference they point to that conclusion. Warrants being
negotiable it has been impossible to ascertain who held those
outstanding, and therefore impossible to fix a proper proportion of
payment, but the fact that the multitude of payments made to the same
person, while other warrant holders were forced to wait, and the
intimacy existing between themselves or their employees and the
Treasurer are, undeniably, circumstances which, unexplained, justify
at least a suspicion that these parties have enjoyed facilities,
preferences and privileges at the Treasury over the general public, to
which they were not entitled.

"It is true that these figures are explained by statements that the
proportion paid the respective persons mentioned were only in
proportion to the amount which the warrants held by them bore to the
whole amount of outstanding warrants, but this explanation in itself
merits notice and explanation, because of the fact that the persons
named were the holders of such a large amount of warrants imply some
inducement on their part to invest in them, more especially as by
avocation the majority of them were not brokers but employees in the
Custom-House. Some of them have testified that all the warrants they
held were paid. Another has refused to disclose for whom he collected.
A third was a relative of a personal employee of the Treasurer. One
has been shown to be a constant frequenter of his office, and must
have been an intimate of the Treasurer's from the fact that he appears
to have been the payee of a check for $75,000 illegally drawn, as
mentioned before. They point, at least, to the necessity of such
legislation as may be adequate to prevent even possible suspicion of
favoritism in the future. Under the provisions of the acts of the
General Assembly, passed at the session of 1877, the danger of
favoritism has been very much safeguarded and needs supplementing in
only minor particulars.

"The T