applied to the redemption of debt. Eventually, it might be expedient to appropriate the entire produce of particular taxes to this purpose; since there would be more assurance that the liquidation would be persisted in, if the fund destined to it were kept apart, and not blended with the general revenues of the state. The succession duties would be peculiarly suited to such a purpose, since taxes paid as they are, out of capital, would be better employed in reimbursing capital than in defraying current expenditure. If this separate appropriation were made, any surplus afterward arising from the increasing produce of the other taxes, and from the saving of interest on the successive portions of debt paid off, might form a ground for a remission of taxation.
The relative amount of the United States public debt may be seen, by Chart No. XXII, from an early date down to 1880. Since the war, the surplus revenue of the United States has been constantly appropriated for the payment of the public debt incurred during the late war, until, what with the reduction of debt and the fall in the interest charge, our income is now so much greater than expenditure that we are (1884) actually in difficulties owing to the surplus. To the present time the Treasury has been able to use its excess of receipts in redeeming matured debt; but the rapidity of the payment has been such that in two years or more no matured debt will exist to be redeemed: $250,000,000 of 4-½ per cent bonds remain, but they do not fall due until 1891; and the 4 per cent bonds to the amount of $737,620,700 do not mature until 1907. Having once raised a large revenue under war pressure, it seems very difficult for people to understand now why heavy duties were originally levied, and the extraordinary suggestion is often made that the surplus should remain, and new channels of expenditure should