5 o PRESENT SYSTEM. 



receipt, and thus completes the evidence upon which all subse- 

 quent accounts are founde'd. 



Few creditors would feel bound to correct any errors as to the 

 items of such an account, provided they themselves received 

 their due; so that, practically, the whole matter is left to the 

 discretion of the purchasing officer. If an unscrupulous person, 

 he may buy a coat and call it candles, and no one need be the 

 wiser, particularly since the candles are, for the reasons stated, 

 "expended" as soon as they are received, and, what is more, 

 are expended without increasing the expense of anything in 

 particular. 



It is easily seen that this practice is opposed to the essence of 

 accountability, which receives no statement unsupported by such 

 independent testimony as the requirements of practice permit. 



2. The defenseless position of the Ordnance Storekeeper is also 

 worthy of note ; for if, from any reason, say the relief or death 

 of the Commanding Officer, or from some of the disagreements 

 to which all organizations are subject, the Commanding Officer 

 should fail to sign the quarterly Abstract of expenditures, the 

 Ordnance Storekeeper would be left badly in the lurch ; for while 

 the cash papers imposing the responsibility are made out monthly, 

 the abstracts discharging it are quarterly papers. A similar case 

 often happens in practice. Since purchases are " taken up " as a 

 consequence of their purchase, but are only dropped or " ex- 

 pended " from the Return after having been drawn from store by 

 the written order of the Commanding Officer, it happens that 

 bulky articles like coal and building materials, which never actually 

 pass under the Storekeeper's control, are often consumed on their 

 arrival without any note being made on the store book that would 

 lead to their expenditure on paper. Consequently, the end of 

 the year finds the Storekeeper with a large amount of material 

 charged against him, but which has disappeared from view. 

 Whatever statements may then be made as to the objects on which 

 it was expended must depend upon memory alone, and be largely 

 conjectural. 



3. Another trouble results from this mixing of property and 



