General Garfield was by this time recognized as the highest authority on the intricate subjects of finance, revenue, and expenditure, in the House. It will be seen that these topics fall within the general head of political economy, “the dismal science.” Of these he was the acknowledged master. Accordingly, at the beginning of the Forty-Second Congress, in 1871, Garfield was made chairman of the Committee of Appropriations. It is probable that in this capacity he never had an equal. Something must be said of his work.
In order to master the great subject of public expenditures, he studied the history of those of European nations. He read the “budget speeches” of the English chancellors of the exchequer for a long period. He refreshed his German, and studied French, in order to read the best works in the world on the subjects, the highest authorities being in those languages. He examined the British and French appropriations for a long period. After an exhaustive study of the history of foreign nations, he commenced with our own country at the time of the Revolution. Charles Sumner was the greatest reader, and had the longest book list at the Congressional Library of any man in Washington. The library records show that General Garfield’s list was next to Sumner’s, being but slightly below it. After Sumner’s death, the man who was second became first. This gathering of facts was followed by wide inductions. National expenditures were found by him to be subject to a law as fixed as that of gravitation. There was a proportion between population, area of country, and the necessary outlay for public expenses, which was fixed. Any thing beyond this was waste. No covering could hide official robbery from the reach of such a detective as the establishment of this law. Every miscreant left a tell-tale track.
The results of his studies were embodied in an elaborate speech on January 22, 1872, in the introduction of his appropriation bill. The close study of political economy, however, did not divert him from other questions. He kept himself thoroughly versed on every question of public importance and was always equal to every demand.
On April 4, 1871, he delivered a speech in opposition to a Republican bill for the enforcement of the Fourteenth Amendment. At the time it brought down upon him the censure of his party. But he was firm. There could be no doubt of his loyalty to the nation, and his distrust of the malignant South. But he was too conservative for the war leaders and politicians. A compromise was effected, with which, however, his opponents were much dissatisfied.
Another notable speech was made on the bill to establish an educational fund from the proceeds of the sale of public lands. The speech abounded in citations from English, French, and German authorities on the subject of education. One doctrine enunciated was that matters of education belong to the State governments, not to the nation; that Congress made no claim to interfere in the method, but only to assist in the work.
In the summer of 1872, General Garfield undertook a delicate mission to the Flat-Head Indians. Their removal was required by the Government. But the noble red man refused to stir an inch from his ancestral hunting-grounds. Garfield’s mission was to be the last pacific effort. He was successful when the department had given up hope in any resource but war.
On his return from the West, General Garfield found the Credit Mobilier scandal looming up like a cyclone in the Congressional sky. Living a life of study, research, and thought, of spotless character and the purest intention, he was inexpressibly pained. A private letter of December 31, 1872, to his bosom friend Hinsdale, is indicative of his feelings:
“The Credit Mobilier scandal has given me much pain. As I told you last fall, I feared it would turn and that the company itself was a bad thing. So I think it will, and perhaps some members of Congress were conscientiously parties to its plans. It has been a new form of trial for me to see my name flying the rounds of the press in connection with the basest of crimes. It is not enough for one to know that his heart and motives have been pure and true, if he is not sure but that good men here and there, who do not know him, will set him down among the lowest men of doubtful morality. There is nothing in my relation to the case for which the tenderest conscience of the most scrupulous honor can blame me. It is fortunate that I never fully concluded to accept the offer made me; but it grieves me greatly to have been negotiating with a man who had so little sense of truth and honor as to use his proposals for a purpose in a way now apparent to me. I shall go before the committee, and in due time before the House, with a full statement of all that is essential to the case, so far as I am concerned. You and I are now nearly in middle life, and have not yet become soured and shriveled with the wear and tear of life. Let us pray to be delivered from that condition where life and nature have no fresh, sweet sensations for us.”
His correspondence at this time with President Hinsdale, in which he uncovers his secret heart, is full of expressions of disgust with politics, “where ten years of honest toil goes for naught in the face of one vote,” as he says. Once he declares: “Were it not for the Credit Mobilier, I believe I would resign.” How plainly his character appears in the following little extract:
“You know that I have always said that my whole public life was an experiment to determine whether an intelligent people would sustain a man in acting sensibly on each proposition that arose, and in doing nothing for mere show or for demagogical effect. I do not now remember that I ever cast a vote of that latter sort. Perhaps it is true that the demagogue will succeed when honorable statesmanship will fail. If so, public life is the hollowest of all shams.”