f finding faithful examining clerks, on
whose correctness and fidelity a just settlement of all accounts
depends. The number of independent offices attached to the Treasury made
the task still more arduous. He wrote to Jefferson at this time, "It
will take me twelve months before I can thoroughly understand every
detail of all these several offices. Current business and the more
general and important duties of the office do not permit me to learn the
lesser details, but incidentally and by degrees. Until I know them all I
dare not touch the machine." One of the acquirements which he considered
indispensable for a secretary of the treasury was a "thorough knowledge
of book-keeping." The recollection of his persistent demands for
information from Hamilton and Wolcott during his congressional career
would have stung the conscience of an ordinary man. But Gallatin was not
an ordinary man. He asked nothing of others which he himself was not
willing to perform. His ideal was high, but he reached its summit. It
seems almost as if, in his persistent demand that money accountability
should be imposed by law upon the Treasury Department, he sought to set
the measure of his own duty, while in the requirement that it should be
extended to the other departments, he pledged himself to the perfect
accomplishment of that duty in his own.

In his first report to Congress,[11] made December 18, 1801, Mr.
Gallatin submitted his financial estimate for the year 1802.

REVENUE. EXPENDITURES.

Imposts $9,500,000 Int. on debts. $7,100,000
Lands } 450,000 Civil List 980,000
Postages } Army 1,420,000
Internal Rev. 650,000 Navy 1,100,000
---------- ----------
$10,600,000 $10,600,000

Mr. Wolcott, in his last report to the Commissioners of the Sinking
Fund, stated the amount in the Treasury to its credit at $500,718. Mr.
Gallatin denied that there was any such surplus, but said that instead
of a credit balance the treasury books showed a deficiency of $930,128
on the aggregate revenue from the establishment of the government to the
close of the year 1799. Elliott, in his "Funding System," said
concerning this once vexed controversy, that it was difficult to
reconcile such a diversity of opinion on so intricate a subject; and
concerning the official statements of Hamilton and Wolcott, that it was
hardly to