ury, I find that thirty-seven millions of that amount come from imported sugar. No one would defend the levying of so heavy a tax upon a necessary article of food were it not that a great agricultural interest is thereby protected, and that interest is mainly confined to the State of Louisiana. I am glad that the Government has given its aid to the State, for not a pound of sugar could be manufactured there if the tariff law did not protect it.

"As the law now stands, the average ad valorem duty on sugar is sixty-two and onee-half per cent. But what has this bill done? The complaint is made by its advocates that the rates are now too high. The rates on all dutiable articles average about forty-two per cent.; yet on sugar the average is sixty-two and one-half per cent., greatly above the average. This bill puts up the average duty on sugar to about seventy per cent. This one interest, which is already protected by a duty much higher than the average, is granted a still higher rate, while other interests, now far below the average rate, are put still lower. Metals, that now average but thirty-six per cent. ad valorem, far less than the general average but little more than half of the rate on sugar-are cut down still more, while the protection of the sugar interest is made still higher. "If the planters of Louisiana were to get the benefit there would be some excuse for the inerease; but what is the fact? One thousand four hundred and fifteen million pounds of sugar were imported into this country last year, but not one pound of refined sugar; every pound was imported in the crude form, going into the hands of about twenty-five gentlemen, mostly in the city of New York, who refine every pound of this enormous quantity of imported sugar. This bill increases the rates on the high grades of sugar far more than on the lower grades, and makes the importation of any finished sugar impossible. It strengthens and makes absolute the monopoly already given to the refining interest; yet we are told that this is a revenue-reform tariff.

'Before closing I wish to notice one thing which I believe has not been mentioned in this debate. A few years ago we had a considerable premium on gold, and as our tariff duties were paid in coin, there was thus created an increase in the tariff rates. In 1875, for instance, the average currency value of coin was one hundred and fourteen cents; in 1876, one hundred and eleven cents; in 1877, one hundred and four cents. Now, thanks to the resumption law and the rate of our exchanges and credit, the premium on gold is almost down to zero. But this fall in

the premium has operated as a steady reduction of the tariff rates, because the duties were paid in gold and the goods were sold in currency.

"Now, when gentlemen say that the rates were high a few years ago, it should be remembered that they have been falling year by year, as the price of gold has been coming down. When, therefore, gentlemen criticise the rates as fixed in the law of 1872, they should remember that the fall in the premium on gold has wrought a virtual reduction of fourteen per cent. in the tariff rates.

"Mr. Chairman, the Committee of Ways and Means has done a large amount of work on this bill. But the views which have found expression in his bill must be criticised without regard to personal consideration. A bill so radical in its character, so dangerous to our business prosperity, would work infinite mischief at this time, when the country is just recovering itself from a long period of depression and getting again upon solid ground, just coming up out of the wild sea of panic and distress which has tossed us so long.

"Let it be remembered that twenty-two per cent. of all the laboring people of this country are artisans engaged in manufactures. Their culture has been fostered by our tariff laws. It is their pursuits and the skill which they have developed that produced the glory of our centennial exhibition. To them the country owes the splendor of the position it holds before the world more than to any other equal number of our citizens. If this bill becomes a law, it strikes down their occupation and throws into the keenest distress the brightest and best elements of our population.

"It is not simply a stalking-horse upon which gentlemen can leap to show their horsemanship in debate; it is not an innocent lay-figure upon which gentlemen may spread the gaudy wares of their rhetoric without harm; but it is a great, dangerous monster, a very Polyphemus which stalks through the land. Monstrum horrendum, informe, ingens, cui lumen ademptum. If its eye be not out, let us take it out and end the agony." [Applause on the Republican side.]

But the correlative of revenue is expenditure. Only one other man of this age ever attempted a philosophy of national expenditure besides Garfield-that was Gladstone. No other American ever attempted to regulate appropriations by a philosophical principle. No other man ever attempted to re

duce the fabulous and irregular outlay of the Government to a science. Of Garfield's studies in this direction we have spoken elsewhere. On January 23, 1872, upon the introduction of his first bill as Chairman of the Committee on Appropriations he delivered an elaborate speech on the subject of

PUBLIC EXPENDITURES

"It is difficult to discuss expenditures comprehensively without discussing also the revenues; but I shall on this occasion allude to the revenues only on a single point. Revenue and the expenditure of revenue form by far the most important element in the government of modern nations. Revenue is not, as some one has said, the friction of a government, but rather its motive power. Without it the machinery of a government can not move; and by it all the movements of a government are regulated. The expenditure of revenue forms the grand level from which all heights and depths of legislative action are measured. The increase and the diminution of the burdens of taxation depend alike upon their relation to this level of expenditures. That level once given, all other policies must conform to it and be determined by it. The expenditure of revenue and its distribution, therefore, form the best test of the health, the wisdom, and the virtue of a government. Is a government corrupt? that corruption will inevitably, sooner or later, show itself at the door of the treasury in demands for money. There is scarcely a conceivable form of corruption or public wrong that does not at last present itself at the cashier's desk and demand money. The legislature, therefore, that stands at the cashier's desk and watches with its Argus eyes the demands for payment over the counter, is most certain to see all the forms of public rascality. At that place, too, we may feel the Nation's pulse; we may determine whether it is in the delirium of fever or whether the currents of its life are flowing with the steady throbbings of health. What could have torn down the gaudy fabric of the late government of France so effectually as the simple expedient of compiling and publishing a balance sheet of the expenditures of Napoleon's government, as compared with the expenditures of the fifteen years which preceded his reign? A quiet student of finance exhibited the fact that during fifteen years of Napoleon's reign the expenditures of his government had been increased by the enormous total of three hundred and fifty million dollars in gold per annum.

HOW SHALL EXPENDITURES BE GAUGED?

Such, in my view, are the relations which the expenditures of the revenue sustain to the honor and safety of the nation. How, then, shall they be regulated? By what gauge shall we determine the amount of revenue that ought to be expended by a nation? This question is full of difficulty, and I can hope to do little more than offer a few suggestions in the direction of its solution.

"And, first, I remark that the mere amount of the appropriations is in itself no test. To say that this government is expending two hundred and ninety-two million dollars a year, may be to say that we are penurious and niggardly in our expenditures, and may be to say that we are lavish and prodigal. There must be some ground of relative judgment, some test by which we can determine whether expenditures are reasonable or exorbitant. It has occurred to me that two tests can be applied.

TEST OF POPULATION.

"The first and most important is the relation of expenditure to the population. In some ratio corresponding to the increase of population it may be reasonable to increase the expenditures of a government. This is the test usually applied in Europe. In an official table I have before me the expenditures of the British government for the last fifteen years, I find the statement made over against the annual average of each year of the expenditure per capita of the population. The average expenditure per capita for that period, was two pounds, seven shillings and seven pence, or about twelve dollars in gold, with a slight tendency to decrease each year. In our own country, commencing with 1830 and taking the years when the census was taken, I find that the expenditures, per capita, exclusive of payments on the principal and interest of the public debt were as follows:

No doubt this

or, excluding pensions, three dollars and fifty-two cents. test is valuable. But how shall it be applied? Shall the increase of expenditures keep pace with the population? We know that population tends to increase in a geometrical ratio, that is, at a per cent. compounded

annually. If the normal increase of expenditures follow the same law, we might look forward to the future with alarm. It is manifest, however, that the necessity of expenditures does not keep pace with the mere increase of numbers; and while the total sum of money expended must necessarily be greater from year to year, the amount per capita ought in all well-regulated governments in time of peace to grow gradually less.

TEST OF TERRITORIAL SETTLEMENT AND EXPANSION.

"But in a country like ours there is another element besides population that helps to determine the movement of expenditures. That element can hardly be found in any other country. It is the increase and settlement of our territory, the organic increase of the nation by the addition of new States. To begin with the original thirteen States, and gauge expenditure till now by the increase of population alone, would be manifestly incorrect. But the fact that there have been added twentyfour States, and that we now have nine territories, not including Alaska, brings a new and important element into the calculation. It is impossible to estimate the effect of this element upon expenditures. But if we examine our own records from the beginning of the Government, it will appear that every great increase of settled territory has very considerably added to the expenditures.

"If these reflections be just, it will follow that the ordinary movement of our expenditures depends upon the action of two forces: first, the natural growth of population, and second, the extension of our territory and the increase in the number of our States. Some day, no doubt— and I hope at no distant day-we shall have reached the limit of territorial expansion. I hope we have reached it now, except to enlarge the number of States within our borders; and when we have settled our unoccupied lands, when we have laid down the fixed and certain boundaries of our country, then the movement of our expenditure in time of peace will be remitted to the operation of the one law, the increase of population. That law, as I have already intimated, is not an increase by a per cent. compounded annually, but by a per cent. that decreases annually. No doubt the expenditures will always increase from year to year; but they ought not to increase by the same per cent. from year to year; the rate of increase ought gradually to grow less.

EXPENDITURES OF ENGLAND.

"In England, for example, where the territory is fixed, and they are