private individual can
undertake, has not hitherto been completed by the French Government, or,
at least, its results have not been made public. We are acquainted with
the sum total of the charges of the State; we know the amount of the
departmental expenditure; but the expenses of the communal divisions
have not been computed, and the amount of the public expenses of France
is consequently unknown.

If we now turn to America, we shall perceive that the difficulties are
multiplied and enhanced. The Union publishes an exact return of the
amount of its expenditure; the budgets of the four and twenty States
furnish similar returns of their revenues; but the expenses incident to
the affairs of the counties and the townships are unknown. *k

[Footnote k: The Americans, as we have seen, have four separate budgets,
the Union, the States, the Counties, and the Townships having each
severally their own. During my stay in America I made every endeavor
to discover the amount of the public expenditure in the townships and
counties of the principal States of the Union, and I readily obtained
the budget of the larger townships, but I found it quite impossible to
procure that of the smaller ones. I possess, however, some documents
relating to county expenses, which, although incomplete, are still
curious. I have to thank Mr. Richards, Mayor of Philadelphia, for the
budgets of thirteen of the counties of Pennsylvania, viz., Lebanon,
Centre, Franklin, Fayette, Montgomery, Luzerne, Dauphin, Butler,
Alleghany, Columbia, Northampton, Northumberland, and Philadelphia,
for the year 1830. Their population at that time consisted of 495,207
inhabitants. On looking at the map of Pennsylvania, it will be seen
that these thirteen counties are scattered in every direction, and so
generally affected by the causes which usually influence the condition
of a country, that they may easily be supposed to furnish a correct
average of the financial state of the counties of Pennsylvania in
general; and thus, upon reckoning that the expenses of these counties
amounted in the year 1830 to about $361,650, or nearly 75 cents for each
inhabitant, and calculating that each of them contributed in the same
year about $2.55 towards the Union, and about 75 cents to the State of
Pennsylvania, it appears that they each contributed as their share
of all the public expenses (except those of the townships) the sum of
$4.05. This calculation is doubly incomplete, as it ap