The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866: A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and PoliticsVarious
General
The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866: A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics
Various
American periodicals
Commerce will gradually adapt itself to this notice, as it has done to
the decline of gold from 285 to 130 in less than a year. But it is urged
that we have a thousand millions of debt to fund within three years, and
therefore cannot resume. Did we not fund nearly a thousand millions at
par in 1865, and most of this after gold fell to 30 per cent premium?
Then the amount was drawn from hoards and commerce; but now our income
exceeds expenditures, and we are reducing the debt ten or twenty
millions a month; we require no funds for war or unproductive
investments, and when we pay one hundred millions, we return it to those
who will seek new loans for investment, and doubtless lend on more
favorable terms.
At Paris, Brussels, and Frankfort, the average rate of interest last
year was less than five per cent. Give Mr. McCulloch power to go there,
to issue bonds for one twentieth part of our debt payable there in the
currency of the country; and with such a fund at his disposal, he can at
once reduce interest and bring back specie, or rather retain it; for we
need not seek it abroad. When the Committee of Ways and Means intimate
that they will give him this power, gold and exchange fall; if a doubt
is expressed, both advance; and the simple question before the public
is, whether we shall cripple the Minister of Finance and give the power
to Wall Street;--whether our finances are to be governed by the Jews of
the gold board and the speculators of the stock exchange, or by the
Secretary of the Treasury. If we ended the war by placing one man on the
field to direct every movement,--after we had tried in vain to conduct
it by committees of Congress and rival generals,--will not one
statesman, with plenary power, be equally effective on the field of
finance?
The man who carried a Western State through the revulsion of 1857, and
maintained specie payments when Boston and New York succumbed,--who has
so well and so successfully wielded the limited power we have given
him,--well deserves the confidence of the country. Let him have power at
once to go to the fountain-head for the small balance we may require
from the Old World; let him have the authority to raise funds to meet
the floating debt and temporary loan, and to replace the seven-thirties
and compound-interest notes as they mature, and we may confidently
anticipate both an early resumption of specie payments and reduced rates
of interest, and consequent diminution of debt. With a return to specie
payments, our current expenses must fall from thirty to forty per cent,
and we can well afford to resign any premium on gold we now enjoy.
TAXES ON PRODUCTION.
The Revenue Commission enlighten us on this point. In their very able
and luminous Report they say:--
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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