During the session he resumed his attacks on the navy, which it was proposed to augment by building six seventy-fours. The President in his speech and the committee in their report had dwelt upon the effect of the naval force already created, in reducing the dangers of capture and the rates of insurance. Mr. Gallatin criticised this argument at some length, and then proceeded to impress the necessity of economy, fortifying himself by a statement which showed that the expense of the permanent establishment, as it now stood, exceeded the revenue by half a million dollars, to which it was proposed to add the cost of a navy. In a second and more elaborate speech, a few days later, he returned to the general question of the advantages of a navy and the unsoundness of the proposition that commerce required one for its protection, or that the commerce of any European state had in fact been protected by her ships of war. England alone had required a naval force for reasons which did not exist in the United States. Commerce depended on wealth and industry, not on a navy; the expense of a naval establishment bore with disproportionate weight on domestic industry. "We have had no navy, no protection to our commerce. During the course of the present war we have been plundered by both parties in a most shameful manner.... Yet year after year our exports and imports have increased in value." He then discussed the question of increasing the national burdens for the purpose of creating a navy. Mr. Harper had taken the ground that this increase was not to be feared; that the national means increased more rapidly than the national burdens; that we paid less taxes than other nations and could bear an increase of them. "I am not surprised," said Mr. Gallatin, "that we should at this time pay less taxes than Great Britain, Holland, and France; but paying what we do at present, if we follow their steps, as we are now proposing to do, by building a navy and increasing our debt, it cannot be doubted that before our system has been as long in existence as theirs have been we shall pay as much as they do. What do we pay now? To the general government ten millions of dollars. How much do we pay to the State governments? How much for poor-rates, county taxes, &c.? Suppose these do not exceed two millions of dollars; that will make twelve millions of dollars to be paid by four millions of white people,--about three dollars a head annually. I do not think this is a very low tax." And he closed by recurring to his favorite proposition that the effect of a navy would be merely to draw us into the political movement of Europe. "I know not," said he, "whether I have heretofore been indulging myself in a visionary dream, but I had conceived, when contemplating the situation of America, that our distance from the European world might have prevented our being involved in the mischievous politics of Europe, and that we might have