[Sidenote:  Expenses diminished.]

[Sidenote:  Internal taxes repealed.]

[Sidenote:  Army and navy reduced.]

[Sidenote:  Part of the debt paid. McMaster, 217-218.]

240.  Paying the National Debt.—­Jefferson was especially anxious to cut down the expenses of the government and to pay as much as possible of the national debt.  Madison and Gallatin worked heartily with him to carry out this policy.  The repeal of the Internal Revenue Act took much revenue from the government.  But it also did away with the salaries of a great many officials.  The repeal of the Judiciary Act also put an end to many salaries.  Now that the dispute with France was ended, Jefferson thought that the army and navy might safely be reduced.  Most of the naval vessels were sold.  A few good ships were kept at sea, and the rest were tied up at the wharves.  The number of ministers to European states was reduced to the lowest possible limit, and the civil service at home was also cut down.  The expenses of the government were in these ways greatly lessened.  At the same time the revenue from the customs service increased.  The result was that in the eight years of Jefferson’s administrations the national debt shrank from eighty-three million dollars to forty-five million dollars.  Yet in the same time the United States paid fifteen million dollars for Louisiana, and waged a series of successful and costly wars with the pirates of the northern coast of Africa.

[Sidenote:  The Spaniards in Louisiana and Florida. McMaster, 218-219.]

[Sidenote:  France secures Louisiana.]

241.  Louisiana again a French Colony.—­Spanish territory now bounded the United States on the south and the west.  The Spaniards were not good neighbors, because it was very hard to make them come to an agreement, and next to impossible to make them keep an agreement when it was made.  But this did not matter very much, because Spain was a weak power and was growing weaker every year.  Sooner or later the United States would gain its point.  Suddenly, however, it was announced that France had got back Louisiana.  And almost at the same moment the Spanish governor of Louisiana said that Americans could no longer deposit their goods at New Orleans (p. 170).  At once there was a great outcry in the West.  Jefferson determined to buy from France New Orleans and the land eastward from the mouth of the Mississippi.

[Illustration:  JACKSON SQUARE, NEW ORLEANS.]

[Illustration:  ROBERT R. LIVINGSTON.]

[Sidenote:  Napoleon’s policy.]

[Sidenote:  He offers to sell Louisiana.]