You will perhaps have been alarmed, as some have been, at the proposition to abolish the whole of the internal taxes.  But it is perfectly safe.  They are under a million of dollars, and we can economize the government two or three millions a year.  The impost alone gives us ten or eleven millions annually, increasing at a compound ratio of six and two thirds per cent, per annum, and consequently doubling in ten years.  But leaving that increase for contingencies, the present amount will support the government, pay the interest of the public debt, and discharge the principal in fifteen years.  If the increase proceeds, and no contingencies demand it, it will pay off the principal in a shorter time.  Exactly one half of the public debt, to wit, thirty-seven millions of dollars, is owned in the United States.  That capital then will be set afloat, to be employed in rescuing our commerce from the hands of foreigners, or in agriculture, canals, bridges, or other useful enterprises.  By suppressing at once the whole internal taxes, we abolish three fourths of the offices now existing, and spread over the land.  Seeing the interest you take in the public affairs, I have indulged myself in observations flowing from a sincere and ardent desire of seeing our affairs put into an honest and advantageous train.  Accept assurances of my constant and affectionate esteem and high respect.

Th:  Jefferson.

LETTER CCXCIV.—­TO ALBERT GALLATIN, April 1,1802

TO ALBERT GALLATIN.

Washington, April 1,1802.

Dear Sir,

I have read and considered your report on the operations of the sinking fund, and entirely approve of it, as the best plan on which we can set out.  I think it an object of great importance, to be kept in view and to be undertaken at a fit season, to simplify our system of finance, and bring it within the comprehension of every member of Congress.  Hamilton set out on a different plan.  In order that he might have the entire government of his machine, he determined so to complicate it as that neither the President nor Congress should be able to understand it, or to control him.  He succeeded in doing this, not only beyond their reach, but so that he at length could not unravel it himself.  He gave to the debt, in the first instance, in funding it, the most artificial and mysterious form he could devise.  He then moulded up his appropriations of a number of scraps and remnants, many of which were nothing at all, and applied them to different objects in reversion and remainder, until the whole system was involved in impenetrable fog; and while he was giving himself the airs of providing for the payment of the debt, he left himself free to add to it continually, as he did in fact, instead of paying it.  I like your idea of kneading all his little scraps and fragments into one batch, and adding to it a complementary sum, which, while it forms it into a single mass from which every thing is to be paid, will enable us, should a breach of appropriation ever be charged on us, to prove that the sum appropriated, and more, has been applied to its specific object.