The reckless expenditure of public money in the United States has not been confined to any particular political division nor to any particular geographical section. The national, State, and municipal governments have seemed to vie with one another in the plunder of the taxpayer. From the North, the South, the East, and the West have come the same complaints of excessive burdens.[B] But figures are needed to give these statements the vividness of reality. Beginning with national expenditures, Mr. Roberts says that during the decade from 1820 to 1830 they were $1.07 per capita; from 1851 to 1861, they were $2.06; and for the year 1894, $6.08. “In a word,” he adds, “the per capita expense of the national Government in 1894 was nearly six times as great as it was in 1820, and nearly three times as great as it was in the decade before our great civil war.” The per capita expenditures of the State of New York in 1830 were $1.30, thirty years later they were $1.89, in 1890 they were $2.15, and “in 1897 the estimated per capita expenditure reached the alarming amount of $4.95.” That is to say, the combined expenditures of the State and national governments gave a rate as high as that prevailing in France before the outbreak of the Revolution. “The tendency to increase,” says Mr. Roberts, commenting on these figures, “is a persistent one. In 1881 the amount expended by the State was $9,878,214.59; in 1884, $10,479,517.31; in 1887, $14,301,102.48; in 1890, $13,076,881.86; in 1893, $17,367,335.98; and in 1896, $20,020,022.47.” Coming to municipal expenditures, where the hand of the prodigal has been most lavish, Mr. Roberts says that “between 1860 and 1880 the municipal debts of our Union increased from $100,000,000 to $682,000,000, and in fifteen cities, believed to represent the average, the increase in taxation was 362.2 per cent, while the increase in taxable valuation was but 156.9 per cent, and of population but 70 per cent. In the year 1860 the direct taxes for State, county, town, and city purposes in New York were $4.90 per capita, in 1880 it was $8.20, and in 1896 it had reached $10.43, an increase in thirty-six years of 213 per cent.” It should be added that the bonded debt--State, county, city, town, village, and school district--in the State is estimated by Mr. Roberts to be $450,000,000. Is it any wonder that people so mercilessly plundered feel that the times are out of joint? Is it any wonder, either, that in 1896 Mr. Roberts was moved to say that, without the discovery of new sources of revenue, “a low tax rate would never again be enjoyed in this State”? Is it any wonder, finally, that he declared again that if “we have not yet passed the danger limit of taxation,” we have reached “a point where there is a deep feeling of unrest and dissatisfaction, and where a halt should be called or there will be danger”?