[Republished by the Union Republican State Central Committee of California.] 
 
 Republican Economy vs. Democratic Extravagance. 
 
 ' 
 
 HON. JAMES G. ELAINE, 
 
 OF MAINE, 
 
 IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, JULY 2, 1868. 
 
 The House being in Committee of the 
 Whole on the Deficiency Appropriation 
 bill- 
 Mr. ELAINE said: 
 
 Mr. CHAIRMAN : We have entered upon a 
 new fiscal year, and the last appropriation 
 bill to provide for its expenditures has been 
 reported and is now before the House. The 
 occasion seems a fit one for a brief survey 
 of our financial situation and for a pertinent 
 answer to the many misrepresentations so 
 industriously spt afloat in regard.to govern- 
 mental expenditures. A very labored at- 
 tempt has been mad? throughout the coun- 
 try by certain parties and partisans tp 
 create the impression that the expenditures 
 of this Congress are on a scale of heedless 
 and reckless extravagance. I propose to 
 show that such is not the fact, but that, on 
 the contrary, the expenditures are made 
 with far more regard to economy than dis- 
 tinguished the last Democratic administra- 
 tion that was in power in this country. The 
 question is one of figures and not of argu- 
 ment, and hence I proceed at once to the 
 figures. 
 
 It is important at the outset, to a clear 
 understanding and clear comparison of 
 Government expenditures at the present 
 time and the period immediatelv preceding 
 the war, to distinguish between those ex- 
 penditures which were the inevitable conse- 
 quence of the rebellion, and -therefore un- 
 avoidable, and those which may be to a 
 certain extent controlled by the discretion 
 and fidelity of Congress. Of those expen- 
 ditures, which are the direct outgrowth of 
 the rebellion, I count the interest on the 
 war debt and the pensions and bounties to 
 soldiers and sailors. These are expenditures 
 which are not discretionary but are impera 
 tiyely demanded, unless the nation is pre- 
 pared on the one hand to defraud its 
 creditors, or on the other to turn its back 
 on the brave men who risked everything 
 that the Republic might survive. 
 
 The annual interest on the public debt 
 amounts to one hundred and twenty-nine 
 million six hundred and seventy-eight 
 
 thousand seventy-eight dollars and fifty 
 cents. The pension-roll for the year will be 
 thirty million three hundred and fifty 
 thousand dollars, and the bounties due and 
 payable will require about thirty million 
 dollars. These three items, which are not 
 discretionary, amount to the large aggre^ 
 oate of nearly one hundred and ninety 
 million dollars, well nigh two thirds of our 
 total outlay for the fiscal year upon which 
 we have just entered. The fact that so 
 large a proportion of our expenditure is the 
 result of the war, and is unavoidable unless 
 we repudiate our obligations to our public 
 creditors and our heroic soldiers, cannot be 
 too often repeated or too thoroughly im- 
 pressed on the public mind ; for it is idle to 
 denounce these expenditures as extravagant 
 unless we are prepared to withhold them ; 
 and whoever proposes to withhold them 
 propose? thereby to put the nation at the 
 same time under the doubly disgraceful 
 stigma of repudiation and ingratitude. If 
 the Democratic party choose to assume 
 that position it is welcome to all the glory 
 of it. 
 
 For the ordinary expenditures of Govern- 
 ment for the fiscal year which has just be- 
 gun the appropriations are as follows : 
 
 Executive, legislative, and judicial, embra^insr *H 
 Department salaries and expenses.... $17, 48", 000 00 
 
 F>r the Army 33,081, 013 10 
 
 For the Navy 17,500,000 00 
 
 West Point Military Academy 30 i. 000 00 
 
 Cousnl-ir and dipl >m<itic service 1, 206.43 1 00 
 
 Post Offi-e Department 2,500 000 00 
 
 Indian bureau, treaties, &c 2,500,000 00 
 
 Rivers and hirbors 4700,000 00 
 
 Collecting the revenue 9,969,000 00 
 
 Sundry civil expenditures connected 
 
 wit li the various Departments 6,020,00000 
 
 Miscellaneous expenses of all kinds, in- 
 eluding cost of certain pub ic bui din 
 throughout the C"imtry, expenses of 
 reconstruction fxncnse of dosing up 
 
 Fr-ertmeu's Bureau, &c 9,000,00000 
 
 Deficient s of various kiuds in the dif- 
 ferent appropriations 2, 560 Of'O 00 
 
 Making alotalof $106818.447 10 
 
 I differ in some items from the recent 
 statements of the honorable chairman of 
 Ways and Means, for T think he included 
 in the expenses of this year a deficiency of 
 thirteen million dollars resulting from the 
 
[2] 
 
 Indian war of 1867 ; which amount was ap- 
 propriated and spent last year and has no 
 proper connection whatever with the ex- 
 penditures of the current fiscal year. And 
 he also includes, incorrectly I think, some 
 twenty four million, appropriations overlap 
 ping from the year which has closed to the 
 present. I say incorrectly, because this 
 amount will be offset by a similar amount 
 which overlaps from this year to the next, 
 about the same amount going over each 
 year, and this from necessity owing to the 
 mode of disbursement. I have also made 
 the amount for bounties ten millions less 
 than the chairman estimates, because a 
 large proportion which he includes in this 
 year will necessarily be paid in the ensuing 
 year, when it is hoped the whole matter 
 will be closed, the last soldier honorably 
 paid off, and the Treasury relieved from 
 further obligation in that direction. 
 
 Adding together these ordinary expendi- 
 
 tures, 
 found 
 
 to 
 
 I have above, the sum total is 
 be one hundred and six miliion 
 
 And at that time the 
 all of nineteen regi- 
 
 eight hundred and eighteen thousand four 
 hundred and forty-seven dollars. If Con- 
 gress can be accused of extravagance, the 
 accusation must be made good on these 
 figures, or else abandoned, for the other 
 expenditures, as I have already repeated, 
 lie without the pale of congressional dis- 
 cretion or control. A clear estimate of the 
 character of these expenditures may- be 
 gathered by comparing them with the out- 
 lays incurred under the last Democratic 
 administration. For example, in 1857-58 
 the same class of expenses in Buchanan's 
 administration were over seventy million 
 dollars in gold, whereas the one hundred 
 and six million eight hundred and eighteen 
 thousand four hundred and forty-seven 
 dollars above named are in paper. It must 
 be observed, moreover, that in 1857-58 the 
 population of this country was under thirty 
 millions, whereas .to-day it is well nigh 
 forty millions. Adding forty per cent, 
 premium on gold, to bring the expenditures 
 of the two eras to the same standard, and 
 we find the outlays of Buchanan were at 
 the rate of over ninety-eight millions in 
 paper to-day. To this add one third for 
 increase of population, and we find the 
 Buchanan expenditures, adjusted to the 
 scale of to-day, would amount to one hun- 
 dred and thirty million dollars for the same 
 items that we are paying less than one 
 hundred and seven millions for. And in 
 this calculation I have said nothing about 
 the increased military and naval force of 
 the present day, which adds immensely to 
 the account in favor of present economy. 
 
 This calculation, stated in these general 
 terms, is far more striking and suggestive 
 
 when you come to examine details. The 
 Army, for instance, cost during the four 
 years of Buchanan's administration, by the 
 official statement of the Treasury Depart- 
 ment, which I hold in my hand, the large 
 aggregate of $86,307,57*5 55, making an 
 average of well nigh twenty-two millions 
 each year in gold. 
 Army consisted in 
 
 merits ; so that each regiment cost consider- 
 ably over a million each year in gold. The 
 Army at present contains sixty regiments, 
 and yet the whole appropriation asked for 
 by General Grant amounts to little more 
 than thirty-three millions, a trifle more 
 than half a million per regiment 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 Army now costs per regiment in. 
 paper under the peace establishment as 
 administered by General Grant. The same 
 scale of expenditure indulged in under the 
 adrninistiation of Buchanan would make 
 our present Army cost over seventy millions 
 in gold or a hundred millions in paper ; and 
 until the latter figure is exceeded the 
 Democratic partisans of Buchanan can have 
 no ground to charge that Army expenses are 
 Extravagant. When we look at the actual 
 amount spentfor legitimate Army expenses, 
 we see good ground for high compliment 
 bestowed by President Johnson when, a few 
 months since, he publicly proclaimed 
 " General Grant's judicious economy as the 
 direct cause of saving many millions to the 
 Treasury." With General Grant's 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 Department will be brought to a point 
 so inconsiderable as no longer to be felt as 
 a burden to the tax payer. 
 
 The comparison in regard to naval ex- 
 penditures at the two periods I have named, 
 are equally suggestive and striking. For 
 the four years of Buchanan's administration 
 the Navy, by the official records, cost fifty- 
 two million six hundred and forty-five 
 thousand nine hundred and ninety-eight 
 dollars and eighty-nine cents showing an 
 average of more than thirteen millions per 
 annum in gold coin. With a 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 
 authorized, if we followed the Buchanan 
 standard of expenditure, in appropriating 
 well nigh forty millions for the year's ser- 
 
[3] 
 
 vice. These facts are certainly suggestive 
 and instructive. 
 
 In our Post Office expenditures, as com- 
 pared with those of the Democratic regime^ 
 the difference is, if anything, more striking 
 than in the relative expenses of the Army 
 and Ravy. Besides using up all the postal 
 receipts, the Post Office Department for the 
 three last years of Buchanan's administra- 
 tion made drafts on the Treasury to the 
 amount of over five millions a 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 ser- 
 vice have not averagpd two million dollars 
 per annum, and with this moderate expen* 
 diture 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 Territories 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 administration. 
 
 These comparisons might be quite indef- 
 initely continued, exhibiting in each item 
 the same result, and demonstrating with 
 mathematical certainty that when we take 
 into aeeountthe vast increase of population 
 and the rapid and unprecedented develop- 
 ment 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 subjected 
 as a necessity of the war to the disadvantage 
 of high prices resulting from paper money ; 
 taking, I gay, these facts into account, 1 
 assert and defy contradiction, tha* large as 
 our expenditures have necessarily beer, they 
 have yet been on a scale of economy and 
 fidelity quite unknown during the last 
 Democratic administration that afflicted the 
 country. And I assert further, and I call 
 both political friend and foe to the witness 
 stand in support of my declaration, that 
 whenever and wherever General Grant has 
 been able to control governmental expendi 
 ture, economy, integrity, fidelity, and rigid 
 retrenchment and reduction have been the 
 unvarying result. 
 
 Consider further, Mr. Chairman, that 
 while the Republican party has been provid.- 
 ing the means for these expenditures, they 
 have been at the same time effecting im 
 t mense 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 was 
 mustered 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 nnijHei.s of tax- 
 ation from the productive industry ot the 
 nation. At the first session of the Thirty- 
 Sinth Congress, the first that convened tiler 
 he close of the war, taxes were remov- 
 ed that had the preceding year yielded a revenue 
 of sixty milli n dollars, and at the second ses- 
 sion of the same Congress forty-one millions 
 more of taxes were pn mptly repealed. The 
 Fortieth Congress has not been behind the 
 Thirty-Nibth in this respect, for we have already 
 repealed taxes that last year gave us a revenue 
 ot ninety millions. And lo-day the taxes of the 
 Federal Government are so wisely adjusted, and 
 collected from such few sources, that no man 
 r eels them burdensome, oppressive, or exacting. 
 Demagogues may misrepresent and partisans 
 may assail, but the people know and feel tnat 
 to-day the taxes levied by the Federal Govern- 
 ment are not an oppression to the individual 
 and not a hindrance to the development of the 
 ndustrial resources of the land. 
 
 The history of the Republican party, Mr. 
 Chairman, is indeed a proud record. Inheriting 
 a bankrupt Trt asury, a dishonored credit, and a 
 gigantic rebellion from the traitorous Adminis- 
 tration which preceded their advent to power in 
 1861, the Rt publicans heroically and sue -ess- 
 fulh grappled with and conquered 11 the^e ob- 
 stacles to the life and progress of the nation. 
 They replenished the Treasury; they redeem- 
 ed our credit ; they subdued the mightiest 
 rebellion that ever confronted civil power 
 since governments were instituted among 
 men ; they struck the shackles from four 
 millions of human beings, and gave them every 
 civil right under the Constitution and laws. 
 And while accomplishing these Herculean ta.-ks, 
 the Republican party administered the Govern- 
 ment so wisely that prosperity has been all the 
 time abroad in the land ; great business enter- 
 prises have been undertaken and successfully 
 prosecuted ; factories have been built ; the 
 forest subdued ; farms brought under cultiva- 
 tion ; navigable rivers improved ; thousands of 
 miles of railway constructed ; the continent 
 spanned by telegraph wires; the two oceans 
 well nigh connected by a road of iron ; the 
 emigrant protected on the remotest frontier [ 
 Territories carved out of the wilderuess domain; 
 and new States of promise and power added to 
 the national Union. 
 
 What other party in the history of this coun- 
 try ever confronted such difficulties ? What 
 other party ever gained such victories ? But 
 great as its achievements have been, its work is 
 not yet finished. Out of the fierce conflicts of 
 the recent past, conflicts indeed still raging, 
 order and harmony, conciliation and friendship, 
 are yet to be evoked ; not, indeed, hy unwise 
 concession and timid compromi?e, but by that 
 firm policy which is based on Right, and under 
 the leadership of one, who, so terribly earnest 
 in war, is yet to-day the embodiment of peace, 
 the conservator of public justice, the hope of the 
 loyal millions ! 
 
Governor Seymour's Misstatenients in regard to Army Expenses, 
 
 In the House of Representatives, June 27, 1868, Mr. Blaine, of Maine, made the fol- 
 lowing comments on a misstatement madt by Governor Seymour, of New York, in 
 his Cooper Institute speech : 
 
 ^ r - Speaker, I desire to call attention to a 
 8t atemenr. made by Governor Seymour in his 
 recent speech at the Cooper Institute in the 
 city of New York. In arraigning the Repub- 
 Ikan party for extravagance he makes the fol- 
 lowing declaration, as reported in the New York 
 World, which I hold in my hand : 
 
 "Sicce the wr dosed in 186* the Government his 
 spent for its < ip n-ses in addition to it-* payment on 
 priudp.il or i tere-t ol ^u^lic debt, more than oue 
 thousiiiKi mi'liou dollars. Of (his sum there h <8 been 
 nearly eight hut dred millions spt-n' on the Army and 
 ana for military p rp iges. This is nearly oi.e 
 
 Nav 
 
 third of the national debt. 
 
 peace. 
 
 This was *pent iu t me oi 
 
 The charge thus brought by Governor Sey- 
 mour is that in the three years that have trans- 
 pired since the war closed our Army and Navy 
 have cost us eight hundred million dollars, or at 
 the rate of nearly two hundred ana seventy mil- 
 lions per annum in time of profound peace. The 
 statement is cunningly made with the evident 
 purpose of misleading the public mind, for while 
 it is quite true that the military and navnl ex- 
 penses since the close of the war have beeu 
 eight hundred million dollars, it is absolutely 
 untrue that they have been two hundred and 
 seventy millions per annum. 
 
 When the war closed by the surrender of Lee 
 on ^the 9ih of April, 1865, the armies of the 
 Union bore the names of nearly a million men 
 on the rolls, and our Navy in its vast and 
 wid< ly-extended duty of blockading three thou- 
 sand miles of coast, had nearly five hundred 
 'vessels in service, with a corresponding number 
 of men. The first result of Grant's magnificent 
 series of victories and final triumph o er the re- 
 bellion was to muster out these countless hosts 
 which had borne our standard with such glory 
 on the land and on the sea. Months of pay 
 were due to more than half the Army ; the 
 well earned closing bounty was due to all, and 
 the sailors, besides their back pay, were to re- 
 ceive millions of prize money honestly their 
 own. The vast and almost incalculable amount 
 needed to be provided for these purposes must 
 be hsd at once, and thanks to the patriotism 
 and the wealth of our people it was had at once 
 I have this morning visited the Treasury De 
 partment, and by the official statements which 1 
 hold in my hand it appears that the disburse 
 ments for the Army and Navy for the one him 
 dred and sevent7-four days following Grant's 
 closing victory amounted tr> six hundred anc 
 
 wenty-five million dollar*. Hence it will be 
 seen that more than three fourths of the eight 
 nindred millions so triumphantly paraded by 
 overnor Seymour as the War and Navy ex- 
 senses of the past three years were really dis- 
 )ursed almost in one sum at the close of hos- 
 ilities as the necessary expenses of mustering 
 out our enormous military aud naval forces. To 
 supply ihis vast sum the current receipts of the 
 overnment were consumed, and the people di- 
 rectly advanced five hundred aud thirty millions 
 iy subscribing that amount to the ever-inemor- I 
 able seven-thirty loan. 
 
 Do Governor Seymour and his friends find 
 "ault with the expenditure thus incurred in mus- 
 tering out the Army? D^> they be^tudge the 
 soldiers their back pay and bounty aud the 
 sailors their hard-earned wages and their prize 
 money? If not, let them ce pe to attuck the 
 Republicans for promptly discharging the hon- 
 orary debts of the Republic, for thus gladly pay- 
 ing the men who risked their lives to save the 
 life of the nation. 
 
 Six hundred and twenty-five millions of Gov- 
 ernor. Seymour's eight hundred mill ons being; 
 thus expended in mustering out the volunteers, 
 his own figures show that the current and 1 git-! 
 imate expense of both Army and Navy for the] 
 past three years of peace have been but one] 
 hundred and seventy- five million dollars, or 
 liitle more than fift v -eight millions per annur 
 for both branches of the service. Tne Gover- 
 nor's figures thus reduced are not far from th( 
 truth, aud they show a degree of economy quit 
 unknown in Democratic times. Take the year 
 1858, for example, in the administration of M 
 Buchanan, and we find that the expenses of tl 
 Navy were fourteen millions and ot the Arm] 
 nearly twenty-six millions for the two w( 
 nigh forty millions' and that was in gold, ai 
 with an Army aud Navy of less numbers thai 
 have been deemed necessary for the security 
 the public peace during the past three years. Tal 
 ing the difference in the amount of force and thj 
 fact that the expenditures of Mr. Buchanan's ac 
 ministration were in coin and the present exper 
 diture in paper, it will be seen that the resul 
 shows strongly in favor of the economy of Arm] 
 expenses as administered by -eneral Granj 
 The Army to-day in fact costs much less 
 regiment in paper than it cost per regiment 
 gold under the last Democratic Administrate 
 So much for Governor Seymour's figures. 
 
 Bacon & Company, Printers, San Francisco.