each payment or transfer; and that if any one of said officers, or those connected with the Post Office Department, shall convert to his own use, in any way whatever, or shall use, by way of investment in any kind of property or merchandise, or shall loan, with or without interest, or shall deposit in any bank, or shall exchange for other funds, except as allowed by this act, any portion of the public money intrusted to him for safe-keeping, disbursement, transfer, or for any other purpose, every such act shall be deemed and adjudged to be an embezzlement of so much of said money as shall be thus taken, converted, invested, used, loaned, deposited, or exchanged, which is hereby declared to be a felony," &c.

The deposit of moneys by Mr. Cullom, intrusted to him for disbursement on account of the contingent expenses of the House of Representatives, in the bank of Suter, Lea & Co., was such a violation of law denounced as felony aforesaid; and checks drawn on said deposit, as commutation, in lieu of newspapers, books, and any other articles allowed to members by express provision of law, were diversions of such amounts from their legitimate object, no commutation for money being authorized by law in any case. For this illegitimate commutation traffic, see testimony in this case; and also the views of the committee in the case of Darling and Hackney, printed report, pp. 3 and 4, saying:

"It is clearly established by evidence that a regular profitable business has been carried on in this city of Washington for years, by the booksellers of the city, in Congressional publications intended for gratuitous distribution among the people, in the course of which the booksellers purchase these documents fresh from the press, at prices greatly below their cost to the Government, and sell them again at a large profit. It is obvious, and so the evidence before the committee indicates, that this trade in books could not exist to the extent proven without culpable negligence, or the misappropriation of the books by members of Congress."

* * * *

And the committee recommended the adoption of the following resolution :

"Resolved, That all extra copies of documents and books printed by order of the House of Representatives, and divided equally among the members of the House, are intended for gratuitous distribution to public libraries and among the people, and are given to members respectively in trust for that purpose; and that any other use or disposition of the same is a violation of the trust aforesaid, and meets the unqualified disapprobation of this House."

This applies equally to all books ordered by Congress for distribution.

The 16th section of the aforesaid act continues thus:

"And any failure to pay over or to produce the public money intrusted to such person shall be held and taken to be bona fide evidence of such embezzle

ment.

And if any officer charged with the disbursement of public moneys shall accept, or receive, or transmit to the Treasury Department, to be allowed in his favor, any receipt or voucher from a creditor of the United States, without having paid to such creditor in such funds as the said officer may have received for disbursement, or such other funds as he may be authorized by this act to take in exchange, the full amount specified in such receipt or voucher, every such act shall be deemed to be a conversion by such officer to his own use of the amount specified in such receipt or voucher; and any officer or agent of the United States,

and all persons advising or participating in said act, being convicted thereof before any court of the United States of competent jurisdiction, shall be sentenced to imprisonment for a term of not less than six months, nor more than ten years, and to a fine equal to the amount of the money embezzled," &c.

There appears to have been several instances of this kind of embezzlement by the late Clerk, to which the aforesaid portion of the report alludes, amounting to $1,800, with a labored effort to explain it away, by a subsequent payment of the like amount to offset it in the Treasury, under the kind advice of one of his employées; all of which is too long to quote here, but may be clearly understood from the testimony when published, or by transcripts from the books of the Treasury, as indicated by the following continuation of the said 16th section, viz:

"And upon the trial of any indictment against any person for embezzling public money under the provisions of this act, it shall be sufficient evidence, for the purpose of showing a balance against such person, to produce a transcript from the books and proceedings of the Treasury, as required in civil cases," &c.-under the act of March 3, 1797.

The "Regulations" prescribed by the Treasury Department have, according to the provisions of the aforesaid act and other laws, the force and validity of law.

Among the accounts required by said regulations to be rendered monthly, of the receipts and disbursements of public money, are "those of the Secretary of the Senate, the Clerk of the House of Representatives, and the disbursing officers of the Executive Departments." See Treasury Regulations, No. 600, p. 332.

Also the Regulation No. 615, p. 342, says:

"In respect to services or supplies employed or obtained by the disbursing officer, he is bound to act exclusively for the interest of the United States, and employ the services, and obtain the supplies, on the best terms, in open market. It follows that he can have no interest, direct or indirect, in furnishing supplies or procuring such services, whether the account be in his own name or otherwise. Supervising or employing officers are prohibited from appointing or employing under them any person in their private employment, or any relative or dependent, and from giving the patronage of furnishing supplies to any such person, or to any other person, without comparing, from time to time, his prices with those of others; and finally, from purchasing from second hands, instead of regular dealers in, or manufacturers of, the articles required."

In respect to the late Clerk's agent, H. Tyler, for the purchase of books, and other agents for the purchase of other supplies, it is proper to state here these principles of law, viz:

1. That the delegation of power to an agent may be done by deed, parol, or mere employment."

2. That "a common law maxim is, that the power delegated to an agent by his principal cannot be delegated by him to a third person."

"

3. That an agent owes to his principal the unremitted exertion of his skill and ability, and that all his transactions in that character be distinguished by punctuality, honor, and integrity."

4. That 66 an agent is liable to misfeasance as to third persons, when, intentionally or ignorantly, he commits a wrong upon the rights or property of another." See Bouvier, and the authorities he quotes.

From these rules or principles of law, and the preceding Treasury regulations, it is manifest that all the persons employed by the late Clerk in purchasing supplies of every or any description were his agents, and that they were responsible for the faithful discharge of their duty in that character, and that he, the supervising and employing officer, was equally responsible for them and for his own remissness or connivance at their peculations, avowedly amounting to 25 and 333 per cent. on the fair market prices of the manufacturers and regular dealers in those articles; and in one instance, mentioned as coming under the special attention and recognition of the Clerk, the peculation, under the softened fallacy of profits, amounted to nearly one hundred per cent., exceeding one thousand dollars of public plunder on a single article. But as the committee were not a court to try these cases criminally, they seem not to have taken any heed of the criminal law at all; but rather to regard these and other enormities as excusable frivolities, under the palliative terms of "negligence," "inattention," "carelessness," &c., &c. Under this very idea, in fact, that the committee were not a court, it appears they could not compel the attendance of a very important witness, H. Tyler, to answer interrogatories furnished to the chairman by a witness about the 27th of March, '58, having no doubt heard of those interrogatories, and simultaneously left the city on that account, and immediately sailed for Cuba "for his health." Since his return, it appears that his testimony has been taken; but it remains to be seen whether the suggested interrogatories were used, or how he evaded them-if by declining to answer, as he did questions asked him at the Treasury, where he bought the books mentioned in his account, and at what prices?

Small and trivial as the peculations above alluded to may appear from the mitigating terms of the aforesaid garbled portion of the Report, taken with others claimed by the late Clerk as the rightful perquisites of his office, they must have amounted to several hundred thousand dollars, if we take the computation of Mr. Letcher, in comparing the expenditures of the late Clerk with those of his successor, in a recent speech at Woodstock, in opening his canvass for Governor of Virginia. It is well known that Mr. Letcher was a prominent member of the Committee of Ways and Means of the House during the last Congress, where he had ample opportunity to make the estimate of these and all other expenditures of the Government. On this occasion he said: "Mr. Cullom, in twenty-two months' clerkship of the House of Representatives, expended $1,600,000, while Mr. Allen,

his successor, although he had to meet many extraordinary expenses, including investigating committees, &c., (Cullom's own among the rest,) expended half a million less than his prede

If the contingent expenditures for the House under Mr. Allen's administration of its contingent fund were necessarily larger on account of "extraordinary expenses" devolving on him, who can imagine what became of the "half million excess" expended by the late Clerk, without rationally imputing a very great portion of it to the boasted perquisites or peculations of his office? His avowed estimate of them, at $50,000, under the pretence of investments and speculations in public land, stock, land warrants and real estate of all kinds, however flagrantly illegal and forbidden to a public officer, would fall far short of the reality of his public plunder, according to the estimate or computation of Mr. Letcher's comparison of his and his successors' expenditures for identical objects from the same fund, except those objects that were illegitimate on his part, and those that were extraordinary on the part of his successor.

Besides the ample evidence tendered to the Committee, of Cullom's premeditation to commit these frauds, of which evidence some notice will be taken in my next number, the following extract from the aforesaid portion of the report in question will suffice for the present to prove that dearly cherished premeditation? It says:

"Witnesses have detailed various statements of the late Clerk respecting the profits of his office, among them J. J. Burnett, S. S. Stanton, and Hon. Charles Ready, who says: Some few days before the adjournment of the last Congress, during a night session of the House, he (the clerk) came and sat down by my desk; after some conversation upon different subjects I asked him myself, I think, what his office would yield him; he stated in substance that he had made $30,000, but if the book resolution should pass, his office would be worth, he thought, $50,000.

I give this as the substance of the conversation. That was before the book resolution passed. At that or some other time, though my impression is that it was at that time, he spoke of having had the advantage, on account of his position here, of engaging in some speculations and making some investments in stocks and real estate. I do not recollect very distinctly what was said upon that subject; the idea was that he had made $30,000 in consequence of holding the office."

The above is sought to be palliated and justified by the following boastful avowal of a person (Mr. McClarin) sent for from Tennessee, at considerable public expense, who had nothing to do with Cullom's accounts nor any connection with them, except as an apologist for them, by which, however, he and the Committee have unwittingly made the matter a great deal worse, unless they were so infatuated with a belief in the ignorance of others that they might safely make a merit of acknowledging the worst possible aspect of these frauds, and that there would be no one discerning enough to detect the base coinage, viz:

“Mr. McClarin, of Carthage, Tennessee, a neighbor and the private financial

agent of the late Clerk, says, that when with his acquaintances at home, he spoke of his office as a profitable one, and thought he would make some $30,000 or $40,000. He explained the matter by saying that there were good opportunities offered to the Clerk of the House of Representatives to make money by dealing in western lands, stocks, land warrants, real estate, &c.; that his position gave him credit and increased facilities for information. He was considered one of our wealthy men. I have been acquainted with General Cullom for eighteen or nineteen years, and from the time of my first acquaintance with him his wealth has been annually increasing. As he increased in years he increased in wealth, and latterly the increase has been larger than formerly.'

In addition to the above statement by Mr. McClarin, it is also attempted by the following, likewise extracted from the said report, to confirm those alleged sources of the sudden wealth of the late Clerk from speculations and investments in various waysprivilege and abuse expressly forbidden by law to a disbursing officer. Suffice it is to say, that the Undersigned furnished the Chairman of the Committee with interrogatories, in writing, of a totally different character, to propound to Mr. French, touching a conversation that Mr. Cullom had with him, showing the late Clerk's premeditation to make large profits out of his office by those illegal practices, for he could do it in no other way. If those questions were put to Mr. French, they were answered in effect, showing that Mr. French made no more than his salary, and the percentage allowed him by law; and that Mr. Cullom declared his intention (sarcastically, no doubt, as the words imply) to make a great deal more than that. Yet we find here a different question propounded to him, for the manifest purpose of extracting an answer that might be construed to confirm Mr. McClarin's statement of Cullom's speculations and investments, however in gross violation of law; and yet no evidence is produced to show what public lands, what stock, or what real estates, he had bought with those investments. Nevertheless, Mr. French's answer is as telling a sarcasm on the question, and on Cullom's proclivities, as can well be imagined. But it was too good a confirmation of Mr. McClarin's tale to have frightened Mr. Cullom and the Chairman of the Committee from its use by its inuendo and its sarcasm. Here it is:

"Mr. French, one of his predecessors in office, on being asked what are the opportunities in this city for such a man to realize money by dealing in real estate, and taking advantages in buying and selling, says: I should think, perhaps, no man could make money faster in any other way.'

Yet, with these convictions as to Mr. Cullom, Mr. French was too faithful a public officer to abuse the public money entrusted to him for disbursement, by such illegal, though vastly profitable "investments !"

I had like to have overlooked in this connection the following make-weight of negative evidence resorted to by the Chairman of the Committee to exonerate the late Clerk from all "misfeasance, ""malfeasance," "corruption," or "dereliction of duty,