Southport Telegraph

Secretary Floyd,

A letter has just been received from this officer by a gentleman in this town, post marked on the 4th inst. somewhere in Virginia. We understand that the letter brings the intelligence that the Secretary intended leaving home immediately for Washington, on his way to this territory. Some of our neighbors of the press seem disposed to inquire with much warmth, what business a public officer of the territory has to be forever residing in Virginia? This is indeed a question which ought to be answered in some way. We have understood, and from the manner in which the business of the office and of the treasury department have been conducted for three years past we have no reason to doubt it, that Mr. F. found the financial concerns of the territory in such a state as to render it necessary for him to go to Washington and endeavor to get them arranged; and it seems that he has been detained in that region several months, waiting the movement of the big wheels at Washington, to audit accounts, investigate claims, &c.; or as we prefer to express it in plain words, to determine to what extent the law of Congress can be evaded in the payment of appropriations made by them to defray the expenses of our legislature. We have been cursed enough, it is true, by bad Secretaries but we are thoroughly convinced that we have been doubly cursed by captious and quibbling constructions put upon the appropriation acts of Congress by the Secretary of the Treasury, or by petty underling officers of the department. Congress, we venture to say, never dreamed of such constructions being put upon their acts, as are constantly interposed to the exclusion of just demands, and to kick unceremoniously, honest claimants out of doors. To our own knowledge, the same act and the same words of an act, have been so construed as to serve directly opposite purposes, and plainly upon the principle that persons alter cases.

Wisconsin in Argus.