Weekly national intelligencer. [volume] (Washington [D.C.]) 1841-1869, 1846-01-24
THE GOVERNMENT PAPER AND IT'S FIGURES.

THE GOVERNMENT PAPER AND IT'S FIGURES.
It's impossible, we find, to get the Editor Of the
Union" to retract an error, even when he has
himself evidently been led into it bhndfold. So
that the extent Of the circulation Of that paper it
will be believed by its readers, that instead Of the
expenditures Of the Van Buren, Administration hav-
ing exceeded the revenue within its period by forty
millions of dollars, and the expenditures of the four
years Wing and Tyler Administration having fallen
short of the revenue by several Millions the former
pattern Of economy, and the latter of extrava-
gance! Absurd as this is, the Unon'' actually
persists in it.
The Editor Of that print objects to the authority
of the official Treasury Report, quoted by US, be-
cause he thinks he has discovered in it an :. error
Of over thirteen millions Of dollars y and, because
we would not take the trouble to expose blunder
which the merest Tyro in finance would have been
able to explain to him, he says chat we maintain
on that subject an eloquent silence" We be-
lieve that we must take the trouble to proUe the
Terror = to be altogether mistake of his own or
he may, claiming to have had the last word, also
claim victory.
We go back, therefore, to the number of the
j
have been discovered, in Mr.. Secretary EwTNos
Report to Congress in June, ls4l. The passage
in that Report in which this error " is supposed
to be, is as follows:
From the year 1916 1887, period Of twenty
years. the constantly exceeded the expenditures The
average annual surplus during that time ,226 81,
making aggregate of $40 764 81 Within
that there applied to the extinction Of the national
debt S2OS 1872 A. and there was deposited with the
nd on The Ist nj
January 1887, in the Treasury Of the United States lud
ing the fourth insament due the States surplus OF
17,l09,473 26.
Upon which passage the Government Editor re-
marks as follows:
at will be that Mr. Ewing asserts from 1916 to 1897
that there was received into the Treasury the
sum of. S24O, I54 u
OF this there paid
account of the public debt $685. 792, 1877 a.
Deposited with the States. .2s, 10, 664 81
236, 500, 1872 35
Deduct. OBSERVATION-DISCLOSURES. 3, 1854, 972 80
g Here is of the Wing books kept and
presented Congress- by Mr. Ewing of 500 "a,
which the Intelgencer rePubishes No further need
be given made such authority except say
that there reliance placed upon the further aega-
tons made in it It will take a unimpeachabe witness
than this document sustain any charge against Mr. Van
Burens administration" &c &c.
The source Of the blunder, not of Mr.. EWING,
but of the asfae fnanciers of the present Admins
tration who have apparently placed the government
editor in his present dilemma, lies visiby on the
surface.
The receipts into the Treasury within the period
referred to were as stated above. To these re-
ceipts add the balance Of cash in The Treasury at
the commencement January l, 1867 Of that pc
riod, and then deduct the amount of payments with
in the same period, and you have the balance in
the Treasury on the lst Of January, stated, of
over seventeen millions of dollars.
This is the whole secret of this supposed error
which, repeat, is but the error of the Editor Of
the (" Union or Of some raw hand in the Treasury,
who, not having got further than his A, B, c. in the
"New Books" and therefore misconceiving the
whole matter, has committed the government paper
in its unjusti6able manner.
A reference to Mr.. Secretary DALLAs's Official
Report shows the balance in the Treasury ON the
LIST Of January, 1916, to have been about thirteen
millions Of dollars, being the precise amount of the
serror " Of the government paper.
An act dvorcing Mrs. s. C. p. THOMAS from her