New-York daily tribune. [volume] (New-York [N.Y.]) 1842-1866, 1859-12-09
AUSTRIA.
AUSTRIAN FINANCES.

bolfesponooht
VIENNA, Nov. 20, 1859.
Hereditary monarchs, popular dictatOrs, and ma
tiona assemblies, in one word, people of every de-
scription who are invested with supreme power,
are generally found to believe in the Omnipotence
of will We smile at Xerxes who willed the tenn
pestuous waves to sabside in quetness and had
them beaten with iron chains for their dsobedience
to bis command. In studying the grand epoch Of
the French Convention, we feel thunderstruck at
the aspect of the iron men who ordered their CO.
tempOraries of the 18th century to be vlrtuous, in
the Spartan sense Of the word, and dictated the
prices Of commodities never to rise over an arbitra-
ry maximum, with the menace of death suspended
over disobedience. They, of course, believed in
the omnipotence of will, and. consequently, under
took to create virtue and reggate prices, by way Of
decree Even more sober and less heroic legisla-
lures, such as English Paraments, are not exempt
from the same delusion. There was a time when
the ruling classes of Great Britain had the will to
do away with pauperism, but the paupers being
stubborn enough to keep their ground, Parliament
rushed in aud ordered working basties to be erected
for the punishment Of the surplus population who
so dOggedly stuck TO existence. Has not the Brit
ish House of Commons, in our own days, taken to
solemn utterance of its will electoral bribery might
be suppressed, though bribery flows from the very
yitals of its constitution Considering all this
must not bear too hard on Francis Joseph, the En-
perOr of Austria, who on the 18th OF November,
solemnly declared his will that that ugly customer
the Deficit was to be banshed forever from the
Imperial States and that on the 3lst OF October
1860, it must have perempt0riy ceased haunting
the Imperial Exchequer
As TO the mechanism for realizing the Imperial
will. il has certainly been put in working order, II
comnared with bygone times Before the Goth
of August last, the chief of every Ministerial De-
oartment transacted his business with the Emperor,
without any regard to bis other colleagues. Each
of them proved ingenious enough in the discovery OF
extravagaut expenditure in the department OF his
colleague but none felt ever able to spare one
single penny in his own department. Thus, the
commission of 1850, appointed for squarlng exPen-
ditures to revenues, proved complete failure. Its
successors shared the same fate, but the mlscar-
riage was accounted for by the magnitude OF friction
the machinery of the commissions had 10 struggle
with This is no longer the case AS far as the
road goes, the trains may start now Inc com,
mission consists this time not of subalterns, but OF
Ministerial chiefs themselves, and, by Imperial
ukase. they are ordered to agree between them
selves upon such economies in their different
branches of administration as would have done
away with the deficit on the 3lst OF October lc0O
So far so well The only question that remains TO
be answered is, whether the thing is possible.
IL is known that on the llth OF October 1897
the Austrian Minister of finances laid before the
nDblic AN official statement of the Austrian State
revanues md State expenditure for the year 1853.
According 10 that document the ms aud outs of the
Austrian Exchequer stood in 1858 as follows;