In fact, it will be one of the incidental benefits of an efficient system of taxation, that it will induce greater care in the expenditure of the public money. Fraudulent contracts are not the only, nor even the chief cause of our financial embarrassments. It may be hoped that what is extracted from it by downright swindling, however considerable in amount, does not cause the great drain upon the Treasury. But if money can be obtained by the simple issue of evidences of debt, and without any provision to sustain the credit of the Government by taxation, the process of supply is too facile. The funds so easily procured are in danger of being too profusely spent. Individual responsibility in money-matters, aided by direct self-interest, is usually more efficient in imposing limits to improvidence than a general sense of duty on the part of official personages. But if funds could be obtained _ad libitum_ by the speculator, without the necessity of giving security for the payment of principal or interest, bankruptcy would soon become the rule and solvency the exception. Still more urgently, in the administration of the National Treasury, is the wholesome corrective of taxation required, to make economy a necessity as well as a virtue. Much must be pardoned to the urgency of the public service, in a crisis like that of last summer, when the Government was compelled to improvise the forces, military and naval, required for the suppression of a gigantic rebellion, long concocted and matured in treacherous secrecy. With the capital of the country beleaguered by open foes without, swarming with hardly concealed traitors within, who privately thwarted and paralyzed when they could not openly defeat the measures of the Government, and conveyed information of them to the enemy with the regularity of official returns, some degree of improvident hurry in every branch of the service was inevitable, and must not be too severely scanned. You cannot stand chaffering at a bargain as to the cheapest mode of extinguishing a fire kindled by a red-hot cannon-ball at the door of the magazine. But the crisis and the necessity for precipitate action are past. The rebellion, dragged to the light of day, has assumed definite proportions. The means for its suppression are ample, and nothing is requisite but the firmness and sagacity to apply them. In other words, the one thing needful for the successful prosecution of the war is a judicious system of taxation.