Treasury

“ More than ever before has the Government of the United States extended its functions beyond its legitimate sphere; more than ever has the public Treasury been pressed into the service of private interests. ”

“ But the Treasury, I am aware, has its own habits, and with whatever complacence it sees its receipts increase, it feels proportional disappointment in seeing them diminished by a single farthing. It seems to be provided with those admirable valves which in the human frame allow the blood to flow in one direction, but prevent its return. ”

“ And this is the exchequer plan so far as it may operate in furnishing a currency.
I can not forego the occasion to urge its importance to the credit of the Government in a financial point of view. The great necessity of resorting to every proper and becoming expedient in order to place the Treasury on a footing of the highest respectability is entirely obvious. The credit of the Government may be regarded as the very soul of the Government itself—a principle of vitality without which all its movements are languid and all its operations embarrassed. ”

“ I can not doubt that such a treasury as was contemplated by the Constitution should be independent of all banking corporations. The money of the people should be kept in the Treasury of the people created by law, and be in the custody of agents of the people chosen by themselves according to the forms of the Constitution--agents who are directly responsible to the Government, who are under adequate bonds and oaths, and who are subject to severe punishments for any embezzlement, private use, or misapplication of the public funds, and for any failure in other respects to perform their duties. ”

“ The prosperity of twenty years is annihilated at one stroke! The sources of revenue are dried up. The Treasury, indeed, may be now full—but it must continually diminish—and, without its usual supply, it must soon be empty. We have still some credit. But how long, sir, can that be maintained, when it is known that we have no longer the means, allowing us to possess the disposition, to fulfil our pecuniary engagements? When you cannot collect a cent upon imposts, and dare not lay a direct tax, how far you will be able to obtain money on loan, is, to say the least of it, very questionable. ”

“ The Treasury has its finger in every departmental pie except the Indian one, for no Minister and no department can carry out reforms or even discharge its ordinary routine without public money, and of public money the Treasury is the vigilant and inflexible guardian. ”

“ You might, indeed, attain the same end if you could put a man into the Treasury, who has the cause of honest government and reform just as sincerely and strongly at heart, who represents the same principles of official conduct, enjoys the same popular confidence and possesses the same qualifications as Bristow. ”

“ The Treasury is the natural point of control to be occupied by any statesman who aims at organization or reform, and conversely no organization or reform is likely to succeed that does not begin with and is not guided by the Treasury. ”

“ Throughout a great part of the nineteenth century the influence of the commercial classes was strong, the government was conducted on strict business principles, and the Treasury as the representative of those principles was the keystone of the administrative arch, or to change the metaphor, the axle on which the machinery of the state revolved. ”

“ The report on this subject, page 3, states the only general convenience to be, the preventing the transportation and re-transportation of money between the States and the treasury, (for I pass over the increase of circulating medium, ascribed to it as a want, and which, according to my ideas of paper money, is clearly a demerit.) Every State will have to pay a sum of tax money into the treasury; 559 and the treasury will have to pay, in every State, a part of the interest on the public debt, and salaries to the officers of government resident in that State. ”

“ The Treasury had a balance of seven or eight millions in specie; the national credit was intact; taxes were not yet reduced; the Bank was still in active existence; various incidental resources were within reach; the first year of war would require neither increase of debt nor of taxation, and for subsequent years loans, founded on increased customs duties, would suffice. ”

“ In order to meet every demand upon the Treasury without delay or peradventure and in order to keep the Treasury strong, unquestionably strong, and strong throughout the present anxieties, I respectfully urge that an additional revenue of $100,000,000 be raised through internal taxes devised in your wisdom to meet the emergency. ”

“ And it shall be the duty of the Secretaries of War and Navy Departments, to cause any balance of moneys drawn out of the treasury, which shall remain unexpended, after the object for which the appropriation was made shall be effected, to be repaid to the treasury of the United States; and such moneys, when so repaid, shall be carried to the surplus fund. ”

“ And now I wish you to know that the previous kings of this place for many years past have held it a custom to maintain a treasury, which treasury, after the death of each, is kept locked and sealed in such a way that it cannot be seen by any one, nor opened, nor do the kings who succeed to the kingdom open them or know what is in them. ”

“ For other material modifications of the revenue laws which seem to me desirable, I refer you to the report of the Secretary of the Treasury. That report and the tables which accompany it furnish ample proofs of the solid foundation on which the financial security of the country rests and of the salutary influence of the independent-treasury system upon commerce and all monetary operations. ”

“ The Treasury Lords are slow to sanction what appeared to them to be a sacrifice of revenue, and from the frequent applications which were made to them by deputy postmasters in the early part of last century to settle accounts of long standing, or remit the arrears owing to the Government, we may imagine that their hands were full and their temper soured. ”

“ The Secretary of the Treasury had devised a plan for offering the five-twenty bonds to popular subscription through the employment of a competent and energetic general agent, who, by a system of sub-agencies, wide advertising, and other business methods, appealed to the mingled motives of patriotism and self-interest and induced the people to lend large sums of money to the Government. ”

“ When they brought their first contribution at the opening of a new month, under this new régime, observing their eyes to beam with a deep satisfaction, I said: "You have not cast into the treasury that which cost you nothing." ”

“ The operations of the Treasury during the period which has elapsed since your adjournment have been conducted with signal success. The patriotism of the people has placed at the disposal of the Government the large means demanded by the public exigencies; Much of the national loan has been taken by citizens of the industrial classes, whose confidence in their country's faith and zeal for their country's deliverance from present peril have induced them to contribute to the support of the Government the whole of their limited acquisitions. ”

“ Very little of the money raised in the several States, will go into the Continental treasury, on pretence, that it is all exhausted in providing the quotas of supplies; and the public will be without funds for the other demands of Government. The expense will be ultimately much greater, and the advantages much smaller. ”

“ And there was the British Treasury, the talisman of whose power has destroyed the efficacy of title-deeds, and converted the land and houses of the empire into paper-money and stock-debts, for the purpose of carrying on wars and performing deeds, which impartial history will justly characterize, when alas! the truth will be useless to the suffering victims! ”

“ It is true that such an agency is in many respects convenient to the Treasury, but it is not indispensable. A limitation of the expenses of the Government to its actual wants, and of the revenue to those expenses, with convenient means for its prompt application to the purposes for which it was raised, are the objects which we should seek to accomplish. ”

“ Financial measures, of various kinds, for borrowing money to supply the wants of the treasury, beyond the receipts from taxation and the sales of the public lands, have been adopted by the government since the United States became an independent nation. Subscriptions for a loan of twelve millions of dollars were, on the 4th of August, 1790, directed to be opened at the treasury, to be made payable in certificates issued for the debt according to their specie value. ”

“ The finances of our country since the commencement of the revolution up to this time, have been in a more embarrassed situation, doubtless, than any other nation ever experienced. Since the commencement of the present administration, during the first year, there was at the disposition of the Executive, or in the Treasury, but five hundred dollars in cash. ”

“ All the shelves and fittings of the treasury are of the plainest wood, and offer no inducement to anyone to take the trouble to break them down. The treasury might be sacked a dozen times, without its occurring to anyone to break down that small cupboard in the corner. ”

“ Allow me to suggest, and ask all thoughtful people to well consider, that if sufficient revenues were collected and paid into the Federal treasury to prove of great benefit to a hundred millions of people, the collection and payment of these same revenues will of necessity amount to some slight imposition and burden upon the ten millions of people when they are paid out of their resources and revenues. ”

“ The people, who are the government, give away one-half of their lands, and then pay into their treasury just money enough for the remaining half to make up the value of the lands they have given away. ”

“ The fact of a treasury surplus, the amount of which is variously stated, has directed public attention to a consideration of the methods by which the national income may best be reduced to the level of a wise and necessary expenditure. ”

“ Of the money which is brought into the treasury of any country by taxes of this last description, a part only is paid by the people of that country; the remainder by the foreign consumers of their goods. ”

“ Cash money, indeed, or the other things mentioned, having once been put in a safe place, are not taken away except when, by mandate of the king, they are sent to him to be distributed for his necessary uses. But there are many things in the repository vaults of the treasury which are carried around, and they are shut up and guarded by the treasurer and the chamberlains, as has been more fully shown above: such are the seal of the king concerning which thou dost ask, the doomsday book, the so-called exactory roll, which some name the writ of farms. ”

“ You will therefore be pleased, sir, to give me the earliest answer, which may be in your power. Should it not be expedient to allow these expences, I shall have a small balance still in my hands, which I will pay into the treasury immediately on my return—... ”

“ The payments which have been made into the Treasury show the very productive state of the public revenue. ”

“ Be that as it may, when these bills appeared in Paris, where they arrived before the letters of advice, the First Consul was applied to from the treasury, to point out what was to be done. ‘Wait for the letters of advice,’ said he, ‘in order to learn the nature of the transaction. The treasury is like a capitalist ”

“ What do you propose to do then, pray?
LYSISTRATA. You ask me that! Why, we propose to administer the treasury ourselves.
MAGISTRATE. You do?
LYSISTRATA. What is there in that to surprise you? Do we not administer the budget of household expenses?
MAGISTRATE. But that is not the same thing.
LYSISTRATA How so—not the same thing?
MAGISTRATE. It is the treasury supplies the expenses of the War.
LYSISTRATA. That's our first principle—no War! ”

“ By such measures, in my opinion, will payment be most certainly secured, not only to the army and navy, but to all honest creditors of the government, and satisfactory provision made for future demands on the treasury. ”

“ The Secretary of the Treasury is expressly required to prepare for, and maintain, the redemption of all United States notes presented at the treasury on and after that date, and for that purpose he is authorized to use all the surplus revenues, and to sell bonds of the United States bearing four, four and a half, and five per cent. ”

“ There is not a dollar in its treasury; the nation is involved from ten to fifteen millions. The precise amount of its liabilities has not been ascertained, nor does the Executive expect, deprived as he is of the means of transacting the public business, to be able to ascertain its true condition within any reasonable time. ”

“ The committee on finances, as Pauline called her mother, Hilary, and herself, held frequent meetings. "And there's always one thing," the girl would declare proudly, "the treasury is never entirely empty." ”

“ You will do well to explain this whole system to men of discernment in your legislature. My object in this branch of administration is to enable each individual man to trace the money he pays, from his own pocket into the public treasury. To this I shall add accounts of equal notoriety, by which every man who can read (being previously informed as above of the sum total of receipts) may perceive the manner in which the public treasure is expended and appropriated. A similar line of conduct will be pursued with respect to all funds which may be granted for liquidation of the national debt. ”

“ However largely employed, there ought to be “no fear of an absorption or a diminution of this treasury, first on account of the infinite merits of Christ, as has been said before, then because the more numerous are the people reclaimed through the use of its contents, the more it is augmented by the addition of their merits.”435 The treasury had therefore no chance of ever being found empty, since the more was drawn from it the more it grew. ”