Mr. Gallatin's report of December 16, 1808, closed the record of his eight years of management of the Department. In the second term of Jefferson's administration, 1805-1808, the gross amount of imports had risen to $443,990,000, and the customs collected to nearly $60,000,000. In the entire eight years, 1800-1808, the gross amount of importations was $781,000,000, and the customs yielded $105,000,000. The entire expenses of the government in the same period, including $65,000,000 of debt, had been liquidated from customs alone. The specie in the Treasury on September 20, 1808, reached nearly $14,000,000. Mr. Jefferson knew of the amount in the Treasury when he wrote his last message, November 8, 1808, and he could not have been ignorant of Mr. Gallatin's warning of the previous year that a continuance of the embargo restriction would reduce the revenue below the point of annual expenditures and require an additional impost; yet he had the ignorance or the presumption to say in his message, "Shall it (the surplus revenue) lie unproductive in the public vaults? Shall the revenue be reduced? or shall it not rather be appropriated to the improvement of roads, canals, rivers, education, and other great foundations of prosperity and union under the powers which Congress may already possess or such amendments of the Constitution as may be approved by the States? While uncertain of the course of things, the time may be advantageously employed in obtaining the powers necessary for a system of improvement, should it be thought best." In these words Jefferson surrendered the vital principle of the Republican party. In his satisfaction at the only triumph of his administration, the management of the finances and the purchase of a province without a ripple on the even surface of national finance, he gave up the very basis of the Republican theory, the reduction of the government to its possible minimum, and actually proposed a system of administration coextensive with the national domain, an increase of the functions of government, and consequently of executive power. The annual report of the Treasury, presented December 16, 1808, showed no diminution of resources. The total receipts for the fiscal year were nearly eighteen millions. The total receipts for-- Customs reached $26,126,648 On which debentures were allowed on exportations 10,059,457 ----------- Actual receipts from customs $16,067,191 But this source of revenue was now definitively closed by the embargo, while the expenditures of the government were increased. Mr. Gallatin met the situation frankly and notified Congress of the resources of the Treasury. RESOURCES FOR 1809 Cash in Treasury $13,846,717.52 Back customs, net 2,154,000.00 -------------- Total resources $16,000,717.52