Page:Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs (Volume One).djvu/349

Rh My successor was Joseph J. Lewis, a country lawyer from Pennsylvania. He had written a biography of Mr. Lincoln, and he had been the President’s choice at the outset. When I resigned, the President had his way. Whether Mr. Chase presented any other person I cannot say. Mr. Lewis had no idea of the work of administration. When questions were submitted to the office, he proceeded to prepare an answer which he wrote with a quill pen with his own hand. At the beginning he sent off his answers without the knowledge of the chiefs of division, and in some instances a newspaper report was the first information that the subordinates obtained that a decision had been made. In some instances he passed upon old questions, without any inquiry or examination, until it was discovered that the head of a division was ruling one way and Mr. Lewis was ruling another way at the same time.

When I left the office in March, 1863, Mr. Chase said to me that it exceeded in magnitude the entire Treasury Department, March 1861. It was in fact the largest Government department ever organized in historical times, and it was organized without a precedent. By its machinery, it became finally so vast, that three hundred and fifty million dollars were assessed and collected in a single year. In the thirty-eight years of its existence, the gross collections have amounted to $5,524,363,255.89. It has existed eight and thirty years with no other changes than such as have been required by the change of laws. The frame work, including the system of bookkeeping with its checks and tests, remains.

When I entered upon the work in July, I examined the records of the Excise Bureau established during the War of 1812, but they furnished no aid whatever in the execution of the work that was before me. I had neither time nor opportunity to study the excise system of Great Britain; and