election poll lists of his districts, and transferred over 5,000 names from such lists to the enrollment lists without inquiry as to age or condition. Of course, a faithful officer would not have taken this step had there been any mode are means at his command in or by which an accurate enrollment could have been made.

The time allowed for making the enrollment, while it was ample for the mere collection of names, was entirely too limited for such inquiries and investigations as might have been made, the better to enable the officers to exercise the very restricted discretionary powers vested in them, as to who were the proper subjects of the enrollment.

The law itself, as well as the orders issued by the War Department for its execution, and of which no complaint is made, as they were evidently proper in the emergency, necessarily compelled an excessive enrollment-that is, the enrollment of aliens, the physically incompetent, and other exempts-and did not and could not effectually guard against the enrollment of non- residents and those not within the proper ages, or other errors and imperfections; and the consequences of these defects in the system-if defects they are-are, of course, more serious and more apparent in cities than in the country.

The Commission, by way of testing the regularity and correctness of the enrollment of the State of New York, instituted a comparison between it and that of the other States. They ascertained the whole number within the ages and description of those composing the first class of the national forces under the conscription act in each State by an estimate and calculation based upon the census of 1860, and upon the principle adopted by the Census Bureau at Washington. Perfect accuracy is not claimed for this estimate, but it approximates sufficiently near the truth for the purpose for which it is used, and no injustice is done to any State by any comparison based upon it. The Commission then ascertained the percentage actually enrolled of the number thus estimated as belonging to the first class in each State, and in each district of the State of New York.

The tables hereto annexed, marked A and B, give the results of these comparisons.

The discrepancies cannot, in the judgment of the Commission, be explained upon any theory which has been suggested. The variances are entirely disproportionate and, in some instances, in direct opposition to the census exhibit of the relative proportion of males and females, as well as of the males within the military ages, in the several States. The lowest enrollments are in Delaware, Rhode Island, and Vermont, while the largest is in New York, and they range from 575 in Delaware to 1,350 in one district in New York City to each thousand of the first class of the males estimated as above. The average enrollment to the thousand in the State of New York is 818, and in Vermont 614, and in all the States, exclusive of New York, 721, and including New York 737.

The average enrollment to the thousand in all the New England States, 637; in New York, Pennsylvania, and Ohio, 764, and in Michigan, Illinois, and Indiana, 767. The result of this grouping of the several States, as well as the comparatn each State, shows conclusively that there has been no uniformity in the enrollment in the Several States, or even in the different districts of the same State. If the same proportion of those estimated as above, belonging to the first class, has been enrolled in New York as the average enrollment in the other States, the enrollment in New York would have been 380,822, instead of 427,469. Most of this excess is in the cities of New York and Brooklyn. Other things being equal-that is,