[Cover sheet. Administrative endorsement written diagonally: "enters on [undecipherable] duty of the — / to errors of Settlement from the / Comptroller the [undecipherable] — / Referred by Letter from the / Dep[t] 7 Dec[r] 1799 / during the Settlement of the / accounts of the [undecipherable] Cap[t] / the [undecipherable] Rec[undecipherable] by [undecipherable] Gen[l]"] [Filing labels: "Recommendations of the War Department" and "War Department"] War Department, December 11^th 1799. Sir, The Pay Master General has laid before me, a letter from you to him, dated the 4^th instant, by which it would appear, that you expect he shall audit and state accounts for expenses of an incidental nature, arising in the course of military Service, and not heretofore consider'd as within the compass of his official duties to perform. "The Act making alterations in the Treasury and War Departments" passed the 8^th of May 1792, designates and appropriates the particular duties of the Accountant of the War Department, and also those of the Pay Master General — to this Act it will be proper to refer. By the first Section, the Accountant of the Department of War, is expressly, and I consider exclusively charged among other things with the settlement of the incidental and contingent expenses of the Department, for the 3^d Section of the Act which designates the appropriate duties of the paymaster General applies them only, to what relates to the pay, the arrears of pay, Subsistence or Forage, due to the Troops of the United States. And altho' General Knox may be thought to have added to these duties, when the paymaster was directed to receive and distribute the recruiting money, to the Officers of the Army, under the direction of the Commanding Officer; yet the certainty of its final destination, for the payment payment of Bounties to Recruits, and the legal allowances to recruiting Officers on every enlistment will be found very much to assimilate the duty to, if not bring it within the general expression of paying the pay due to the Troops. The law appears to me, to have assigned distinct and separate duties to the Accountant of the Department, and to the paymaster General, and that these are easily discernible — to have assigned exclusively to the Accountant, the settlement of [underline: the incidental and contingent expenses of the Department], and I cannot discover that it has any where given to either power to devolve his duties upon the other. No representation has been made to me, nor have circumstances occurred, to induce me to believe, that new, and unusual business or duties ought at this time to be assigned to or expected from the Pay Master General. And I do not suppose it can ever be proper to constitute him an Auditor to state accounts for expenses of an incidental and contingent nature. I am Sir your obed^t Servant James McHenry The Accountant of the War Department.