superintendent of the Bureau of Conscription in reference to the incompetency of the great majority of the enrolling officers and of their failure to discharge their duty. I have the honor to send you herewith a copy of that communication.

You are aware, general, of the accuracy, in part at least, of this representation, and you are also aware of the other grave difficulties which exist in this State to prevent the efficient execution of the conscript laws. The Execution of the State and his officiials and partisans, aided by a few prominent and influential public men in the State, have persistently labored to oppose the execution of these laws and to create publiic opinion not only hostile to their execution but commendatory of their evasion. The class of men now liable to conscription, and who have hitherto kept out of the service, cannot be reached under the present system. Instead of finding their security condemned as disHonorable , they find it approved, if not connived at, by some whose positions ought to be a warrant of a different course of conduct. It is therefore obvious that men assigned to the duty of dragging these skulkers from their hiding places should be chosen for their activity, zeal, and intelligence-in a word, the exact opposite of those who are acting under my orders. I think, general, you will do me the justice to acknowledge that so far as my personal exertions could secure the faithful execution of the law they have not been spared. I have ssen the difficulty. I have exposed the evils while I was powerless of myself to remedy them.

There is another matter which I desire to bring to your attention, and that is the impossibility which has hitherto existed of trying and punishing delinquent officers. For the past five months I have had officers in arrest on most serious charges and been unable to briing them to trial from the absence of any military court in the State. I have had the honor on sevral occasions to bring this matter to your earnest attention. If a permanent court were established for the speedy punishment of offenses and neglect of duty, and properly qualified men, irrespective of age or physical condition, ordered to report for enrolling duty, the service can be performed.

I have the honor to be, general, your obedient servant,

WM. M. BROWNE,

Commandant of Conscript for Georgia.

[Sub-inclosure.]

HEADQUARTERS CONSCRIPT SERVICE, GEORGIA,
Augusta, November 24, 1864.

Brigadier Gen. JOHN S. PRESTON,

Superintendent Bureau of Conscription, Richmond, Va.:

GENERAL: Your telegram of to-day in reference to the discrepancy between the official report for September and the registration returns as to mail contractors, impels me in self-defense to inform you specially of the utter incompetency of the majority of those assigned to duty as enrolling officers. Seven months' experience has proved to me conclusively that out of the whole number employed in the conscript service in the State there are not twenty who possess one qualification for the office. To remove men now on duty because of incompetency and replace them by others of the class at my disposition would be simply to put incompetent men who know nothing whatever in the place of incompetent men who have learned something, small though it be. For the most part, the enrolling and sub-enrolling officers belong to the lower and poorer order of society.