148 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



inconvenient but inevitable surplus. And it is a curious fact, and 

 one perhaps altogether unprecedented and almost unrecognized 

 in history, that from the years 1837 to 1857 there was rarely a sin- 

 gle fiscal year, in which the unexpended balance in the national 

 Treasury derived from a few sources at the end of the year, 

 was not in excess of one half of the total expenditure of the pre- 

 ceding year.* 



To provide for the use, or rather to get rid of a continual sur- 

 plus, various plans were from time to time suggested. In one in- 

 stance the House of Representatives, on motion of Henry Clay (the 

 leading statesman of his day), seriously considered the question of 

 the expediency of the national Government becoming by purchase 

 and investment a partner in various stock corporations or enter- 

 prises; and pending any conclusion the surplus funds were de- 

 posited in the local or small State banks, with reiterated injunc- 

 tions " to loan liberally to merchants." 



In 1836, the unexpended cash balance in the Treasury of the 

 United States reported as available for public purposes, being 

 $65,723,959 $46,001,467 of which was on deposit in ninety-one 

 different State banks Congress (by act of June 23d of that year) 

 appropriated the sum of $37,468,859 for distribution among the 

 States ; of which $27,063,430 was officially certified in September, 

 1837, as having been actually paid. Most of the States applied the 

 amount apportioned to them for educational purposes. Others 

 used it differently and less wisely: Massachusetts, for example, 

 dividing her share proportionally among her towns and cities, 

 where it was expended at the discretion of the local authorities ; 

 in one instance, in a small fishing town, for the construction of 

 walks on the sands for the benefit of pedestrians ; and in others 

 for the purchase of houses and lands for the use and settlement 

 of the town's poor. 



As might have been expected under such circumstances, fiscal 

 and economic subjects were during the period under considera- 

 tion, those that least of all attracted the attention of the Ameri- 

 can people. Few books or essays on such topics were either writ- 

 ten or read, while the continually increasing agitation and interest 

 respecting the existence or extension of negro slavery furnished 



* During the decade from 1821 to 1831 the average ordinary annual expenditures of 

 the United States were $12,390,000, or at the rate of $1.07 per capita of its whole popu- 

 lation. 



From 1831 to 1841, $24,740,000, or $1.61 per capita. 



From 1841 to 1851, $33,760,000, or $1.63 per capita. 



From 1851 to 1861, $57,870,000, or $2.06 per capita. 



For the year 1894 the total expenditures of the Federal Government, as officially re- 

 ported, were $442,605,758, or $6.08 per capita of the entire population of the country ; or 

 $4.50 less expenditure for pensions. 



