John C. Calhoun
It being impracticable, however, to restore the money in exact proportion to each individual taxpayer, the Government did the next best thing—it divided the surplus pro rata, among the states.
In his letter to Dawson, Mr. Calhoun estimates the entire amount of the surplus, extending over a series of years, at seventy or eighty million dollars.
The share of Georgia and South Carolina, he estimates at $3,500,000.
Now what does he advise shall be done with this money which has been drawn from the taxpayers of the two states?
He advises that it be spent by Georgia and South Carolina in building railroads to connect those two states with the lines leading to the West and Southwest.
Spent in that manner, the surplus taxes of the two states would be so invested as to benefit all the people of Georgia and South Carolina.
It wouldn’t go to fatten a handful of greedy, millionaire bond-holders.
It wouldn’t go to a few pet National banks to be loaned out as private capital.
It being public money, it would be used for a public purpose; and the great public roads which it would build would belong to and benefit all the people of the two states which had paid the taxes into the Federal Treasury.