viii REPORT OF THE

greater decrease in the ordinary expenditures of these
years than of the off years. It is to be noted that
there has been considerable retrenchment by legisla-
tive enactments during this time. The pension laws,
under which about thirty thousand dollars were an-
nually drawn from the treasury, were repealed in
1878. A law was passed the same year, reducing
the salaries of the tobacco inspectors and their em-
ployees, and abolishing the office of supervisor of to-
bacco warehouses after the first of April, 1880. In 1880
the bounty laws were repealed, and the treasury re-
lieved of this indefinite annual drain; and in the same
year, the salaries of the Adjutant General and of all the
officers and employees of the State fishery force were re-
duced. In 1882, the legislative expenses were consid-
erably curtailed. The registration law, of that year,
however imposed a cost of about fifty thousand dollars
upon the State treasury.

The revenues of the State are regarded as established
upon a reliable and improved basis, and it is to be hoped,
that the expenditures can be kept within such limits, as
to afford a large and increasing surplus for the reduction
at par, of the State debts now rapidly becoming due.
The saving, thereby, of heavy premiums, incident to in-
vestments in the Sinking Fund, is a matter worthy of at-
tention.

The inequality of taxation, and especially of the sys-
tem by which direct taxes are imposed, is attracting anx-
ious attention, and the increased and increasing amount
of superabundant wealth persistently kept from view, but
confirms me in the belief, expressed to the Legislature of
1880, that "not until every person holding property, shall
be required to go once a year to the assessor to be taxed, ac-
cording to his actual worth, will taxation be equalized
and its burdens be imposed so as to fall lightly on the
many, rather than heavily on the few." This is a broad
and fertile field for reform cultivation.

In 1878, a "Treasury Relief Loan" of $500,000 was autho-
rized and issued, and, as required by the Constitution,
and provided by the Act of Assembly authorizing the
loan, an annual tax of 1 1/2 per cent, on the taxable proper-