furnished by Mr. Steuart, and which were handed by him to the Secretary
of the Treasury on the 7th instant, the one being "memoranda of
proceedings," etc., marked No. 1, and the other "letters accompanying
memoranda," etc., marked No. 2.

The commission was instituted for the purpose of ascertaining existing
defects in the custom-house regulations, to trace to their true causes
past errors, to detect abuses, and by wholesome reforms to guard
in future not only against fraud and peculation, but error and
mismanagement. For these purposes a selection was made of persons of
acknowledged intelligence and industry, and upon this task they have
been engaged for almost an entire year, and their labors remain yet to
be completed. The character of those labors may be estimated by the
extent of Messrs. Kelley and Steuart's report, embracing about 100
pages of closely written manuscript, the voluminous memoranda and
correspondence of Mr. Steuart, the great mass of evidence accompanying
Messrs. Kelley and Steuart's report, and the report of Mr. Poindexter,
extending over 394 pages, comprised in the volume accompanying this,
and additional reports still remaining to be made, as before stated.

I should be better pleased to have it in my power to communicate the
entire mass of reports made and contemplated to be made at one and the
same time, and still more should I have been gratified if time could
have been allowed me, consistently with the apparent desire of the House
of Representatives to be put into immediate possession of these papers,
to have compared or even to have read with deliberation the views
presented by the commissioners as to proposed reforms in the revenue
laws, together with the mass of documentary evidence and information by
which they have been explained and enforced and which do not admit of a
satisfactory comparison until the whole circle of reports be completed.