of the Government. Large
revenues and large expenditures are mutually recreative. Mr. Calhoun,
the most sagacious and philosophical statesman of this century, said,
in 1839, "I am disposed to regard it as a political maxim in free
States, that an impoverished treasury, once in a generation at least,
is almost indispensable to the preservation of their institutions and
liberty." All experience shows that excessive revenue and large
expenditures increase the patronage of the government and corrupt
public and private morals. Some palliation may be found in the fact
that wars are demoralizing, necessitate much assumption of power, and
that our conflict was gigantic; but after all due allowances the
corruptions in America must find a parallel in that period of English
history when the sovereign was the pensioner of a foreign potentate.
The centennial anniversary of our republic finds a record so scandalous
that all honest men blush, and the Fourth of July eulogists have to
make the humiliating confession of much of vice and shame in our
national life, of a decline from the former high standard of political
and moral purity, and of the blister of corruption in high places, upon
Executive and judiciary, upon laws, and on the acts of prominent
officials. (See speeches of Dr. Storrs and Hon. C. F. Adams.)

[7] This is somewhat in excess of the actual amount, which is,
however, quite large enough, $3,809,722,765; viz., customs,
$1,973,589,621; internal revenue, $1,826,185,813; direct tax,
$9,947,331. It is well to remember, too, that the expenditures of
the Government have decreased one-half in this period; viz., from
$520,809,417, in 1866, to $258,469,797 in 1876. Of this decrease,
thirty-three millions is in the interest on the public
debt.--ED. GALAXY.

As cause and consequence of oppressive taxes, and wasteful and corrupt
extravagance, I may instance the centripetal tendencies of the Federal
Government. The patriot must deprecate the rapid strides toward
consolidation. Our government was designed as a government of
clearly-defined limitations upon power. It is now practically absolute.
In its complex character, a division of powers mutually exclusive
betwixt Federal and State governments, "divisibility of sovereignty,"
as some phrase it, was contemplated. Now the States are provinces
dependent on, submissive to, the central head, just as the Colonies
were looked upon, prior t