Martinsburg Gazette

DEFERRED ARTICLES.

The Post Office Reporter.-We have had since our last, an opportunity of looking over the report of the Minority of the P. Office committee. It is a work of great labor, exhibiting evidence of unwearied industry, with the results of accurate research, so far as the committee were allowed to carry it. The Report consists of statements under various heads, exhibiting the particulars of abuses, such as have led the Majority as well as the Minority of the committee, to the withering conclusions which have already been published statements of great interest, but which cannot be condensed, or made the subject of abstracts, without the consumption of more time and space than we are able now to give the subject. We reserve, therefore, till after the adjournment, the details, of which we then shall consider it our duty to present as ample a view as is practicable.

Notwithstanding the extent and enormity of the disclosures made by the committee, it appears that there is much yet to be told, if the facts could be fully arrived at. Thus, the Minority say, in the outset of their Report:

" It is doing no injustice to the Department to say that they received no voluntary aid from any of its officers. What they have been able to find out they know ; and, from what is known. it may be inferred that much yet remains to be known."

The Report of the Minority further states:

"It will be apparent, from the records of the Committee, that from an early day of their session, there was a majority and a minority.- The minority do not claim anything for themselves that they do not accord to the majority.- They disclaim all party views, in entering upon, or conducting the examination on their part, and shall give full credit to a similar disclaimer on the part of the majority. The fact, however. is mentioned, as accounting in some degree, for the mode of bringing forward the examination, the prolixity and irrelevancy of portions of the testimony, and the manner in which it was taken.

The minority believed it their duty to go forward, and examine into the proceedings of the Department, to see whether they were right or wrong. The Majority were of opinion that it was not required to search for abuses, but to examine only where probable cause was alleged.-- This would, in fact, have limited the examination to abuses already discovered.

The effect of this difference of opinion will be seen to have related to the calls on the Department for information, and to the production of witnesses."

It appears further, that the neglect of the Department to answer interrogatories, absolutely defeated, to a certain extent, the object of the inquiry instituted by the House of Representatives. Thus says the Minority Report: "It is but justice to themselves to state, the Minority are not responsible for the course the examination has taken (the direction of which was beyond their control) or, that so little has been done, and so much has been left undone-they do not say which ought to have been. but which could not be done, on account of the neglect of the Department to answer the Resolutions of the Committee,"

The close of the Report, (the total of which fills 311 manuscript pages) we copy entire. because it concludes with a suggestion, the significance of which will not be lost upon our readers:

"The minority have now presented to the House an account of the investigations they have been enabled to make. Many important subjects other than mail contracts and extra allowances. remain to be examined, particularly the incidental accounts of the Department. and of Post Offices. and the most important of all, the pecuniary condition of the Department.

"The Committee were not authorized to report by bill, or to propose any course for the action of the House; much less would the Minority feel themselves warranted in offering an opinion as to what that course should be--whether to revise the post office laws alone-or to exercise the Constitutional power of the House as the grand inquest of the Nation."-Nat. Int.