1825. If the East had preferred him to his predecessor, it was not
because the East proposed to surrender any of her interests; and if the
West liked him less than she had liked her hero, it was just because his
feelings and interests were suspected.

He had supported Jackson in the breaking-down of a stable civil service
in 1829, in order to ruin their common opponents, Adams and Clay. Now
Van Buren was to inherit the evils of the spoils system, and Adams,
Clay, and Webster were leading the attack upon him both in Congress and
in the country. Jackson's collector of the customs in New York defaulted
in the sum of $1,250,000 during the first year of Van Buren's term; and
to make matters worse the new appointee behaved quite as scandalously
the next year. Out of sixty-seven land officers in the West and South,
sixty-four were reported in 1837 as defaulters, and the United States
Treasury lost nearly a million dollars on their account. The Jacksonian
Democracy was certainly putting its worst foot foremost, and the great
leaders of the opposition held up their hands in horror at a system
which "reeked with corruption from center to circumference."

Van Buren had begun badly. But worse was to follow. The receipts from
federal land sales dropped from $24,000,000 in 1836 to $6,000,000 in
1837, and the total income of the Government declined from $50,000,000
to $24,000,000 in the same year; and the expenditures of the Treasury
outran the receipts during 1837 and 1838 by more than $21,000,000. A
deficit of $300,000,000 for two successive years in our time would not
be worse than the deficit of the unpopular successor of Andrew Jackson.
From 1833 to 1836 there had been an annual surplus equal sometimes to
the total expense of the Government. The national debt had been paid in
full and money had been loaned to the States without interest or
security. There was to be no more national debt and no more paying of
interest to hard-driving capitalists; but Van Buren borrowed $34,000,000
in two years to meet the ordinary expenses of his Administration.

The honors of the time were, and have since been, bestowed upon Jackson,
and all the blame of things was, and has since been, laid upon the
shoulders of Van Buren. But the fault was not Van Buren's. A number of
causes had produced this surprising and distressing state of affairs.
After the great success of the Erie and other canals in the East,
Western States entered upon an era of cana