The Sun.
London, England, 1862-10-30 00:00:00

COMMERCIAL.

The commercial news has been anticipated by
the Cape Race telegrams already published—but
we re-produce a significant financial article from
the New Fork Herald of the latest date as follows:

" To say that gold has risen to 33 per cent. pre-
mium is a pleasant way of stating that paper money
has depreciated 33 per cent. Practically in their
conversation and reports the Wall-street financiers
make paper the standard, and talk as if gold had
risen above the standard. The fact is, as they and
everybody else know, that gold is the standard, and
that paper has fallen below this standard and is at a
large discount. In a word, the one dollar bill in your
purse is worth, according to yesterday's quotations,
only 67 cents. That information affects you in quite
a different way from the stereotyped announcement
that gold has risen. You do not care how high gold
may rise as long as your bank bills are at par.
The delicate sophism of the money-changers leads
you to forget that it is not gold that rises, but paper
money that falls. Every time that the premium
on gold increases the bills in your pockets lose
iu value. Your riches, if they happen to be in
paper money, take to themselves wings and fly
away in spite of you. You find that the prices
of coal, flour, butter, dry goods, clothing, and
all the common necessaries of life, also rise with
gold. The main secret of this rise is that the mer-
chants with whom you deal can only give you 67c.
worth of articles for your dollar bill, worth only
67c.; and so they raise their prices in order to
balance the discount. If you can afford to hold on
to your bills till the war is over, they may regain
their original value. If you must part with them
now--and nearly every one must—then you are
certain to suffer. It being understood, therefore,
that the rise in gold is really a depreciation in the
value of paper, the people inquire, Who is respon-
sible for this great depreciation ? We answer,
Secretary Chase and the present Congress. The
Treasury Department has been most grossly mis-
managed. Secretary Chase had a sound system of
finance prepared for him by practical men, but he
does not know how to manage it. If the system
now in operation had been properly carried out
paper could not have been depreciated more than 8
per cent. by this time. There is nothing either in
the condition of the country or the position of our
armies to justify the present large depreciation. If
the war had been weighing upon us for ten years,
and our prospects of success were still doubtful,
then there might be some excuse for such a premium
on gold. But the war has lasted but a year and a
half, and its fortunes are indisputably in our favour,
and still on the very days that great Union victo-
ries are announced the premium on gold increases.
Clearly, then, there is mismanagement in the Trea-
sury Department."

The article then comments upon Secretary
Chase's errors of commission and omission, and
concludes as follows :

" It is not too late to remedy all this, however.
The example of William Pitt, who carried England
through a long war by a judicious system
em of taxa-
tion, I
j'a
studied and legal tender currency,
ied should be
Tax Ilia be attentively by Secretary Chase. Let the
enforced so as to supply the Govern-
ment with moue
3'basis of the currene
, and with the Tariff Bill form the
Y. Then let Congress, at its
next
trict sessitheon, pass a bill taxing banks so as to re-
s bank circulation,
country being deluged
with and thus prevent the two kinds of paper
money--that of the Government and that of the
1