The total expenditures of the National Government for the year 1797 were $8,625,877.37, and if we deduct from this the amounts paid for interest, and payments upon the public debt, it leaves the amount of ordinary expenditure but $2,836,110.52. The ordinary expenditures of the National Government did not reach the amount expended in this State for the year 1896 until the year 1847, if we except the years 1813, 1814 and 1815, when the expenditures were abnormal by reason of the War of 1812, and if we except also the years 1837 and 1838, and in none of those excepted years did the annual ordinary expenditures very greatly exceed this State's expenditure for 1896. During the century, the State has expended for lands, construction, enlargement or permanent improvement: Of its five canals $74,347,000 00 Of its new Capitol 22,254,023 60 Of the twelve hospitals erected by it $15,204,099 59 Of its seventeen other charitable institutions 6,369,110 70 Of its forty-five armories and arsenals 3,349,543 73 Of its three State prisons 4,528,058 65 Of its twelve normal schools 1,826,350 06 -------------- Making a total expenditure for those various purposes of $127,878,186 33 =============== [Illustration: Willis E. Merriman. (signature) _2d Deputy Comptroller_ _Connected with the office 31 years_ ] Far the greater part of this money has been handled by, and drawn on the warrant of, the Comptroller, and no suspicion has ever arisen that this duty was not honestly performed. Nearly all of the sinking funds of the various bonded debts of the State have been managed by the Comptrollers, who, in these 100 years, have never been the occasion of the loss of a single dollar. Jenkins, in his political history of New York, says that the Comptroller bears the same relation to the State that the Secretary of the Treasury does to the National Government, and this is largely true. I cannot do better in closing this brief sketch of the Comptroller's office than by quoting from Thurlow Weed's autobiography. His opportunities for, and keenness of, observation make his statement of peculiar value. He says: "It seems proper to say, amid all the mutations of party, and the liability under our form of popular government to occasionally find unworthy men elevated to high places, our State has ever been singularly fortunate in its highest financial officer. We have had unfaithful men in almost every other department of the State Government. We have had, in two or three instances, comparatively weak men in the office of Comptroller, but as a rule its incumbents have been capable, firm and incorruptible." * * * * * [Transcriber's Notes: