The Life and Work of James A. Garfield, Twentieth President of the United States / Embracing an Account of the Scenes and Incidents of His Boyhood; the Struggles of His Youth; the Might of His Early Manhood; His Valor As a Soldier; His Career As a Statesman; His Election to the Presidency; and the Tragic Story of His Death.

by John Clark Ridpath

EFFECTS OF WAR ON EXPENDITURES.

“Thus far I have considered the expenditures that arise in times of peace. Any view of this subject would be incomplete that did not include a consideration of the effect of war upon national expenditures. I have spoken of what the rate ought to be in time of peace, for carrying on a government. I will next consider the effect of war on the rate of increase. And here we are confronted with that anarchic element, the plague of nations, which Jeremy Bentham called ‘mischief on the largest scale.’ After the fire and blood of the battle-fields have disappeared, nowhere does war show its destroying power so certainly and so relentlessly as in the columns which represent the taxes and expenditures of the nation. Let me illustrate this by two examples.

“In 1792, the year preceding the commencement of the great war against Napoleon, the expenditures of Great Britain were less than twenty million pounds sterling.

“During the twenty-four years that elapsed, from the commencement of that wonderful struggle until its close at Waterloo, in 1815, the expenditures rose by successive bounds, until, in one year near the close of the war, it reached the enormous sum of one hundred and six million seven hundred and fifty thousand pounds.

“The unusual increase of the public debt, added to the natural growth of expenditures from causes already discussed, made it impossible for England ever to reach her old level of expenditure. It took twenty years after Waterloo to reduce expenditures from seventy-seven million seven hundred and fifty thousand pounds, the annual average of the second decade of the century, to forty-five million seven hundred and fifty thousand pounds, the expenditure for 1835.

“This last figure was the lowest England has known during the present century. Then followed nearly forty years of peace, from Waterloo to the Crimean war in 1854. The figures for that period may be taken to represent the natural growth of expenditures in England. During that period the expenditures increased, in a tolerably uniform ratio, from forty-five million seven hundred and fifty thousand pounds, the amount for 1835, to about fifty-one million seven hundred and fifty thousand pounds, the average for the five years ending 1853–’54. This increase was about four million dollars of our money per annum. Then came the Crimean war of 1854–1856, during one year of which the expenditures rose to eighty-four million five hundred thousand pounds.

“Again, as after the Napoleonic war, it required several years for the expenditures of the kingdom to get down to the new level of peace, which level was much higher than that of the former peace.

“During the last ten years the expenditures of Great Britain have again been gradually increasing; the average for the six years ending with March 31, 1871, being sixty-eight million seven hundred and fifty thousand pounds.