making the present outstanding public debt, exclusive of Treasury notes,
$35,155,977.66. There was on the 1st of July, 1858, of Treasury notes
issued by authority of the act of December 23, 1857, unredeemed, the sum
of $19,754,800, making the amount of actual indebtedness at that date
$54,910,777.66. To this will be added $10,000,000 during the present
fiscal year, this being the remaining half of the loan of $20,000,000
not yet negotiated.

The rapid increase of the public debt and the necessity which exists
for a modification of the tariff to meet even the ordinary expenses of
the Government ought to admonish us all, in our respective spheres of
duty, to the practice of rigid economy. The objects of expenditure
should be limited in number, as far as this may be practicable, and the
appropriations necessary to carry them into effect ought to be disbursed
under the strictest accountability. Enlightened economy does not
consist in the refusal to appropriate money for constitutional purposes
essential to the defense, progress, and prosperity of the Republic, but
in taking care that none of this money shall be wasted by mismanagement
in its application to the objects designated by law.

Comparisons between the annual expenditure at the present time and what
it was ten or twenty years ago are altogether fallacious. The rapid
increase of our country in extent and population renders a corresponding
increase of expenditure to some extent unavoidable. This is constantly
creating new objects of expenditure and augmenting the amount required
for the old. The true questions, then, are, Have these objects been
unnecessarily multiplied, or has the amount expended upon any or all
of them been larger than comports with due economy? In accordance with
these principles, the heads of the different Executive Departments of
the Government have been instructed to reduce their estimates for the