Page:Henry Adams' History of the United States Vol. 1.djvu/285

272 Neither in the Senate nor in the House did Gallatin's financial schemes meet with serious question; they were accepted without change, and embodied in legislation evidently the work of the secretary's own hand. So cautious was Gallatin, that notwithstanding the assertions of the President's Message, he would not make himself responsible for the repeal of internal taxes, but left his colleagues of the War and Navy to pledge themselves to John Randolph for economies to the amount of $600,000, which the event proved to be not wholly practicable. Dearborn and Robert Smith in good faith gave to Randolph the required pledges, and Congress gladly acted upon them. The internal taxes were swept away, and with them one half the government patronage; while a sinking fund was organized, by means of which the public debt, amounting to a nominal capital of about $80,000,000, was to be paid off in sixteen years.

This financial legislation was the sum of what was accomplished by Congress toward positive reform. The whole of Jefferson's theory of internal politics, so far as it was embodied in law, rested in the Act making an annual appropriation of $7,300,000 for paying interest and capital of the public debt; and in the Act for repealing the internal taxes. In these two measures must be sought the foundation for his system of politics abroad and at home, as this system has been described; for his policy flowed in a necessary channel as soon as these measures were adopted.