Next in importance to the maintenance of the Constitution and the Union
is the duty of preserving the Government free from the taint or even
the suspicion of corruption. Public virtue is the vital spirit of
republics, and history proves that when this has decayed and the love
of money has usurped its place, although the forms of free government
may remain for a season, the substance has departed forever.

Our present financial condition is without a parallel in history. No
nation has ever before been embarrassed from too large a surplus in its
treasury. This almost necessarily gives birth to extravagant
legislation. It produces wild schemes of expenditure and begets a race
of speculators and jobbers, whose ingenuity is exerted in contriving
and promoting expedients to obtain public money. The purity of official
agents, whether rightfully or wrongfully, is suspected, and the
character of the government suffers in the estimation of the people.
This is in itself a very great evil.

The natural mode of relief from this embarrassment is to appropriate
the surplus in the Treasury to great national objects for which a clear
warrant can be found in the Constitution. Among these I might mention
the extinguishment of the public debt, a reasonable increase of the
Navy, which is at present inadequate to the protection of our vast
tonnage afloat, now greater than that of any other nation, as well as
to the defense of our extended seacoast.

It is beyond all question the true principle that no more revenue ought
to be collected from the people than the amount necessary to defray the
expenses of a wise, economical, and efficient administration of the
Government. To reach this point it was necessary to resort to a
modification of the tariff, and this has, I trust, been accomplished in