pts will amount to $436,000,000 and that the
expenditures will be $350,247,641, showing an excess of $85,752,359 in
favor of the Government. These estimated receipts may be diminished
by a reduction of excise and import duties, but after all necessary
reductions shall have been made the revenue of the present and of
following years will doubtless be sufficient to cover all legitimate
charges upon the Treasury and leave a large annual surplus to be applied
to the payment of the principal of the debt. There seems now to be no
good reason why taxes may not be reduced as the country advances in
population and wealth, and yet the debt be extinguished within the
next quarter of a century.

The report of the Secretary of War furnishes valuable and important
information in reference to the operations of his Department during the
past year. Few volunteers now remain in the service, and they are being
discharged as rapidly as they can be replaced by regular troops. The
Army has been promptly paid, carefully provided with medical treatment,
well sheltered and subsisted, and is to be furnished with breech-loading
small arms. The military strength of the nation has been unimpaired
by the discharge of volunteers, the disposition of unserviceable or
perishable stores, and the retrenchment of expenditure. Sufficient war
material to meet any emergency has been retained, and from the disbanded
volunteers standing ready to respond to the national call large armies
can be rapidly organized, equipped, and concentrated. Fortifications on
the coast and frontier have received or are being prepared for more
powerful armaments; lake surveys and harbor and river improvements are
in course of energetic prosecution. Preparations have been made for the
payment of the additional bounties authorized during the recent session
of Congress, under such regulations as will protect the Government from
fraud and secure to the honorably discharged soldier the well-earned
reward of his faithfulness and gallantry. More than 6,000 maimed
soldiers have received artificial limbs or other surgical apparatus,
and 41 national cemeteries, containing the remains of 104,526 Union
soldiers, have already been established. The total estimate of military
appropriations is $25,205,669.

It is stated in the report of the Secretary of the Navy that the naval
force at this time consists of 278 vessels, armed with 2,351 guns. Of
these, 115 vessels, carrying 1,029 guns, are in c