Year: 1868

years of Buchanan's administration, by
the official statement of the Treasury De-
partment, which hold in my hand, the
large aggregate of 6,307, ,575.55, making
an average of well nigh twenty-five nil
lions each year in gold. And at that time
the army consisted in all of nineteen regi-
ments so that each regiment cost cOnsld-
erably over million each year in gold.
The army at present contains sixty regl-
ments, and yet the whole appropriation
asked for by General Grant amounts to
little more than thirty-three millions, a
trife more than half million per regi-
ment each year in paper. In other words
the army under the peace establishment OF
a Democratic administration Immediately
preceding the war cost per regiment
largely more in gold than the armynow
costs per regiment in paper under the
peace establishment as administered by
General Grant. The same scale of eX-
penditure INDUCED in under the admins
tratiOn of Buchanan would make our
present army cost over seventy millions in
gold or hundred millions n paper; and
until the latter figure is exceeded the Dem
ocratic partisans of Buchanan can have
no ground to charge that army expenses
are extravagant. When we look at the
actual amount spent for legitimate army
expenses, we see good ground for the high
compliment bestowed by President john
son, when, few months since, he pub
licly pronounced General Grants judi
cious economy as the direct cause of saw
ing many millions to the Treasury" With
General Grants election to the Presidency
and the final pacification of the Southern
States, our army will at once be reduced
and the expenditures of the War Depart
ment will be brought to point so incon-
siderable as no longer to be felt as a bur-
den to the taxpayer.


The comparison in regard to naval ex-
penditures at the two periods | have
named are equally suggestive and striking.
For the four years of Buchanan's admin
istration the navy, by the official record,
cost fifty-two millions six hundred and
forty-five thousand nine hundred and
ninety eight dollars and eighty-nine cents,
showing an average of more than thir-
teen millions per annum in gold coin.
With much larger navy, and with the
| disadvantage of paper money and high
prices, our appropriations this year are a
trifle under eighteen millions. Taking
the difference in the size of the navy at
the two periods, and the disparity between
gold and paper, and we should be author
lied, if we followed the Buchanan stand
ard of expenditure, in appropriating well
nigh forty millions for the years service
These facts are certainly suggestive and
instructive.


In our Post Office expenditures, as COM
pared with those of the Democratic regime
the difference is, ifanything, more striking
than in the relative expenses of the army
and navy. Besides using up all the postal
receipts, the Post Office Department for the
three last years of Buchanan's admins
tration made drafts on the treasury to the
amount of over five millions year, in one
year running up to nearly seven millions.
During the whole time the Republicans
have been in power, the drafts on the
Treasury for the support of the postal
service have not averaged two million dol
lars per annum, and with this moderate
expenditure we have been enabled to
carry on the immense mail service in the
interior of the continent and to the shores
of the Pacific, through all our remote Ter
ritories and sparsely peopled sections, and
have also been able to maintain a superb
line of mail steamers from San Francisco
to Hong Kong, and from New York to
Rio Janeiro, none of which extraordinary
enterprises and expenditures were levied
on the department. during Buchanan's ad
miniStratiOn.


These comparisons might be quite inde-
finitely continued, exhibiting in each item
the same result, and demonstrating with
mathematical certainty that when we take
into account the vast increase of popula-
ton and the rapid and unprecedented de-
velopment of our country during the time
the Republican party has been in power,
and when we take into further account the
fact that we have been all the while sub
jected as necessity of the war to the dis
advantage of high prices resulting from
paper money; taking, l say, these facts
into account, / assert and defy contradic-
ton that large as our expenditures have
scale of economy and fidelity quite un-
known during the last Democratic admin
istration that afflicted the country. And l
assert further, and 1 call both political
friend and foe to the witness stand in sup
port of my declaration, that whenever and
wherever General Grant has been able to
control governmental expenditure, econo-
my, integrity, fidelity, and rigid retrench-
ment and reduction have been the unvary-
ing result.


Considering further, Mr.. Chairman, that
while the Republican party has been pro-
viding the means for these expenditures,
they have been at the same time effecting
immense reductions in the public debt and
continually and largely reducing taxation.
Within the three years that have elapsed
since the war closed and the army muster
ed out, we have reduced the public debt
between two and three hundred million
dollars, and at each session of Congress,
while this reduction of the debt was going
on, we have taken off millions upon mil
lions of taxation from the productive in
dustry of the nation. At the first session
of the Thirty ninth Congress, the first that
convened after the close of the war, taxes
were removed that had the preceding
year yielded revenue of sixty million
dollars, and at the second session of the
same Congress forty-one millions more of
taxes were promptly repealed The For
tleth Congress has not been behind the
Thirty ninth in this respect, for we have
already repealed taxes that last year gave
us revenue of ninety millions. And to-
day the taxes of the Federal Government
are so wisely adjusted, and collected from
such few sources that no man feels them
burdensome, oppressive or eXacting De
magogues may misrepresent and partisans
may assail, but the people know and feel
that to-day the taxes levied by the Federal
Government are not an oppression to the
individual and not hindrance to the de-
veloplnent of the industrial resources of
the land.


The history of the Republican party,
Mr.. Chairman, is indeed a proud record.
Inheriting bankrupt Treasury, dishon-
ored credit, and a gigantic rebellion from
the traitorous administration which pre-