The Sun.
London, England, 1864-12-21 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

TIMES.—Any statement of American finance ad-
dressed to the English intelligence comes with two
important qualifications—first, the high rate of in-
terest borne by American debt, and rendering it
really equivalent to a much larger amount of obli-
gation; secondly, the fact that as most of the-debt
is in paper, it runs no small risk of never being
repaid in any other form. Bat we will take the
figures as they stand, only substituting pounds
sterling for dollars, at the rate of five donates a pound
sterling. On the Ist of July, then, the public debt
was £348,000,000. The Custoths' receipts during
the year ending July 1 amounted to £20,400,000;
the internal revenue to £21,000,000; and the receipts
from " miscellaneous sources," including a trifling
sum from land sales and another from direct taxes,
to £9,714,800. The proceeds of loans during the
year amounted to £124,600,000. The aggregate
expenditure of the year was £173,000,000, or about
half a million pounds sterling a day. These figures
are formidable enough. They are formidable in
their amount, and still more in their proportions.
In our own Russian war, which was no trifle, we
made rather a point of dividing the extraordinary
expense between loans and extraordinary taxation,
taking half on ourselves and leaving half to future
years. The Federal Government, upon their own
showing, in the yeas ending July last only raised
by taxation about £43,000,000, against three times
that sum raised by loans, and after all did not meet
the year's expenditure by £6,200,000, Even that
year, however, was moderate indeed compared with
the current year, Including the interest of the public
debt, the expenses to be provided for in the twelve-
month ending July next amount to £233,600,000,
which our readers need scarcely be told is consider.
ably more than three times that annual expenditure
which we are daily told at home is a crime and a
scandal to this country, and which, accordingly, our
governmenl is doing its best to cut down. The
United States' Treasury has to raise in one year a
sum nearly equal to the third of our own National
Debt. How that is to be done is a problem past
the large experience even of British finance. Mr.
Fessenden refers to Congress, and appeals to the
conscience and patriotism of his fellowecitizens to
allow taxation to yield its full produce, as if thus
far it had disappointed fair estimates. He suggests
whether the income tax should not be levied on
every income, But even putting the produce of taxes
for the current year far higher than it proved for
the last,after availing himself of certain borrowing
powers, which are not explained, he estimates the
deficit to be provided by loans at £81,000,000. After
the wonders already achieved, and apparently a
matter of pride rather than dismay to the American
imagination, we must not venture to doubt that this
sum will be raised too. Mr Fessenden deprecates, in
a tone of national self-respect, an appeal to foreign
borrowers. He would prefer to see the money raised
in the Union itself, and does not see why it should
not be, especially as he thinks we need only con-
template one year longer of war. By the let of next
July Mr Fessenden estimates the public debt at
£529,000,000. The inadequacy of existing resources,
however, long felt severely, is now confessed by the
extraordinary nature of the expedient by which it
is proposed to add to them. It is introduced as a
matter of patriotism and political well-being rather
than finance, and therefore by the P.m resent rather
than by the Secretary. Mr Lincoln is very
naturally of opinion that the present respon-
sibility and interest of the war, and also its final
risks, ought to be shared by every citizen, so that
all may bear its burden, and the loss, if that is to
be, shall be one common to the whole community.
The scheme is so novel that we quote the very
words. After stating the enormous total of the pree
sent debt, and its probable increase
this year,
Mr Lincoln 'proceeds :—" Held as it is for the
most part by our own people—a substantial
branch of national though private property—for
obvious reasons, the more equally this property
Can be distributed among the people the better.
To favour such general distribution greater
inducements - to become owners might perhaps,
with good effect, and without Injury, be pre-
sented to parsons of limited means. With this
view I suggest whether it might not be both com-
petent and expedient for Congress to provide that a
limited amount of some future issue of public secu-
rities might be held by any bona fide purchasers
exempt from taxation and from seizure for debt,
under such restrictions and limitations as might be
necessary to guard against abuse of so important a
privilege. 'Phis wcu:d enable every prudent person
to set aside a small annuity against a possible day
of want. Privileges like these would render the
possession of such securities to the amount limited
most desirable to every person of small means, who
might bo able to save enough for this purpose. The
great advantage of citizens bein, creditors as well
ra debtorswith relation to the public debt is obvious.
Men readily perceive they cannot be much oppressed
by a debt which they owe to themselves." As the
scheme is only sketched in the rudest outline, rather
by its object, its results, and its moral and political
bearings than in the form of a measure, we must
deal with it as we find it; as a phantom in the future
of American finance. Whatever the modus operandi,
here arc two substantial realities, and two sides of
a bargain. The Treasury is to gain a great number
of " sums from citizens supposed to be of
small means or small incomes; out of that transac-
tion there is supposed to arise a class of small pen-
sioners with an inalienable claim on the Treasury.
In this indistinct and shadowy form, we cannot help
fancying a resemblance between this expedient and
one of which the British nation has seen the begin-
ning and the end. At the beginning of this century
it was thought an object of, the highest policy to
promote by all means the increase of our population,
that being our weak point in the European scale.
Hence every inducement was offered to marriage
and large families, by the national pledge of a suffi,
dent maintenance, with or without work, to every
child thatshould be born. Forty years ago every
child was born with a fortune of 2s. a week, or five
pounds a year, to begin with, and the power of in-
creasing it to any extent by a suitable marriage.
It was found eventually that, whatever may be
said of a select class of genteel pensioners, there
is a point beyond or below which pensions
arc injurious to the personal character and the social
system. In fact work, hard work, is so disagreeable
that when the class usually compelled to it is re-
leased from the necessity, it no longer works, and
takes to evil courses, We all know that a man paid
to do nothing Is very apt to go to the bad. Such
then, as it appears to us, is the class which it is
proposed to saddle on the Federal Treasury as the
legacy of the war. We cannot believe that the
class is compatible with American institutions, end
therefore we cannot conceive it ever being forced on
the Union. That being the case we see no chance of
success for an expedient appealing to habits and
tastes that do not exist. Some day it will have to
be described, and it ma y then wear a more practie
cal character ; but at present it only seems to bee
tray a dreary misgiving that the time must come at
last when all must contribute to pay the enormous
debt of the war, by cheerfully consenting to sure
render their claims as pubic creditors.
HERALD.—In the year 1864, the fourth year of
the American civil war, mans desperate attempts
have been made by the Government of Mr Lincoln
to penetrate the tough hide of the Southern Confe-
deracy. Vast armaments have been launched by
land and sea at supposed vulnerable points in an
area so extensive that in our eastern hemisphere it
,vsued count half a continent. And yet Richmond,
Charleston, and Mobile are still virgin forttesses.
The result of these costly expeditions, from which
so much has been expected, has been so, uniformly
disappointing to their sanguine promoters that the
President of the North, with his inevitable destiny
before him, girding up his loins for that other four
years, struggle which the voice of his people has
chosen him for the .esepress purpose of carrying
through to the bitter end, finds in none of them any
cause of congratulation, any laurel twig of- triumph
to present to Congress. Turning disconsolately from
his great army so impractically wedged between the
James and the Appomattox, looking askance at his
great fleet before impotent the despised defences of
Charleston and Mobile, and scarcely able to interrupt
the trade of Wilmington, he finds a ray of hope in the
distant contemplation of an enterprise so desperate
in its conception, and so utterly dubious in its re-
sults, that even he, audacious as he is, cannot predict
its issue. Tho eyes of the Preeident and of the whole
people of the North are turned towards General
Sherman in his march across Georgia. Is it, indeed,
in these Southern swamps that is to be fought the
last crowning battle for Union and independence ?
Have the Northerners staked their last die on the
success of this movement, condemned by every
principle of war, on the answer to this fearful bid
for victory or death ? There, somewhere to the
north of Savannah, are Sherman and his 50,000.
striving for the sea. There, all round him and de-
fying him, are the swarms of Confederate soldiery
thirsting for his destruction. Are these the Horatii
and Curiatii on the result of whose encounter the
rest of the Federals and Confederates are prepared
to risk their fortunes, to whose brave arms they
are willing to entrust their cause ? We would that
it were so, for for Sherman and his army we can
foresee nothing but' disaster. The best that can
happen to him will be the accomplishment of a dis-
astrous retreat. The alternative is utter annibilas
tion. As the Inying Waste of Georgia, by firing
her citizens to frenzy, has_ put an end to all hope
of reconquering this State for the Union, so the
humiliating failure Of a campaign on which they
have built all their hopes will madden the North
into a more vindictive prosecution of the war. Their
cry will no longer be for conquest, they will b“
satisfied with revenge. We seen to be entering
upon Et long dark period of bloody war, for exter-

mination on one side, for dear life on the other,
which will be.suffered to continue to such time as
the other nations of the world shall begin to feet
that America is not utterly without the pale of their
sympathies.
.1n New York, on Dec. 5, the latest
reliable news of Sherman and his army was of the
date of Nov. 24. Even this was obtained from
Southern sources. For twelve days the whole
of the North was as much in the dark as to
the movements of these 50,000 men as
if their
general and his followers had been campaigning
in the moon. Their anxiety, in the meanwhile,
must have risen to fever heat. What terrible story
lay hid under that veil of ignorance, what carnage,
what disasters, what grief to Northern mothers slid
wives might be concealed by that shroud of dark*
nese which made the worse that could happen seem
more terrible in its awful mystery, they knew
not .
i
yet, and perhaps even now do not know. But the
grim work was going on and may be going on Hove.
Every day 50,000 hungry souls to be fed. Every
d ly the fieids made more impassable by rains, the
swamps widening and deepening from a thousand
rills. Every day the swarms of the enemy gather-
ing mere closely, and pressing more boldly on their
stragglers, their rearguard, and their fl teks. Every
day the wild Southern battle-cry ringing more
loudly in the eats of these hunted fugitives. And
that enemy will give them no mercy, because he
owes them none. It will not be his fault if one re-.
giment or one soldier reach the sea, dustworn and,
bloody, like the courier from Ronceevalles, or the
single survivor of that dread slaughter in Cahill-
The.right wing of Sherman's army was formed by
Howard's division ; the left was commanded by
Slocum. On Nov. 20 the rear of Howard's advance
made an unsuccessful attack on a redoubt near
Macon, and was pursued to Griswoldville, a station
on the railway, 10 miles east of that city. On the
23d Howard attempted tor cross the Oconnee River
at Toomsboro, 30 miles further to the east, and
about the same distance south of Milledgeville. It
seems that Howard succeeded at first in fording the
river four miles below the bridge, but was obliged
to recross by an attack on his rear by Wheeler 8
cavalry, which had crossed 18 miles lower down for
that purpose. Down to the night of the 24th Gen.
Howard was to the west of the Oconnee River. It
was supposed that Slocum was endeavouring to form
a junction with him, but it was doubtful whether
he would succeed, as the Confederate Gen. Wayne
was on the left bank of the Oconnee, confronting
Howard. From this date all is rumour, and we have
no further authentic news of Sherman's movements.
It was reported that Wheeler had twice engaged
his cavalry, and had been signally victorious, It
was further reported that Sherman's army had at
length croased the Oconnee, but when, where, or
how, is not known. Supposing the whole army to
have been at Toomsboro on the 24th, it had °cote
pied 12 days in marching 80 miles. It was at a diss
tance of 150 miles from the sea-coast at Savannah,
170 from DArien, at the mouth of the Oconnee. If
we are to credit the latest report, for which there
seems to be no 'foundation beyond the sanguine
imaginations of Northern journalists, that the ad'
vance guard of the army has reached Millen, on the
Georgian Central Railroad, it will still be 80 mile!
from Savannah, a place so strongly garrisoned and
defended that it cannot hope to take it. Sherri:mot
as we at first anticipated, may be aiming at Beau-
fort, where his army might effect a junction with •
the garrison of Port Royal. From Millen to this
point there would be 150 miles of almost impassable
country before him. From Charleston to Savannah,
about 120 miles, the railway passes across the
swamps on a succession of trestle bridges. Poco-
taligo Bridge is about halfway between these towns
and duo north of Beaufort. At this point General
Foster, sallying forth from Beaufort, has cut the
line of railway, with the intention of aiding Sher"
man. There is still a line from Charleston to
Augusta beyond the reach of the Federals. If
Foster intended to move eastward to effect a junction
with Sherman, he was disappointed. A Confederate
force from Grahamsville, west of Pocotaligo, met
him and drove him back as he was feeling his We/
in this direction. Wherever Sherman may got it
seems that there is an enemy in strong force In
front of him. The success of his movement will be
the evacuation of Georgia, but he is so surrounded
thet ifdoes not seem likely that he will be able to
save his army. -Not only Georgia, but Tennessee,
is slipping from the feeble grasp of this Federal
Napoleon and his lieutenants. General Hood le
laying siege to Nashville. The garrison of Chat'
tanooga is cut off from all assistance. Gillem is he'
leagured in Knoxville, with the remnant of hie
army. Ere the close of the year the camp of Grant)
in Virginia, may be the only foothold left to the
North•in all the wide regions from the Potomac to
New Orleans.