While from the incompetency of the administration the country was fast approaching the real crisis of open war, the Republicans in Congress were deliberately destroying and undermining the basis of national credit, by which alone it could be carried on. In February the United States Bank, by which, and its branches, the customs were collected throughout the country, was destroyed by the refusal of Congress to renew its charter. Mr. Gallatin in his combinations never contemplated such a contingency as the total destruction of the fiscal agency on which the government had relied for twenty years. Unwilling to struggle longer against the mean personalities and factious opposition of his own party in Congress, he tendered his resignation to Mr. Madison. But the Republican party was a party of opposition, not of government. With the exception of Mr. Gallatin, no competent administrative head had as yet appeared. There was no one in the party or out of it to take his place. Mr. Madison knew it. Mr. Gallatin felt it, and remained. Congress met in November. On the 25th Mr. Gallatin sent in his annual report; the receipts reached thirteen and a half million dollars. The budget for 1812 left a deficiency to be provided for of $1,200,000. This was a small matter. The revenue Mr. Gallatin proposed to increase, on the plan before recommended, by additions of fifty per cent, to the imposts on foreign commerce. This he preferred to any internal tax. At the close of the year the country, chafed beyond endurance by the indignities put upon it and the sufferings it encountered without compensation to its pride, was eager for war. Congress was no way loath to try the dangerous path out of its labyrinth of blunders. The near contingency imposed the necessity of an immediate examination of the sources of revenue. In January, 1812, Mr. Gallatin was requested by the chairman of the Committee of Ways and Means to give his opinion as to the probable amount of receipts from duties on tonnage and merchandise in the event of war. This, in view of the vigorous restrictions laid by France under her continental system of exclusion, Mr. Gallatin estimated under existing rules as not to exceed $2,500,000. He then stated, without hesitation, that it was practicable and advisable to double the rate of duties, and to renew the old duty on salt. The sum acquired, with this addition, he anticipated, would amount to $5,400,000.