Apr 07, 2022 - Sale 2600

Sale 2600 - Lot 118

Price Realized: $ 13,750
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 3,000 - $ 4,000
ALEXANDER HAMILTON. Treasury report featuring the first formal federal budget. 12 pages. Folio, disbound; minimal wear and toning. [Philadelphia], 6 January 1791

Additional Details

As Secretary of Treasury under the new Constitution, Hamilton did not submit formal budgets for 1789 or 1790, so this report was the first formal budget ever submitted to Congress for its review.

The report does not have a title page. It is headed with the printed text of Hamilton's cover letter to Speaker of the House F.A. Muhlenberg: "Sir, I have the Honor to transmit to you a Report to the House of Representatives, relative to the Appropriations of Money." This is followed by Hamilton's short introduction, which concludes with an apology for the growing Treasury Department bureaucracy, explaining that officials went through so much stationery that they could not possibly cover the expense out of their modest salaries. The budget itself begins with the salaries of all federal employees, headed by President Washington at $25,000. The Treasury Department's budget dwarfed that of the departments of State and War, who employed only 7 men each, although the actual military force is listed separately (as submitted by Henry Knox). Continental soldier pensions were rare enough to list all 15 by name, including Baron von Steuben and "Youngest children of the late Major-General Warren." Evans 23925; Ford, Hamiltoniana 180.