After  a  statement  of  the  means  made  available  by  Mr.
Van  Buren,  otherwise  than  by  the  receipts  from  customs,


334  HISTORY   OF   THE   PROTECTIVE   TARIFF,

and  another,  that  the  Government  ran  behind  in  Mr.  Van
Buren's  four  years  ^30,000,000,  he  continued  :

"  The  revenue  had  fallen  off  from  over  thirty  millions  per  annum,
during  General  Jackson's  last  term,  to  less  than  twenty  millions  under
Mr.  Van  Buren,  and  the  actual  receipts  of  1841  and  1842  —  the  two  years
of  most  strictly  revenue  duties — were  less  than  fifteen  millions  per
annum.  So  notoriously  inadequate  was  the  income  afforded  by  this
revenue  tariff,  that  one  of  the  last  acts  of  the  retiring  Van  Buren  Con-
gress of  1837,  was  an  act  authorizing  the  issuing  of  an  additional  five
millions  of  Treasury  notes,  to  enable  the  new  administration  to  struggle
on  until  the  regular  meeting  of  the  next  Congress,  in  December  of  that
same  year."

Such  palpable  and  undeniable  facts  as  these  furnish  a
far  better  basis  for  correct  opinion  than  any  mere  assertion,
however  plausibly  maintained.  They  indubitably  establish
the  proposition  that  at  the  close  of  Mr.  Van  Buren's  admin-
istration, it  had  been  clearly  demonstrated  that  under  the
Compromise  Act  of  1833  it  would  be  impossible  to  raise
revenue  enough  to  carry  on  the  Government ;  in  other
words,  that  it  was  an  absolute  failure  as  a  revenue  measure.
