The Life and Work of James A. Garfield, Twentieth President of the United States / Embracing an Account of the Scenes and Incidents of His Boyhood; the Struggles of His Youth; the Might of His Early Manhood; His Valor As a Soldier; His Career As a Statesman; His Election to the Presidency; and the Tragic Story of His Death.

PUBLIC EXPENDITURES

“It is difficult to discuss expenditures comprehensively without discussing also the revenues; but I shall on this occasion allude to the revenues only on a single point. Revenue and the expenditure of revenue form by far the most important element in the government of modern nations. Revenue is not, as some one has said, the friction of a government, but rather its motive power. Without it the machinery of a government can not move; and by it all the movements of a government are regulated. The expenditure of revenue forms the grand level from which all heights and depths of legislative action are measured. The increase and the diminution of the burdens of taxation depend alike upon their relation to this level of expenditures. That level once given, all other policies must conform to it and be determined by it. The expenditure of revenue and its distribution, therefore, form the best test of the health, the wisdom, and the virtue of a government. Is a government corrupt? that corruption will inevitably, sooner or later, show itself at the door of the treasury in demands for money. There is scarcely a conceivable form of corruption or public wrong that does not at last present itself at the cashier’s desk and demand money. The legislature, therefore, that stands at the cashier’s desk and watches with its Argus eyes the demands for payment over the counter, is most certain to see all the forms of public rascality. At that place, too, we may feel the Nation’s pulse; we may determine whether it is in the delirium of fever or whether the currents of its life are flowing with the steady throbbings of health. What could have torn down the gaudy fabric of the late government of France so effectually as the simple expedient of compiling and publishing a balance sheet of the expenditures of Napoleon’s government, as compared with the expenditures of the fifteen years which preceded his reign? A quiet student of finance exhibited the fact that during fifteen years of Napoleon’s reign the expenditures of his government had been increased by the enormous total of three hundred and fifty million dollars in gold per annum.