“Reviewing the subject in the light of subsequent experience, it will be seen that the progress of reduction of expenditures from the war level has been very nearly in accordance with these expectations of seven years ago.
“The actual expenditures since the war, including interest on the public debt, as shown by the official record, were as follows:
| 1865 | $1,297,555,224 41 |
| 1866 | 520,899,416 99 |
| 1867 | 357,542,675 16 |
| 1868 | 377,340,284 86 |
| 1869 | 322,865,277 80 |
| 1870 | 399,653,560 75 |
| 1871 | 292,177,188 25 |
| 1872 | 277,517,962 67 |
| 1873 | 290,345,245 33 |
| 1874 | 287,133,873 17 |
| 1875 | 274,623,392 84 |
| 1876 | 258,459,797 33 |
| 1877 | 238,660,008 93 |
| 1878 | 236,964,326 80 |
“Omitting the first of these years, in which the enormous payments to the army swelled the aggregate of expenses to $1,297,000,000, and beginning with the first full year after the termination of the war, it will be seen that the expenditures have been reduced, at first very rapidly, and then more slowly, from $520,000,000 in 1866 to about $237,000,000 in 1878.
“The estimate quoted above was that in 1876 expenditures would be reduced to $230,000,000, including $95,000,000 for interest on the public debt. In 1877, one year later than the estimated date, the actual reduction had reached $238,000,000, including $97,000,000 for interest on the public debt. [He means the expenditures had been reduced to $238,000,000.]
“It is evident that in 1877 we had very nearly reached the limit of possible reduction, for the aggregate expenditures of 1878 show a reduction below that of the preceding year of less than $2,000,000; and the expenditures, actual and estimated, for the current year ending June 30, 1879, are $240,000,000. It thus appears that 1878 was the turning-point from which, under the influence of the elements of normal growth, we may expect a constant, though it ought to be a small, annual increase of expenditures.”
If anywhere there is to be found a more scientific statesmanship than this, the average man knows not the place to seek it out. Garfield had discovered the law of the increase and decrease of national expenditures. It was as fixed as the laws which lengthen and shorten the day. Scientists agree that the laws of society are far more difficult of discovery and of demonstration than the laws of nature. Only one man in a generation makes any real advance in the study of those laws which pervade the affairs of men. In his philosophy of public expenditures, James A. Garfield was that man of his political generation. On March 5, 1874, in another speech on the same topic, he unfolded the philosophy and laws of growth of the public debt. As usual, it is an illumination of a vast and foggy subject. It is impossible to give, in our already crowded pages, even a synopsis of this address.
There can be no question that Garfield was the most perfect master of the themes of revenue and expenditure in his generation. With the exception of the tariff, they were not questions which could be brought into politics. In their nature, they were so dry and complicated that the House itself, much less the people, knew but little of the enormous labor performed by General Garfield on the subject. He applied his immense energies to the task as cheerfully as if the questions were those of the next campaign, instead of being known only in the committee-room. His research would gain him no contemporary laurels, his toil bring him no applause. But he grappled with the monster of public debt, which had its clutch on England’s throat, and was reaching toward the New Republic. He who knew so well how to thrill the audience and shake the building with plausive thunders, embodied the results of his work in speeches, which his friends possibly thought impractical and certainly tiresome. They lie embalmed in the mighty mausoleum of the Congressional Record, hidden away from the prying eyes of mankind. Some future statesman, with more industry or genius than his contemporaries, will, perchance, come with pick and shovel to excavate and disinter the buried children of the brain. If so, like the recently-discovered remains at Mycenæ and Thebes, they will be pronounced of royal blood.
We now pass to the last branch of the subject discussed in this chapter. This relates to the record of Garfield in relation to questions concerning the general character and tendency of American institutions.
This question opens the door to what would make a volume of General Garfield’s speeches. Under a rigid necessity of condensation, we can only give broken extracts from three addresses.