Thus ended Mr. Gallatin's administration of the national finances. The hour for saving had passed. The imperious necessities of war take no heed of economic principles. The work which the secretary had done became as the rope of sand. It is not surprising that Gallatin wearied of his post; that he watched with vain regret and unavailing sighs the unavoidable increase of the national debt, and that he sought relief in other services where success was not so evanescent as in the Treasury Department. Before the close of Madison's administration, February 12, 1816, the public debt had run up to over one hundred and twenty-three millions,[15] and a sum equal to the entire amount of Mr. Gallatin's savings in two terms had been expended in one. But his work had not been in vain. The war was the crucial test of the soundness of his financial policy. The maxims which he announced, that debt can only be reduced by a surplus of revenue over expenditure, and the accompaniment of every loan by an appropriation for its extinguishment, became the fundamental principle of American finance. Mr. Gallatin was uniformly supported in it by Congress and public opinion. It was faithfully adhered to by his distinguished successors, Dallas and Crawford, and the impulse thus given continued through later administrations, until, in 1837, twenty years after the peace, the entire debt had been extinguished. All this without any other variation from Mr. Gallatin's original plan than an increase of the annual appropriation, to the sinking fund for its reimbursement, from eight to ten millions.[16]