drive Burr from the party. Despite the pettiness of the game, which
disgusted both Gallatin and Jefferson, the decision was fateful. It was
no light matter, even for the chief magistrate, to offend Aaron Burr.

From these worrisome details of administration, the President turned
with relief to the preparation of his first address to Congress. The
keynote was to be economy. But just how economies were actually to be
effected was not so clear. For months Gallatin had been toiling over
masses of statistics, trying to reconcile a policy of reduced taxation,
to satisfy the demands of the party, with the discharge of the public
debt. By laborious calculation he found that if $7,300,000 were set
aside each year, the debt--principal and interest--could be discharged
within sixteen years. But if the unpopular excise were abandoned, where
was the needed revenue to be found? New taxes were not to be thought of.
The alternative, then, was to reduce expenditures. But how and where?

Under these circumstances the President and his Cabinet adopted the
course which in the light of subsequent events seems to have been
woefully ill-timed and hazardous in the extreme. They determined to
sacrifice the army and navy. In extenuation of this decision, it may
be said that the danger of war with France, which had forced the Adams
Administration to double expenditures, had passed; and that Europe was
at this moment at peace, though only the most sanguine and shortsighted
could believe that continued peace was possible in Europe with the First
Consul in the saddle. It was agreed, then, that the expenditures for
the military and naval establishments should be kept at about
$2,500,000--somewhat below the normal appropriation before the recent
war-flurry; and that wherever possible expenses should be reduced by
careful pruning of the list of employees at the navy yards. Such was
the programme of humdrum economy which President Jefferson laid before
Congress. After the exciting campaign of 1800, when the public was
assured that the forces of Darkness and Light were locked in deadly
combat for the soul of the nation, this tame programme seemed like an
anticlimax. But those who knew Thomas Jefferson learned to discount the
vagaries to which he gave expression in conversation. As John Quincy
Adams once remarked after listening to Jefferson's brilliant table
talk, "Mr. Jefferson loves to excite wonder." Yet Thomas Jefferson,
philosopher, was a very diffe