Their recollections now came forward to his discomfiture.

"My official duty," said Wadsworth of Connecticut, "has led me often to attend at the Treasury of the United States, and, from my experience, I venture to pronounce that a Board of Treasury is the worst of all institutions.

They have doubled our national debt." He contrasted the order and clearness of accounts while the Superintendent of Finance was in charge with the situation since then.

If the committee had before them the transactions of the Treasury Board, "instead of system and responsibility they would find nothing but confusion and disorder, without a possibility of checking their accounts." Boudinot of New Jersey said he "would state a circumstance which might give the committee some small idea of what the savings under the Superintendent were.

The expenditure of hay at a certain post was one hundred and forty tons; such was the estimate laid before him; yet twelve tons carried the post through the year, and the supply was abundant, and the post was as fully and usefully occupied as it had ever been before." Of course there was an outcry against the Superintendent of Finance; "he rather wondered that the clamor was not more loud and tremendous." He remembered that "one hundred and forty-six supernumerary officers were brushed off in one day, who had long been sucking the vital blood and spirit of the nation.