1860 3,144.620 94 13,900,392 13 *Actual payments on the public debt, but not carried into the totals because of repayments to the Treasury. N. L. JEFFRIES, Register TREASURY DEPARTMENT, REGISTER'S OFFICE, November 9, 1867. 17,015,013 07, 77,055,125 65 85,387,313 08 570.841,700 25 895,796,630 65 These tables show the wild extravagance of the Government, and the cause of our enormous taxes. The public debt, unnecessarily doubled by the resort to depreciated paper, calls for interest to nearly twice the amount of the whole expenses for any year before the war since the organization of the Government. The civil list alone now costs more than the whole Government during any year of its early stages. Not one step is taken in Congress to diminish these enormous expenditures. Nearly onehalf of our present expenses are occasioned, not by national necessity, but by the reckless and never-ending efforts of the Republicans to retain political power in their own hands. We call upon the people to examine these tables, and to learn where and how these expenses are incurred, and, if they wish them diminished, to secure representatives in Congress who will attend to the interests of their constituents, instead of making the nation pay for keeping the Republican party in power. 139.-OUR PUBLIC DEBT. The Constitution authorizes Congress to borrow money on the credit of the United States, and to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts, and excises, to pay the debts and provide for the common defence and general welfare of the United States. This does not authorize taxing the people to sustain Freedmen's Bureaus and armies to govern people in States, or to make and use machinery to produce political effect, which we now see in the Southern States. But we have now a debt upon us, that is already recognized, amounting to $2,757,689,571.43, the details of which we give below. A considerable portion of this vast sum was unauthorized by the Constitution, but cannot now be separated from the honest and legal portion. The evils that are upon us we must endure. But we can secure ourselves against the future by taking the Government from the hands of those who have been unmindful of the Constitution and regardless of their pledges of economy, and place it with those who have been faithful to both, and wise, and sagacious, and will so administer it as to make it a blessing instead of a burden under which the people are bending, staggering, and liable to be crushed, without the hope of possibic relief. Statement of the Public Debt on November 1, 1867. The unrecognized debts, which must be eventually admitted, will add very largely to this amount, and many estimate that it will nearly double it. The money in the Treasury has already gone, without actually diminishing the public debt, in paying interest and meeting new claims under appropriations by Congress. The legislative authority is daily increasing instead of diminishing our public debt. It keeps in the field, at the South, five armies to promote the interests of the Republican party, and a host of Freedmen's Bureau officers and spies, all of whom are worse than useless for any honest pur. pose under the Constitution and laws. Receipts for the last Fiscal Year-June 30, 1867. $176,417,810.88 |