Peter Vivian Daniel

“ Moreover, these quarterly returns, which, so far as they go, are certainly admissions of the postmaster, are in nowise changed or affected, except by the disallowance of particular items, and by that very disallowance the officer is put in the position, and notified to sustain, if he can, his claims by legal proof. If he fail to do this, it can certainly furnish no reason why every other item of indebtment, admitted to be correct by both parties, should be withheld. We can perceive, then, no force in the second cause assigned by the judge below for the rejection of the transcripts. ”

“ Buford, 3 Peters, 29, and of the United States v. Jones, 8 Peters, 375, in which it has been ruled, that transcripts from the treasury should not amount to proof of facts not coming within the regular relation existing between the department and persons with respect to whom such facts may have transpired; but this exception or qualification cannot apply to transactions falling strictly within the relation subsisting between the government and its agents, or rather it goes to affirm the operation of the statute in reference to such transactions. ”

“ The competency of a statement by the auditor of all or any accounts with postmasters and contractors in suits against them, cannot, then, be questioned; the accuracy of such statements as to detail, is a wholly different matter, and is to be questioned or contested in the mode prescribed by other provisions of the statute. The only qualification ever made of the principle above laid down, if indeed it can be properly considered a qualification, is to be found in the decisions of this court in the cases of the United States v. ”

“ A different proceeding would seem to have been the contemplation of the legislature, if we can gather its intention from the mode pointed out for preferring and establishing credits, which, if denied and rejected by the government, it would seem strange to require should, by the act of that government which denied their existence, be held forth as a part of its own view of the transaction. ”