Unfortunately Gallatin had carelessly said, in his annual report of November, that a revenue of nine millions would, with the aid of loans, answer the purposes of war; while his letter of January 10 required, as was proper, that the interest of each new loan should be added annually to the nine millions. The difference amounted to $600,000 for the first year alone, and in each successive year increased taxation by at least an equal sum. Gallatin himself was in a defiant mood, as he well might be, since he saw Congress in a position where it must either submit or take the responsibility of bankrupting the Treasury; and he did not content himself with demanding unpopular taxes, but read Congress a lecture on its own conduct that had made these taxes necessary. He recalled his promise of 1808 that “no internal taxes, either direct or indirect, were contemplated even in the case of hostilities carried on against the two great belligerent powers;” and he showed that since 1808 Congress had thrown away his actual or expected balance of twenty millions, had refused to accept twenty millions that might have been obtained from the Bank, and had thus made internal taxes necessary, while making loans more difficult to obtain even on harder terms. The sting of this reproof came at the end of the secretary’s letter, where he named the objects of internal taxation. These were spirits, refined sugar, licenses to retailers, auctions, stamps, and carriages for conveyance of persons. Here was the whole armory of Federalism, that had once already roused rebellion, and after causing the grievances which brought the Republicans into power, appeared again threatening to ruin them as it had ruined their predecessors. Standing army of thirty-five thousand men, loans, protective duties, stamps, tax on distillation,--nothing but a Sedition Law was wanting; and the previous question, as a means of suppressing discussion, was not an unfair equivalent for the Sedition Law. Gallatin’s letter caused no little excitement in the House. Congress recoiled, and for more than a month left the subject untouched. The chance that England might still give way, or that something might at the last prevent actual war, made every member anxious to avoid committing himself on matters of taxation. The number of representatives who favored war was supposed not to exceed forty or fifty in a House of one hundred and forty-one,--as many more would vote for war only in case they must; but the war men and the peace men united in private to fall upon Gallatin,--the first, because he had chilled the national spirit by saying that taxes must be laid; the last, because he had not said it earlier, and had not chilled the national spirit once for all.