[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.