184 PUBLIC FINANCE 



mental in character; the one having to do with procedure, so far as 

 financial legislation and administration are concerned, the other 

 relating to the source from which the financier may hope successfully 

 to obtain revenue. 



The question is sometimes asked why the science of finance should 

 include a consideration of budgetary legislation and a chapter upon 

 financial administration, and it is indeed a difficult question to answer. 

 A casual survey of the literature, however, makes it evident that 

 these topics are included along with the topics of taxation, public 

 industries, and public credit, by the financial writers of all nations. 

 The explanation of this is, perhaps, found in the fact that the science 

 of finance is primarily a practical science. It has assumed its modern 

 form very largely as the result of the actual problems presented to 

 the practical financier. The financier is the only public official who, 

 by virtue of his office, is interested in holding legislative appropria- 

 tions within reasonable bounds. The painful experience of Albert 

 Gallatin, the greatest of American financiers, is ample proof of this 

 assertion. It is natural, therefore, that the financier should empha- 

 size, with all the power at his command, those rules and maxims of 

 legislative procedure which tend to the control of expenditures and 

 which demand from the legislative body due consideration of all 

 appropriations. Whoever feels responsible for public expenditure 

 must, from the very nature of the case, assume a responsibility for 

 the form in which those expenditures are determined and for the 

 manner in which grants of money are expended. Now the science of 

 finance, as already stated, consists in an analysis and classification 

 of those principles of conduct that the financier finds it expedient to 

 put into practice. It is, therefore, inevitable that the publicist who 

 undertakes to write a comprehensive treatise upon financial pro- 

 blems should devote considerable space to budgetary legislation and 

 financial administration. 



This brings us to the question with which we started, namely: 

 What is the formal relation that exists between political science and 

 the science of finance? So far as budgets are concerned, this relation 

 is found in the fact that there is no legislative machinery of which 

 the financier can avail himself to check excessive expenditures ex- 

 cept such as is provided by political science. The form of govern- 

 ment, the relative power of the legislative and executive branches 

 of government, the nature and extent of public responsibility, and 

 all other similar facts relative to political organization, are given 

 factors for the science of finance; but for political science they are 

 the material of investigation and the objects of explanation. Such, 

 as it appears to me, is the formal relation between these two fields 

 of investigation. 



The vital relation to which reference has been made is much the 



