d when he was deprived of the power to
touch one cent of the receipts. I remained at Washington from March 3
to August, engaged in the preparation of a work upon the Revenue
System. This volume contains the rulings and decisions by me most of
which have been sustained by the courts or justified by experience.*

My successor was Joseph J. Lewis, a country lawyer from Pennsylvania.
He had written a biography of Mr. Lincoln, and he had been the
President's choice at the outset. When I resigned, the President had
his way. Whether Mr. Chase presented any other person I cannot say.
Mr. Lewis had no idea of the work of administration. When questions
were submitted to the office, he proceeded to prepare an answer which
he wrote with a quill pen in his own hand. At the beginning he sent
off his answers without the knowledge of the chiefs of division, and in
some instances a newspaper report was the first information that the
subordinates obtained that a decision had been made. In some instances
he passed upon old questions, without any inquiry or examination, until
it was discovered that the head of a division was ruling one way and
Mr. Lewis was ruling another way at the same time.

When I left the office in March, 1863, Mr. Chase said to me that it
exceeded in magnitude the entire Treasury Department, March 1861. It
was in fact the largest Government department ever organized in
historical times, and it was organized without a precedent. By its
machinery, it became finally so vast, that three hundred and fifty
million dollars were assessed and collected in a single year. In the
thirty-eight years of its existence, the gross collections have
amounted to $5,524,363,255.89. It has existed eight and thirty years
with no other changes than such as have been required by the change
of laws. The frame work, including the system of bookkeeping with its
checks and tests, remains.

When I entered upon the work in July, I examined the records of the
Excise Bureau established during the War of 1812, but they furnished
no aid whatever in the execution of the work that was before me. I had
neither time nor opportunity to study the excise system of Great
Britain; and hence the organization of the system of the United States
was based upon, and grew out of, the requirements of the law. I do not
deem this a misfortune. The public anxiety in regard to the
construction of the law induced a large amount of correspondence with
per