[Office of Army Accounts May 5^th 1786] Gentlemen Agreeably to the direction of your honorable Board I beg leave to state on the petition of Patrick Bennet, praying a depreciation while in the Forage Masters Department, — That the paper money being a tender and considered when paid as a compleat discharge of all debts and contracts during the period of its circulation, it remains only with Congress to point out such Characters or departments as they please to except from this general rule, and as there is not any provision of this nature for the Quarter Master Department, the executive Officers of Congress are not at present at liberty to make any such allowance. That M^r Bennet, having left the service agreeably to his own stating on the 17^th March 1780 can not be entitled to his depreciation, supposing that the Quarter Masters department are eventually to receive it and on the same principles with the Officers of the Line, because the Act of the 10^th April 1780 granting the same, and the several subsequent resolutions of the 8^th Day of August 1780 and the 15^th of May and 12^th of August 1783 have declared it to be the uniform intention of Congress, to exclude all such as were not in the service on that Day — I am therefore of opinion without an examination into the justice of granting the same to the Quarter Masters department, that M^r Bennet, is clearly precluded from his depreciation. The Hon^ble the Board of Treasury