that the business
of the Treasury should proceed day by day without interruption and it
was difficult to explain the discrepancy to the many inquirers, I
ordered Mr. Allison, the register, to accept for his annual reports the
statement of the Treasurer, as his statements conformed to the existing
facts on the days when the statements were made. The register
protested that the order was not justified by the law, and that was
the truth although there was no law forbidding such an act. The
transaction, including my order, was brought before a committee of the
House of Representatives, but as far as I know, the question of the
legality of the proceedings, was not canvassed, or if attention was
directed to the subject the committee may have treated it as an act in
the public interest and from which no injury had arisen. Upon these
facts, Senator Henry G. Davis, of West Virginia, made the charge that
the books of the Treasury had been altered by my direction and that it
was possible that some great fraud had been perpetrated which might be
discovered if a committee were appointed to investigate the Treasury.
A committee was granted, of which Senator Davis was a member. The
investigation was a failure from his standpoint. Indeed, the
alteration of the books of the Treasury would required the collusive
co-operation of many persons, and evidence of the fact of the
alteration would, of necessity, become known to hundreds of clerks.

Mr. Davis and some other Democrats implicated me in an analogous matter
which they tried to understand but did not. The Loan Accounts of the
Treasury Department showed that the payments on the Public Debt
exceeded the receipts from loans in the enormous sum of one hundred and
sixteen million dollars. I appointed a committee of clerks to examine
the account in detail for the purpose of ascertaining whether the
discrepancy was real or only apparent. The fact of the discrepancy was
reported to Congress and the progress made in the investigation was
noted in the appendix to the Annual Reports. It is probable, however,
that these reports were never seen by Mr. Davis, and hence his
suspicion that an investigation into the accuracy of the Treasury
accounts would show an alteration of Treasury books, and of course, for
some improper purpose.

The error began in Mr. Hamilton's time, and in consequence of the
assumption of the State debts. Bonds were issued for those debts but
there were no receipts