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appeared to many members unreasonable in our opposition to measures of expenditure, but the House has generally shown an unwavering purpose to follow the line of genuine economy in its management of public affairs. In this connection I may state (and I do so in no disparaging or invidious spirit) that almost every bill sent from this House to the Senate has come back to us larger in the amount of the appropriation than when it left us; and in almost every instance, the bills that have come back to the House from a conference committee have come back with smaller amounts of appropriation than when they were sent to the committee. No conference committee on any of the appropriation bills has enlarged the bill in its charge; but, on the contrary, nearly all such committees have decreased the appropriations. I shall watch with deep interest the financial history of the next fiscal year, with some apprehension that in some places we have cut too deeply. But I shall confidently expect to see the expenditures kept within the aggregate of the permanent and annual appropriation bills.

On the 29th of July, 1876, the House being in the Committee on the State of the Union, Mr. Garfield said:

IN the year 1872, soon after I became chairman of the Committee on Appropriations, I made an analysis of the expenditures of the government from the official records of the Treasury Department, with a view to classifying them in such a manner as to make the various kinds of expenditures easily understood. I divided all the expenditures, exclusive of payments on the principal of the public debt, into three groups. The first embraced all those expenditures that grew directly out of the war. It did not include the very large incidental expenses of the war, such as the increase of the clerical force in nearly all of the departments, but included only those items as to which there could be no doubt that they were occasioned directly by the war itself. The second group consisted of expenditures for the army and navy in time of peace, but did not include those civil expenditures under the control of the War Department for rivers and harbors, and similar public works. The third group consisted of the expenditures for the civil service proper.

This analysis was continued year by year down to and including 1874. It was continued at the present session by the gentleman from Maine. And now that the fiscal year ending June 30, 1876, is closed, I have obtained from the Treasury Department a similar analysis for that year, and present it in the following table, which also includes the four years 1873, 1874, 1875, and 1876; being the four years for which appropriations were made when I was chairman of the Committee on Appropriations.

It will be remembered that near the close of the last session of the Forty-third Congress I reviewed the appropriations and expenditures up to that time, and expressed the opinion that. the work of the four years would show a reduction of at least $30,000,000 in the expenditures of the government during that period. But the value of any speculative opinion can be tested only by time; and the following table speaks for itself.

[He then presented a comparative statement of expenditures for the years ending June 30, 1873, 1874, 1875, and 1876. His analysis was even more minute than the analyses found in the preceding speeches. These are the total expenditures by years:

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From this official exhibit it will be seen that the expenditures, under the first group, that have grown directly out of the war, have been reduced from $157,250,000 to a little less than $141,000,000; for the army and navy proper, from near $54,000,000 to a little more than $47,200,000; for the civil service proper, from $79,000,000 to $70,321,733; and that the aggregate reduction of expenditures during that period of four years is nearly $32,000,000. It will be seen that 54% per cent of all the expenditures for the fiscal year ending June 30, 1876, grew directly out of the war.

1 Mr. Hale.

When the current fiscal year shall have ended and a similar analysis is made, we can judge precisely the merit of the work of this session. I shall not stint any just praise due to this House for whatever good work it has accomplished in that direction. But much the largest share of reductions that have been made in the bills already passed, and those yet to be acted upon by the House, have been postponements of necessary appropriations, and not an actual mustering out of expenditures. I make this statement for the purpose of doing justice to the work heretofore done, and also of laying the foundation of a just estimate of the appropriations of the present session.

EFFECTS OF THE REBELLION ON SOUTH

ERN LIFE INSURANCE CONTRACTS.

ARGUMENT MADE BEFORE THE SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES IN THE CASE OF W. E. TATE ET AL., HEIRS OF SAMUEL BOND, v. THE NEW YORK LIFE INSURANCE COMPANY ET AL.

MARCH 17, 1874.

THE principal facts in this case can be inferred from Mr. Garfield's argument. As the court were equally divided in their opinions, no decision was reached, and hence no trace of the case appears in the reports. The effect was to confirm the decision of the court below.

M

AY IT PLEASE THE COURT, - The facts in this case have been so fully and clearly stated by the distinguished counsel on the other side, that I need not state them at length; but I deem it important that, as two cases are being considered together, it should be clearly understood in what respects they differ as to the facts. There are several important points of difference between the two cases.

In case No. 228,1 the assured survived the war, and tendered to the company payment of his back premiums after the war was over. In the case now before your Honors, the assured did not survive the war, but died while it was in progress, and there was no tender of payment of premium after the conclusion of the war. In case 228 it is alleged that the executors of the assured had equitable claims, growing out of a surrender of a former policy, to the amount of eight or nine hundred dollars, which should be considered as a paid-up policy for that amount. In this case there is only one policy, and the annual premiums

1 The case of The Mutual Life Insurance Co. of New York v. Peter Hamilton, Executor of D. W. Goodman.

which had been paid to keep it alive, to be considered. In the other case there were dividends due, alleged to be sufficient in amount to cover the premium of 1861. That, I believe, was denied; but it was set forth in the record, and counsel insisted that it was the duty of the company to credit Goodman with dividends sufficient in amount to cover the payment of premiums during the war. In this case no dividends were due. There was an express stipulation in the charter of the New York Life Insurance Company that, when the accumulation of surplus should reach $500,000, and not till then, dividends should be declared by the company. It did not reach that sum, and the company were not bound to make a dividend in 1861, and as a matter of fact did not, to any of their members.

There is still another item of difference which ought to be noticed, and that is in reference to the status of the parties themselves. It was set forth in a note appended to the policy itself in case 228, that "agents of the company are authorized to receive the premium when due." In this case it is a special provision of the charter of the company that their place of business is in the city of New York, and not elsewhere. I refer your Honors to the fifteenth section of the charter, as quoted in the record. In further illustration of this difference in the two cases, I refer to a note on the margin of Dr. Bond's policy, as printed in the record, which reads as follows: "All receipts for premiums paid at agencies are to be signed by the President or Actuary." It results from these facts, that no agent is authorized to receive any premium on a policy already issued, until he has received from the home company a receipt in blank, signed by the President or Actuary of the company; and it is shown in the testimony, that this was the uniform custom of the company. These, I believe, constitute the main differences of fact in the two cases.

The case now before your Honors rests on these plain facts: that the life of Dr. Bond was insured by a contract with the New York Life Insurance Company, made October 17, 1854; that he paid the annual premiums regularly until October 17, 1861, when, through another person, he tendered the amount of the premium for that year to Kirtland, who had been the agent of the company at Memphis; and that Kirtland refused to receive it, alleging that he had no signed receipt giving him authority from the company, and that it was impossible for him

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