for saving had passed. The imperious necessities of war take no
heed of economic principles. The work which the secretary had done
became as the rope of sand. It is not surprising that Gallatin wearied
of his post; that he watched with vain regret and unavailing sighs the
unavoidable increase of the national debt, and that he sought relief in
other services where success was not so evanescent as in the Treasury
Department. Before the close of Madison's administration, February 12,
1816, the public debt had run up to over one hundred and twenty-three
millions,[15] and a sum equal to the entire amount of Mr. Gallatin's
savings in two terms had been expended in one. But his work had not been
in vain. The war was the crucial test of the soundness of his financial
policy. The maxims which he announced, that debt can only be reduced by
a surplus of revenue over expenditure, and the accompaniment of every
loan by an appropriation for its extinguishment, became the fundamental
principle of American finance. Mr. Gallatin was uniformly supported in
it by Congress and public opinion. It was faithfully adhered to by his
distinguished successors, Dallas and Crawford, and the impulse thus
given continued through later administrations, until, in 1837, twenty
years after the peace, the entire debt had been extinguished. All this
without any other variation from Mr. Gallatin's original plan than an
increase of the annual appropriation, to the sinking fund for its
reimbursement, from eight to ten millions.[16]

The only charge which has ever been made against Gallatin's
administration was, that he reduced the debt at the expense of the
defenses and security of the country; but, to quote the words of one of
his biographers:[17] "Mr. Gallatin had the sagacity to know that it [the
redemption of the debt] would make but little difference in the degree
of preparation of national defense and means of contest, for which it is
impossible ever to obtain a considerable appropriation before the near
approach of the danger that may render them necessary. He knew that the
money thus well and wisely devoted to the payment of the debt was only
rescued from a thousand purposes of extravagance and mal-application to
which all our legislative bodies are so prone whenever they have control
of surplus funds." In our own day the irresistible temptations of a full
treasury need no labored demonstration. Friend and foe drop political
differences over the abund