Bainbridge’s report of his capture, which had happened at the end of October, 1803, was sent to Congress March 20, 1804, in the last week of the session. The President sent with it a brief Message recommending Congress to increase the force and enlarge expenses in the Mediterranean. As Gallatin never willingly allowed his own plans for the public service to be deranged, Congress adopted a new means for meeting the new expense. Although the Treasury held a balance of $1,700,000, Gallatin would not trench upon this fund, but told Randolph, who was Chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, that the specie in the Treasury could not be safely reduced below that amount.[91] He informed Joseph Nicholson that $150,000 was the utmost sum he could spare. The sum wanted was $750,000 per annum. A Bill was introduced which imposed an additional duty of 2½ per cent on all imports that paid duty _ad valorem_. These imports had been divided, for purposes of revenue, into three classes, taxed respectively 12½, 15, and 20 per cent; the increase raised them to 15, 17½, and 22½ per cent. The average _ad valorem_ duty was before about 13½; the additional tax raised it above 16 per cent; and the Republicans preferred this method of raising money as in every way better than the system of internal taxation. After imposing the additional duty of 2½ per cent,--a duty intended to produce about $750,000,--the Bill made of it a separate Treasury account, to be called the “Mediterranean Fund,” which was to last only as long as the Mediterranean war should last, when the 2½ per cent duty was to cease three months after a general peace. The Mediterranean Fund was meant as a protest against loose expenditure,--a dike against the impending flood of extravagance. The Mediterranean war was the first failure of President Jefferson’s theory of foreign relations, and the Mediterranean Fund was the measure of the error in financial form. No reproach henceforward roused more ill temper among Republicans than the common charge that their elaborate financial precautions and formalities were a deception, and that the Mediterranean Fund was meant to conceal a change of principle and a return to Federalist practices. Even in the first words of the debate, Roger Griswold told them that their plausible special fund was “perfectly deceptive,” and amounted to nothing. John Randolph retaliated by declaring that the Republican government consisted of men who never drew a cent from the people except when necessity compelled it; and Griswold could not assert, though he might even then foresee, that for ten years to come, Randolph would denounce the extravagance and waste of the men whom he thus described.