The Emancipation of Massachusetts
I wrote this little volume more than thirty years ago, since when I have hardly opened it. Therefore I now read it almost as if it were written by another man, and I find to my relief that, on the whole, I think rather better of it than I did when I published it. Indeed, as a criticism of what were then the accepted views of Massachusetts history, as expounded by her most authoritative historians, I see nothing in it to retract or even to modify. I do, however, somewhat regret the rather acrimonious tone which I occasionally adopted when speaking of the more conservative section of the clergy. Not that I think that the Mathers, for example, and their like, did not deserve all, or, indeed, more than all I ever said or thought of them, but because I conceive that equally effective strictures might have been conveyed in urbaner language; and, as I age, I shrink from anything akin to invective, even in what amounts to controversy. Therefore I have now nothing to alter in the _Emancipation of Massachusetts_, viewed as history, though I might soften its asperities somewhat, here and there; but when I come to consider it as philosophy, I am startled to observe the gap which separates the present epoch from my early middle life. The last generation was strongly Darwinian in the sense that it accepted,
For expenditures on account of the District of Columbia - 3,407,049.62
For interest on the public debt - 54,578,378.48
For the sinking fund - 46,790,229.50
Total ordinary expenditures - 290,926,473.83
Leaving a surplus of - 57,603,396.09
As compared with the preceding fiscal year, there was a net decrease of
over $21,000,000 in the amount of expenditures. The aggregate receipts were
less than those of the year previous by about $54,000,000. The falling off
in revenue from customs made up nearly $20,000,000 of this deficiency, and
about $23,000,000 of the remainder was due to the diminished receipts from
internal taxation.
The Secretary estimates the total receipts for the fiscal year which will
end June 30, 1885, at $330,000,000 and the total expenditures at
$290,620,201.16, in which sum are included the interest on the debt and the
amount payable to the sinking fund. This would leave a surplus for the
entire year of about $39,000,000.
The value of exports from the United States to foreign countries during the
year ending June 30, 1884, was as follows:
I wrote this little volume more than thirty years ago, since when I have hardly opened it. Therefore I now read it almost as if it were written by another man, and I find to my relief that, on the whole, I think rather better of it than I did when I published it. Indeed, as a criticism of what were then the accepted views of Massachusetts history, as expounded by her most authoritative historians, I see nothing in it to retract or even to modify. I do, however, somewhat regret the rather acrimonious tone which I occasionally adopted when speaking of the more conservative section of the clergy. Not that I think that the Mathers, for example, and their like, did not deserve all, or, indeed, more than all I ever said or thought of them, but because I conceive that equally effective strictures might have been conveyed in urbaner language; and, as I age, I shrink from anything akin to invective, even in what amounts to controversy. Therefore I have now nothing to alter in the _Emancipation of Massachusetts_, viewed as history, though I might soften its asperities somewhat, here and there; but when I come to consider it as philosophy, I am startled to observe the gap which separates the present epoch from my early middle life. The last generation was strongly Darwinian in the sense that it accepted,