The finances, and the public debt, required a notice, which was briefly and satisfactorily given. The receipts into the Treasury for the past year had been $29,770,000: the payments from it $29,968,000; and the balance in the Treasury at the end of the year five millions—leaving a balance of $7,658,000 on hand. The nature of these balances, always equal to about one-fourth of the revenue even where the receipts and expenditures are even, or the latter even in some excess, has been explained in the first volume of this View, as resulting from the nature of great government transactions and payments, large part of which necessarily go into the beginning of the succeeding year, when they would be met by the accruing revenue, even if there was nothing in the Treasury; so that, in fact, the government may be carried on upon an income about one-fourth less than the expenditure. This is a paradox—a seeming absurdity, but true, which every annual statement of the Treasury will prove; and which the legislative, as well as the executive government, should understand. The sentiments in relation to the public debt (of which there would have been none had it not been for the distribution of the land revenue, and the surplus fund, among the States, and the absurd plunges in the descent of the duties on imports in the last two years of the compromise act of 1833), were just and wise, such as had been always held by the democratic school, and which cannot be too often repeated. They were these:
"The amount of the public debt remaining unpaid on the first of October last, was seventeen millions, seventy-five thousand, four hundred and forty-five dollars and fifty-two cents. Further payments of the public debt would have been made, in anticipation of the period of its reimbursement under the authority conferred upon the Secretary of the Treasury, by the acts of July twenty-first, 1841, and of April fifteenth, and of March third, 1843, had not the unsettled state of our relations with Mexico menaced hostile collision with that power. In view of such a contingency, it was deemed prudent to retain in the Treasury an amount unusually large for ordinary purposes. A few years ago, our whole national debt growing out of the revolution and the war of 1812 with Great Britain, was extinguished, and we presented to the world the rare and noble spectacle of a great and growing people who had fully discharged every obligation. Since that time the existing debt has been contracted; and small as it is, in comparison with the similar burdens of most other nations, it should be extinguished at the earliest practicable period. Should the state of the country permit, and especially if our foreign relations interpose no obstacle, it is contemplated to apply all the moneys in the Treasury as they accrue beyond what is required for the appropriations by Congress, to its liquidation. I cherish the hope of soon being able to congratulate the country on its recovering once more the lofty position which it so recently occupied. Our country, which exhibits to the world the benefits of self-government, in developing all the sources of national prosperity, owes to mankind the permanent example of a nation free from the blighting influence of a public debt."
The revision of the tariff was recommended, with a view to revenue as the object, with protection to home industry as the incident.
[CHAPTER CLIV.]
DEATH OF JOHN FORSYTH.
Like Mr. Crawford, he was a Virginian by birth Georgian by citizenship, republican in politics, and eminent in his day. He ran the career of federal honors—a member of the House and of the Senate, and a front rank debater in each: minister in Spain, and Secretary of State under Presidents Jackson and Van Buren; successor to Crawford in his State, and the federal councils; and the fast political and personal friend of that eminent citizen in all the trials and fortunes of his life. A member of the House when Mr. Crawford, restrained by his office, and disabled by his calamity, was unable to do any thing for himself, and assailed by the impersonation of the execrable A. B. plot, it devolved upon him to stand up for his friend; and nobly did he do it. The examination through which he led the accuser exterminated him in public opinion—showed every accusation to be false and malicious; detected the master spirit which lay behind the ostensible assailants, and greatly exalted the character of Mr. Crawford.
Mr. Forsyth was a fine specimen of that kind of speaking which constitutes a debater, and which, in fact, is the effective speaking in legislative assemblies. He combined the requisites for keen debate—a ready, copious, and easy elocution; ample knowledge of the subject; argument and wit; great power to point a sarcasm, and to sting courteously; perfect self-possession, and a quickness and clearness of perception to take advantage of every misstep of his adversary. He served in trying times, during the great contests with the Bank of the United States, with the heresy of nullification, and the dawning commencement of the slavery agitation. In social life he was a high exemplification of refined and courteous manners, of polite conversation, and of affability, decorum and dignity.