the nation. The nation commonly does not attend, but if by gigantic blunders you make it attend, it will remember it and turn you out when its time comes; it will show you that your power is short, and so on the instant weaken that power; it will make your present life in office unbearable and uncomfortable by the hundred modes in which a free people can, without ceasing, act upon the rulers which it elected yesterday, and will have to reject or reelect tomorrow.
In finance the most striking effect in America has, on the first view of it, certainly been good. It has enabled the Government to obtain and to keep a vast surplus of revenue over expenditure. Even before the Civil War it did this—from 1837 to 1857 . Mr. Wells tells us that, strange as it may seem, “there was not a single year in which the unexpended balance in the National Treasury—derived from various sources—at the end of the year, was not in excess of the total expenditure of the preceding year; while in not a few years the unexpended balance was absolutely greater than the sum of the entire expenditure of the twelve months preceding.” But this history before the war is nothing to what has happened since. The following are the surpluses of revenue over expenditure since the end of the Civil War:—