Excerpt from Report of the Joint Committee of the General Assembly on the Public Works: Appointed by the Act of April 11, 1856, Entitled "an Act for the Appointment of Three Joint Investigating Committees, Defining Their Powers and Prescribing Their Duties" The treatment we have received from all the members of the board has been such as the kind tone of this note seemed to justify us in expecting. The law appointing us made it our duty during the recess of the General Assembly, fully to investigate all the transactions and expenditures of the Board of Public Works, and make report thereon at the adjourned session. It will be seen that the field of investigation opened to us by the act is very extensive, and that the duties imposed upon us are various and important. We saw at once that it mattered not how much we might do, a great deal must of necessity remain undone, for in the short time allotted to us by the law, it was utterly impossible to do every thing that it appeared to authorize. Finding that we could not do every thing that the law seemed to contemplate, we were driven to the necessrty of deciding what transactions and expenditures of the Board of Public Works we would investigate, and what we would not, and the decision of this point was per haps the most difficult and embarrassing duty we have been called upon to per form during the whole investigation. However, after much reflection, we deter mined to give precedence in our inquiries to transactions of such recent date, and of such a nature, that in case we found the public interest had suffered by any mis-management or fraud of any of the officers connected with the Public Works, there might still be a chance to right whatever wrongs we might discover; and if, after we had exhausted cases of this kind, we found we still had time, we would push our investigation farther. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.