enance of the Constitution and the Union
is the duty of preserving the Government free from the taint or even the
suspicion of corruption. Public virtue is the vital spirit of republics,
and history proves that when this has decayed and the love of money has
usurped its place, although the forms of free government may remain for
a season, the substance has departed forever.

Our present financial condition is without a parallel in history. No
nation has ever before been embarrassed from too large a surplus in its
treasury. This almost necessarily gives birth to extravagant
legislation. It produces wild schemes of expenditure and begets a race
of speculators and jobbers, whose ingenuity is exerted in contriving and
promoting expedients to obtain public money. The purity of official
agents, whether rightfully or wrongfully, is suspected, and the
character of the government suffers in the estimation of the people.
This is in itself a very great evil.

The natural mode of relief from this embarrassment is to appropriate the
surplus in the Treasury to great national objects for which a clear
warrant can be found in the Constitution. Among these I might mention
the extinguishment of the public debt, a reasonable increase of the
Navy, which is at present inadequate to the protection of our vast
tonnage afloat, now greater than that of any other nation, as well as to
the defense of our extended seacoast.

It is beyond all question the true principle that no more revenue ought
to be collected from the people than the amount necessary to defray the
expenses of a wise, economical, and efficient administration of the
Government. To reach this point it was necessary to resort to a
modification of the tariff, and this has, I trust, been accomplished in
such a manner as to do as little injury as may have been practicable to
our domestic manufactures, especially those necessary for the defense of
the country. Any discrimination against a particular branch for the
purpose of benefiting favored corporations, individuals, or interests
would have been unjust to the rest of the community and inconsistent
with that spirit of fairness and equality which ought to govern in the
adjustment of a revenue tariff.

But the squandering of the public money sinks into comparative
insignificance as a temptation to corruption when compared with the
squandering of the public lands.

No nation in the tide of time has ever been blessed with so rich and