The bulk of the receipts from taxes and other sources was in the form of treasury notes and audited drafts. It was only at the end of the period that specie to any important amount was received.2 Audited drafts, or unpaid warrants drawn on the treasury, were receivable for direct taxes down to 1842, and for land fees throughout the entire period. Auditors' certificates, representing the government's indebtedness to those who carried the mails, assessors' drafts, or warrants drawn in favor of assessors in payment for the work of assessment, and drafts issued by special acts of congress, were receivable for direct taxes after 1842.

1 Houston in his message of December 4, 1844, said that the amount appropriated for sustaining the post office during his second adminis tration was only $29,000 while under Lamar it was $252,917. See also Gammel, op. cit., vol. 1, p. 1256.

2 In 1842 only $3 of specie was received, and a balance of $17.44 carried over from 1841 was jealously retained in the treasury throughout 1842. Gouge (p. 274) says that previous to the adoption of the exchequer note system (1842) the records do not disclose that the government ever realized one dollar of its taxes in specie. Specie receipts from 1842 to February 19, 1846, were, according to Gouge, $10,-440. This is by no means the true, or even approximately true, amount, however, for the practice of the treasury after 1841 of designating as "par funds" paper received at par as well as specie makes it impossible to tell how much of either was actually received. Such par funds amounted, according to Gouge, to $275,420 from 1842 to 1846, and some specie is included in another unclassified item of $70,005; Gouge, op. cit., p. 273.

Treasury notes, including both the "red-backs" issued before 1842 and the exchequer bills issued in 1842 and thereafter, made up the largest part of the receipts.1 After 1843 the old issues of notes, or those before 1842, were not receivable for taxes, except in payment of arrears, and the new issues were receivable only at their current market rates.2

The other forms which receipts took were bonds and land scrip, but they constituted only a small part of the receipts.3 Bank notes were for a short time receivable, but it does not appear that any found their way into the treasury in payment of taxes or fees.4