The fact of a treasury surplus, the amount of which is variously stated, has directed public attention to a consideration of the methods by which the national income may best be reduced to the level of a wise and necessary expenditure. This condition has been seized upon by those who are hostile to protective customs duties as an advantageous base of attack upon our tariff laws. They have magnified and nursed the surplus, which they affect to deprecate, seemingly for the purpose of exaggerating the evil, in order to reconcile the people to the extreme remedy they propose. A proper reduction of the revenues does not necessitate, and should not suggest, the abandonment or impairment of the protective system. The methods suggested by our convention will not need to be exhausted in order to effect the necessary reduction. We are not likely to be called upon, I think, to make a present choice between the surrender of the protective system and the entire repeal of the internal taxes. Such a contingency, in view of the present relation of expenditures to revenues, is remote. The inspection and regulation of the manufacture and sale of oleomargarine is important, and the revenue derived from it is not so great that the repeal of the law need enter into any plan of revenue reduction. The surplus now in the treasury should be used in the purchase of bonds. The law authorizes this use of it, and if it is not needed for current or deficiency appropriations, the people, and not the banks in which it has been deposited, should have the advantage of its use by stopping interest upon the public debt. At least those who needlessly hoard it should not be allowed to use the fear of a monetary stringency, thus produced, to coerce public sentiment upon other questions.