_To the Senate of the United States_:
I nominate Arthur St. Clair to be register of the land office for the
district of lands subject to sale at Indianapolis, in the State of
Indiana, in the place of William B. Slaughter, appointed during the
recess of the Senate.
As Arthur St. Clair was heretofore appointed to this office and was
removed during the recess, it is proper to state the reasons which
induce me again to nominate him to the Senate.
During the last summer an agent was appointed by the Treasury
Department to examine the land offices in Indiana, and upon his report
to the Department of the proceedings in the register's and receiver's
offices at Indianapolis I deemed it proper to remove both of those
officers without delay. A subsequent examination by a different agent
enabled the parties to offer explanations of the charges against them
in the first report, and although I am satisfied that the duty of the
first agent was honestly and faithfully performed by him, yet the
circumstances on which his report is founded have since been so
explained as to acquit both of the officers who were removed of any
intentional misconduct. In the case of Mr. St. Clair, however, it
appears from both of the reports that he had permitted the clerk in his
office to be the agent of speculations in land scrip contrary to the
instructions received by him from the Treasury Department, but I am
convinced that he himself did not participate in the speculation nor
share in the profits, and that he gave the permission under a mistaken
construction of the order and erroneous views of his duty as an officer.
His mistake in this respect seems to have arisen in a great measure
from his reliance on the judgment of others in whom he might well have
supposed he could confide, and who appear to have sanctioned the course
he adopted without sufficiently examining the subject and the evils to
which such a practice would necessarily lead. Under these circumstances
I have believed it to be an act of justice to Mr. St. Clair to present
his name again to the Senate, as he can be reinstated in the office from
which he was removed without injury to the person who in the recess was
selected to succeed him. And I should have adopted the same course in
relation to the receiver but for the peculiar circumstances in which his
successor has been placed, and which would render it an act of injustice
to him not to submit his name to the Senate for confirmation.
The reports and papers in relation to these removals are herewith
transmitted to the Senate, in order that they may act in the case with
the whole evidence before them.