Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That the accounting officers of the Treasury Department be, and they are hereby, authorized to allow to Joseph Wilson, a purser in the United States navy, in the settlement of his accounts, for such deficiency as he shall show to exist by reason of his making his deposits of the public money in the Phoenix Bank, at Charlestown, Massachusetts, subsequent to the twenty-fifth of February, eighteen hundred and forty-two, after a final liquidation and distribution of the effects of said bank shall have been made; and shall also allow to said Wilson such reasonable and proper expenses as he has actually incurred and paid, or may incur and pay, in a suit now pending in the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, and prosecuting the same to final judgment, brought to enforce the supposed priority of the claims of the United States over other creditors upon the assets of said bank in the hands of trustees; the proper evidence thereof being furnished by said Wilson to the accounting officers aforesaid.

Approved, June 13, 1848.