tual expenditures. For this purpose those of
the civil Government, the Army, and Navy will need revisal.

When we consider that this Government is charged with the external, and
mutual relations only of these States; that the States themselves have
principal care of our persons, our property, and our reputation,
constituting the great field of human concerns, we may well doubt
whether our organization is not too complicated, too expensive; whether
offices and officers have not been multiplied unnecessarily and
sometimes injuriously to the service they were meant to promote. I will
cause to be laid before you an essay toward a statement of those who,
under public employment of various kinds, draw money from the Treasury
or from our citizens. Time has not permitted a perfect enumeration, the
ramifications of office being too multiplied and remote to be completely
traced in a first trial. Among those who are dependent on Executive
discretion I have begun the reduction of what was deemed unnecessary.
The expenses of diplomatic agency have been considerably diminished. The
inspectors of internal revenue who were found to obstruct the
accountability of the institution have been discontinued. Several
agencies created by Executive authority, on salaries fixed by that also,
have been suppressed, and should suggest the expediency of regulating
that power by law, so as to subject its exercises to legislative
inspection and sanction. Other reformations of the same kind will be
pursued with that caution which is requisite in removing useless things,
not to injure what is retained. But the great mass of public offices is
established by law, and therefore by law alone can be abolished. Should
the Legislature think it expedient to pass this roll in review and try
all its parts by the test of public utility, they may be assured of
every aid and light which Executive information can yield. Considering
the general tendency to multiply offices and dependencies and to
increase expense to the ultimate term of burthen which the citizen can
bear, it behooves us to avail ourselves of every occasion which presents
itself for taking off the surcharge, that it never may be seen here that
after leaving to labor the smallest portion of its earnings on which it
can subsist, Government shall itself consume the whole residue of what
it was instituted to guard.

In our care, too, of the public contributions intrusted to our direction
it would be pruden