The Sun.
London, England, 1869-04-29 00:00:00

TliZ SEASON.

The London season has commenced, and the
li.d.etropolis is full. Full too at a time when the
country is so very beautiful. All the-great families
have left their mansions, parks, and lawns, with the
freshness of spring upon them, and are now helping
to choke the over-full, and certainly not lovely,
metropolis. Why is this? Fashion, we arc told, ift
inexorable. No matter th,A real enjoyment cannot be
had. Excitement can, and the onemust makeup for the
other. Moreover, materfamilias urges that she wants
her daughters to marry. And so she leaves the more
healthy country and comes to ruinously expensive
London, there, amidst the feverish whirl of balls
and parties, to get her daughters mated for life. The
L'ailyYexs ass whether all this is necessary : •
" We would ask if everybody cannot be seen and every-
body get married without everybody rushing up to
London for the purpose at a certain time, and that time
the most delicious one of the rural year? We fancy that
folks married and gave in marriage before the days of
the iron rail, and still go through those indispensable
ceremonies in countries where iron rails and their con-
verging points at a metropolis are as yet wholly unknown.
As for free and frequent intercourse with comparatively
distant neighbours, that, no doubt, was a matter difficult
of attainment before steam was applied to locomotion;
but the very same ease and rapidity of moving about
which we now owe to railways can surely be utilised in
carrying people from county to county, and from one part
of the country to another, as in carrying them all up to
London."

AMERICAN FLVA NCB, 1865-1869.*

(From the Anglo -American Times.)
t! ,e Ist July, 1860
This article thus opens—" The public debt of
the United States amounted, nn
to a capital of £13,400,000. On the Ist July, 1865'
according to Mr. M'Culloch's latest report, the
tluyh re
s_sc yearsnotoet
t(e) Gab'
between
nmite,
the
debt, including unliquidtted claim 3 exceded
reiex7iee°n:vnd:i
rt°u'
considers
d averageders. Duringthnate nearly
President and Congress alone prevented political
parties from being formed anew on financial
grounds on the submi,sion of the Confederate
States. Of the men who directed the financial
policy of the Johnson Administration he does not
think highly, and though the President interfered
little, that little neither increased his reputation
as a financier nor as a statesman. On Mr. M'Culloch
and his subordinat-s fell the labour and re-
sponsibility. That gentleman gained his financial
experience in Indiana, when that State was a part
of " the West," and so ,kilfully conducted the State
Bank that it maintained specie payments in 1857
when all its rivals had suspended. On Mr. Chase,
the Secretary, in 1861 converting the bank-note
circulation into a national currency, he selected
Mr. M'Culloch for Comptroller of the Currency.
In 1864 NI riChase was succeeded by SenatorFessen-
den, who, after nine months, returnel to the Senate
i❑ preference• and APCulloch was promoted to be
Secretary of the Treasury. The Reviewer describes
Mr. M'Culloch as good in his judgment and advice,
unquestioned in integrity, patient, hopeful, courage-
ous; but he hari no weigh t,no influence,easy in temper,
and inclined toyield; therefore, however forcible and
just his remarks, no one attended, Congress seized
his functions, and left him to c irry out its policy
with which he had only a moderate sympathy.
Mr. Rollins was neutralized by political jealousies,
and Mr. Wells' duties were consultative only. Con-
gress distrusting the Executive assumed some of its
functions, but unfortunately the members had been
taught to regard with contempt mere administration
compared with the moral questions on which they
were returned. " The leaders of Congress, brought
up as they had been to study moral abstrac-
tions alone, carried, as heads of committees
and framers of bills, the wildest financial theories
into practical effect. They undertook, with the aid
of their boldest and ablest member, the late Thad-
deus Stevens, of Pennsylvania, to make laws of
political economy by Act of Congress, and they
succeeded so far as to throw the economical fabric
of society into an unnatural and unsound condition,
likely to last many years, and to cost the nation
either a more or less violent shock if corrected, or
a still severer blow to its credit and honour if al-
lowed to become chronic." The Reviewer then goes
o❑ to discuss "rings" and their influence, asserting
that "no bill that has money in it is-said to have a
chance of h2coming law without paying tax to some
one in its passage. On the surrender of the South-
ern armies the embarrassment of the Treasury was
great, but the people took up at once £100,000,000
of Seven-Thirty cores, and from that time there has
always been a surplus instead of a deficiency. The
financial difficulties belong to the two classes ;
those which relate to the management of the debt,
including the depreciated Legal- render currency,
and those which relate to revenue. Mr. M.Culloch
turned his attention first to the Currency, but Con-
gress declined to give him supreme power in deal-
ing with it, limiting him to withdraw £2,000,000
of greenbacks in six months, and afterwards
£BOO,OOO per month. After reducing the amount
from £80,000,000 to £73,000,000 hard times came ;
a cry was raised against contraction, and Mr.
M•Culloch yielded, and stopped redemption. On
the meeting of Congress, in spite of the Secretary's
protest, a Bill was passed withdrawing the power
of contraction. The Reviewer defends Mr. M'Cul-
loch's policy in accumulating a large gold reserve
in the Treasury to encourage regular trade and to
discourage speculators, and he managed to liquidate
£260,000,000 of temporary obligations within three
years after the war, more than £125.000,000 being
actually paid out of surplus revenue; but lie is of
opinion that all England considers him to be in error
in devoting so large a sum to the discharge of a
debt while industry was suffering under such de •

structive taxation. An excellent summary of the
attacks on the national credit is then given ; the
proceedings of Congress; of the politicians to make
political capital ; the real feeling of the nation ;
and what the repudiators got for their pains. All
which is familiar to our readers, and we are glad to
see how admirably correct the " Review" is. The
Reviewer proceeds to discuss the way in which the
Government raised the necessary revenue. There
was no want of money, for the country was very
wealthy, the Northern States being untouched by
the war; but how to collect it proved the problem.
The excessive taxes imposed were destructive
to healthy industry and violated every economic
law. After enumerating these imposts, he adds,
" Perhaps the most mischievous tax of all, which
eat into the heart of society like a cancer, was that
which resulted from the additional profit charged
by every tradesman or manufacturer, as a compen-
sation, for the risks to which he was subjected by
the daily fluctuations of the currency." To this
system and to this vitiated currency the Reviewer
attributes the corruption which has undoubtedly
been developed. Productive pursuits ceased to

* " Edinburgh Review," April, 1869.

!yield a return comparable to the rapid gains of
trade and speculation- —the rural districts threw
their surpl Ll 3 population into the great cities, which,
in spite of the rise in rents and cost of living, rapidly
grew. The currency acted as a violent spur to
speculation and as a screen to profits ; smuggling
became a system and fraud a habit. This state of
things attracted the serious attention of Congress,
and the still more serious attention of really patrio-
tic citizens, but though Congress stormed, it did no-
thing effectual to check the tide. The system of
officering the Government service was ingeniously
contrived to give force to the current ; bur, not-
withstanding the efforts made in both Houses, no
change took place. We write from memory, but
the Reviewer does not appear fully to appreciate
what a tremendous check corruption would receive
in the passage of such a bill as that of Mr. Jenckes,
of Rhode Island. Ile asserts with truth what Mr.
Wellsaffirms, that the effectof greenback currency is
to make the rich richer and the poor poorer ; to make
speculation a trade, and to generate huge corpora-
tions, whose wealth and power create oligarchies
in their States. Strong and severe as is the article, we
are bound tosay that the writer has put down naught
in malice, and its point and force are derived from its
simple truth. Although the overflow of corruption,
leaving its slimy traces all over the country, breeding
plagues in its malaria, is not a pretty picture for
Americans to contemplate. They do not object to
hear the truth from a foreign critic. It is below
what their own papers state to be the case, and the
Reviewer can substantiate all he says from official
documents. Still we hold with the Hon. Thomas
A. Jenckes that it is but a temporary phase, one of
those manias which follow other periods of excite-
ment, and which end in a general smash when
people will awake to a stern reality, and learn by
experience that they must not only be honest them-
selves, but force their neighbours to be honeit as
well ; and that any lapse from this rule will surely
tend against the weal of society. It is but the scum
which has boiled up to the surface that we see,
while beneath it is clear. and pure. Before the war
there were those who affirmed that all martial quali-
ties bad died out in the trading, peddling Yankee,
yet the world knows how this was belied by events.
We hope the first step in reform is the passage of
the Civil Service Bill ; that the Courts and I, ,gisla-
tures will be purified ; but, above all, that society
will learn to stigmatize crime, and cease to hold
that success makes any difference.