Page:Henry Adams' History of the United States Vol. 1.djvu/249

238 reduced to three ministers; the army is undergoing a chaste reformation; the navy will be reduced to the legal establishment by the last of this month; agencies in every department will be revised; we shall push you to the utmost in economizing."

His followers were not altogether pleased with his moderation of tone. They had expected a change of system more revolutionary than was implied by a pledge to do away with the President's occasional receptions and his annual speech to Congress, to cut off three second-rate foreign missions, to chasten the army, and to execute a Federalist law about the navy, or even to revise agencies. John Randolph wrote, July 18, to his friend Joseph Nicholson, a member from Maryland: "In this quarter we think that the great work is only begun, and that without a substantial reform we shall have little reason to congratulate ourselves on the mere change of men."

The task of devising what Randolph called a substantial reform fell almost wholly upon Gallatin, who arrived in Washington, May 13, and set himself to the labor of reducing to a system the theories with which he had indoctrinated his party. Through the summer and autumn he toiled upon this problem, which the President left in his hands. When October arrived, and the whole Cabinet assembled at length in Washington, under the President's eye, to prepare business for the coming session, Gallatin produced his scheme. First he required common consent to