Neither diversity of sentiment nor even mutual recriminations upon a
point in respect to which the public mind is so justly sensitive can
well be entirely avoided, and least so at periods of great political
excitement. An intelligent people, however, seldom fail to arrive in the
end at correct conclusions in such a matter. Practical economy in the
management of public affairs can have no adverse influence to contend
with more powerful than a large surplus revenue, and the unusually
large appropriations for 1837 may without doubt, independently of the
extraordinary requisitions for the public service growing out of the
state of our Indian relations, be in no inconsiderable degree traced
to this source. The sudden and rapid distribution of the large surplus
then in the Treasury and the equally sudden and unprecedentedly severe
revulsion in the commerce and business of the country, pointing with
unerring certainty to a great and protracted reduction of the revenue,
strengthened the propriety of the earliest practicable reduction of the
public expenditures.
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