citizens are paying to the state proportionally less than in the past, although they are paying more money than formerly. In any case, if it is very difficult to draw comparisons with the remote past, we can make comparisons with times less remote. And it is necessary then to recognize that for a century public expenses, national and local, have increased much more than in former centuries, on account of the increased solidarity brought about by various causes. The increased expenditures of the nineteenth century are real increases; and in some way, despite the extraordinary increase of wealth, the citizens bear burdens which continually grow heavier.

Neither changes in the value of money nor changes in the income of the people explain fully the increases which appeared during the last half of the nineteenth century. The budgets of France, England, and Russia grew larger and larger, from year to year, by tens of millions, sometimes by hundreds. Now these increases are real, for in regard to them none of the qualifying factors above described has more than a temporary influence. What causes, then, produce these increases, which occasion such deep anxiety, and often disturb the equilibrium of the best balanced budgets? The increased expenditure of the nineteenth century, and especially of the last half of it, is real and is due chiefly to:

The sta

(a) The continued growth of military expenditures. tistics collected and published with so much care by Bloch in the famous book which led the Czar to call the conference at The Hague are certainly worthy of attention. For fifty years military expenditures have risen everywhere with a rapidity almost fantastic; and the increase has been as great in democratic as in monarchical countries. Under the most liberal governments, in England, Switzerland, and Sweden, the outlay has taken the same forms as in countries ruled by absolute monarchs. In earlier times there were many more wars, but they cost much less, from such items as the purchase of arms up to the equipment of soldiers. An iron head at the end of a long stick constituted a lance; and the arms and machines of war were generally simple. Modern arms are almost always expensive; a great steel cannon often costs more than the equipments for a whole battalion of soldiers in former times. The largest fleet

possessed by Athens cost less, perhaps, than a single modern warship. And then up to the Napoleonic wars there did not exist such vast permanent armies as we have to-day. War was the profession of a small number, and military apprenticeship was consequently a simpler matter. Expenses for war were small then, although frequent; there was more fighting, but the outlay was less. In our day peace itself costs the great powers more than the greatest war of antiquity ever cost. A modern war costs five or six billions, often more; and if wars do not often occur in Europe, it is because we now stop to think of the immense loss of men and treasure that would be occasioned thereby.

(b) Great public works. It is only from about the middle of the nineteenth century that the use of steam and electricity as motor forces and the introduction of the electric telegraph upon a large scale occasioned a large increase of public expenditure. The world has never seen another transformation which could compare even remotely with that produced by steam and electricity. In this way, despite the enormous development of wealth in certain countries, the rate of interest has been kept up to a high point by reason of the demand for capital in the construction of public works, in addition to the demand in private industry which has continually assumed new and varied forms. In many countries the governments have constructed, upon their own account, in addition to public highways, which were rare almost everywhere at the beginning of the nineteenth century, tens of thousands of kilometers of railways and hundreds of thousands of kilometers of telegraph.

(c) The growth of public debts. It is true that countries contract debts because they have expenses which they wish to make; but it is equally true that they could not make many expenditures if they could not borrow. And how the debts of the various countries have grown! In 1800 the nominal capital of the French debt was 713,000,000 francs; in 1891 it was 30,170,000000, and in 1897 it was 31,093,000,000. In Italy the interest on the recorded debt at the time the kingdom was unified was II1,000,000 lire; the interest paid in the fiscal year 1897 was 556,000,000 lire. There is no country which does not resort largely, and even excessively, to borrowing. It would seem. that, among the great states of Europe, England alone offers a

fortunate exception. She enjoys extraordinarily favorable natural conditions, and could, without difficulty, devote a part of her revenues to extinguishing old debts, rather than contract new ones. But even she, on account of her new policy, is resorting in large measure to loans.

(d) The development of all forms of social prevention. — These have increased the economic activity of the state. Formerly the state directed its action to repressing rather than preventing the most serious social ills that afflict society. To-day not only the social conditions have changed, but also the development of science leads us to adopt a different course. When activity was confined to healing or diminishing the evil, it was possible to rely upon individual effort; hospitals, charitable institutions, and asylums, created to cure or lessen the suffering which attracted attention and enlisted sympathy, could be created by individual initiative. But we do not ordinarily resort to individual effort when we adopt preventive methods. Thus hygienic or sanitary regulations, designed to prevent the evils, can only be undertaken by governments, central or local. General voluntary preventive action requires too great an educational and moral development ever to be wholly effectual.

(e) The increasing participation of all the people in public affairs. Thanks to this, both national and local authorities have had to assume the burden of undertakings which formerly were not considered of general utility, or, at any rate, were neglected. It is true that the increase of public expenses has sometimes been more apparent in countries with absolute governments than among those with liberal institutions; but it cannot be denied that the latter have often led the way. Government of the nation by the nation, as de Rémusat remarked in 1832 in the French chamber of deputies, is not often economical government. An absolute government has frequently cost the people less, and, in order to maintain itself, has been known to reduce taxes even to the neglect of the public service. To-day, when the control of the government rests with the people and the expenses of sovereigns are separated from the public expenditures and form a separate item in the budget, people do not look upon taxation as a loss; in greatest part expenditures are truly public expenditures, since they are made

in the public interest. Under the constitutional governments which have succeeded the older absolute forms, it is not possible to consider the administration as an enemy, taxation as a scourge, and money paid to the state as money lost. . . . From any point of view it cannot be denied that, by having a share in public affairs, the masses of the people create expenses which formerly did not exist or existed on a very limited scale, such as expenses for compulsory public education, for the public health and social prevention, compulsory insurance, and the like, which did not previously exist. . . .

These then are the causes, the new conditions, which have brought about for a century a real increase of public expenditures.

10. The Growth of Federal Expenditures in the United States. — The facts concerning national expenditures in this country have been ascertained to be as follows: 1

For the purposes of this article it will be desirable to exclude all the disbursements of the Post Office Department except the deficits paid out of the federal treasury, since the expenses defrayed from the ordinary postal revenues constitute no burden upon the taxpayers.2 Then, for different reasons, we shall exclude all payments upon the principal of the public debt. These, of course, are a burden upon the taxpayers, but they show great variation from year to year according to the condition of the federal finances; and would have the effect, if they were included, of vitiating the comparisons that we shall attempt to make of the costs of running the federal government at various dates. By excluding this item the statistics for different years will be made strictly comparable, and this advantage is so great as to justify the omission, important as it is.

It is important first of all to secure a general view of the growth of expenditures since the formation of the national government. The following table begins with the year 1792

1 The Growth of Federal Expenditures, by C. J. Bullock. Reprinted from the Political Science Quarterly, XVIII., pp. 97–11I.

2 Thus for the fiscal year 1900 we shall state the expenditures at $487,713,000, which includes the postal deficit. If the expenses defrayed out of departmental revenue were included, the total would reach $590,068,000.

because the official reports do not present separately the figures for 1789, 1790, and 1791:

EXPENDITURES OF THE UNITED STATES 1

Even a cursory examination of these figures shows that the history of federal expenditures may be divided into five periods. The first of these extended from 1789 to 1811, and reflects the conditions that existed during the formative period of national finance. The ordinary expenditures steadily increased during the twelve years of Federalist rule, and culminated in 1800; after which the economies inaugurated under the Democratic régime resulted in a somewhat smaller outlay. In a similar

1 These figures are taken from the Report of the Secretary of the Treasury for the year 1901, pp. 131 and 133. They include the expenditures stated in the first and third columns of each page. They will be found to differ slightly from the statistics given on p. 113 of the same Report. For 1870, 1880, and 1890 the differences are due to the fact that our table excludes the item of " premiums" on debt. For 1840 and 1860 the differences are so slight as to be immaterial. For 1850 there is a difference of $1,404,000 which is not readily explained.

2 The figures in the parenthesis show the per capita expenditures in specie. Interest payments were always made in gold, but the ordinary expenses are stated in currency values. Accordingly, I have reduced the latter to terms of gold before calculating the per capita outlay. For the fiscal year 1870 the greenbacks were worth 81 per cent of their face value.

3 Yet in 1809 the ordinary expenditures rose to $7,414,000 on account of unusual outlays upon the army and navy.