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Subject Area: Economics
Subject Area: Political Theory

GALLATIN TO JEFFERSON. - Albert Gallatin, The Writings of Albert Gallatin, vol. 1 [1879]

Edition used:

The Writings of Albert Gallatin, ed. Henry Adams (Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott, 1879). 3 vols.

Part of: The Writings of Albert Gallatin, 3 vols.

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GALLATIN TO JEFFERSON.

Treasury Department, June 12, 1801

Sir,—

The complaints for want of stamps are certainly well grounded, yet difficult to remedy, at least by this Department. The fault has been in the original postponement of stamping, which has delayed every subsequent operation. They stamp here now at the rate of near twenty thousand impressions per day, but the distribution is slow. The stamps are sent from the Commissioner to the several supervisors, from each supervisor to the several inspectors in his district, from each inspector to the several collectors in his survey, from each collector to the storekeepers who may choose to purchase, and from them at last it is distributed to the consumers. The radical defect of our internal revenue system, and which I feel every day, pervades this as well as every other branch of that revenue. Instead of making the collectors account to and correspond with the Treasury Department, we know nothing of them except through the channel of the inspector, nothing of the inspectors except through the supervisors, and I know nothing of either except through the Commissioner of the Revenue.

As soon as I have got rid of the arrears of current business which had accumulated before my appointment, it is my intention to prepare and submit to you a plan tending to remedy that evil, so far as it can be remedied without the assistance of the Legislature.

In the mean while I have directed the Commissioner to write to Mr. Page, collector of internal revenue in Alexandria, that if he has not a sufficient supply of stamps, he may obtain any quantity and of any description by applying at the general office here.

What shows how much more proper it will be to open a correspondence direct with the collectors is, that Mr. Carrington, the supervisor, by his last return, dated 8th instant, states that he has in his possession by far too large a quantity of twenty-five cent stamps, and these are precisely those which are wanted by his collector in Alexandria. I have the honor to be, very respectfully, sir,

Your obedient servant.