It can be seen from the foregoing that the duties of the Comptroller's office are varied and important. The boards of which he is a member give some indication of this fact. He is ex-officio a member of the State Board of Canvassers; of the Board of the Commissioners of the Land Office; of the Board of the Commissioners of the Canal Fund; of the Canal Board; of the State Commissioners of Charities; of the board to fix prices for prison made products; of the board for the establishment of State insane asylum districts, etc.; of the legislative printing board; of the department printing board, and one of the officers to designate the State paper. He manages the finances of the State so far even as to supervise the expenditures of the State institutions. He designates the banks in which funds of all institutions shall be deposited. He levies and collects the tax on corporations; supervises the collection of the transfer tax, and sells the lands of delinquent taxpayers in the counties in which are included a part of the Forest Preserve. He audits all accounts against the State; acts as a court in applications for cancellations of tax deeds or sales, and in disputed corporation tax matters; examines the court and trust funds deposited with the treasurer of every county in the State, and regulates the form of accounts and the manner of their investment, and performs many other less important duties too numerous for mention.
Of the men who have held the office of Comptroller nineteen were lawyers; three were gentlemen farmers; three bankers; one a merchant; one a manufacturer; one a capitalist, and two were business men. In politics two were Federalists; fifteen Democrats (including under the word Democrats original Republicans, whether Clintonians or otherwise); four Whigs; two Anti-Masons; six Republicans, and one American or Know Nothing.
The total expenditures of the State for each tenth year since the establishment of the office were as follows:
| 1797 | $322,831 37 |
| 1807 | 425,689 69 |
| 1817 | 1,296,590 88 |
| 1827 | 1,908,346 73 |
| 1837 | 4,926,449 04 |
| 1847 | 5,275,164 09 |
| 1857 | 10,176,939 70 |
| 1867 | 20,496,050 59 |
| 1877 | [A]26,186,744 70 |
| 1887 | 16,771,448 98 |
| 1897 | 26,510,425 77 |
[A] Includes $10,453,805.95 bounty debt.
Each of these would very nearly represent the average annual expenditures for the decade which it ends.
The total expenditures of the National Government for the year 1797 were $8,625,877.37, and if we deduct from this the amounts paid for interest, and payments upon the public debt, it leaves the amount of ordinary expenditure but $2,836,110.52. The ordinary expenditures of the National Government did not reach the amount expended in this State for the year 1896 until the year 1847, if we except the years 1813, 1814 and 1815, when the expenditures were abnormal by reason of the War of 1812, and if we except also the years 1837 and 1838, and in none of those excepted years did the annual ordinary expenditures very greatly exceed this State's expenditure for 1896.