The weekly pioneer and Democrat. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn. Territory) 1855-1865, 1864-04-15
The Rise Ia Gold and Necessity of
Taxation.


the attention of the people so much at this
time as the present State of our national
currency. The distressing news that gold
rated yesterday at nearly 70 cents premi-
UNI we fear is but the precursor of more
disagreeable tidings of the same nature.
The same causes which have deprecated
tho treasury notes are still in full operation
and gathering momentum by their contin-
uance every day, for it is no longer denied
that the over issue of these notes and
other United States securities, together
with the continuance of the snail-like
protracted progress of the war are the
causes of this great national misfortune.
The radical journals, it is true, attribut-
ed the cause solely to the combinations of
gold spectators and other underlined finan-
cial myths which they disposed of by
charging it all over to the accounts of the
Oopperheads But some of them already
begin to see the error Of their calculations
and are exhibiting much better sense by
looking for remedy in some measures
beside having the government go into
competition with the brokers in chaffering
over TIE price Of its own paper, or in shut
ting their eyes to all facts and clamoring
against everybody, as Copperhead who
looked at facts and had the temerity to
proclaim them.
How there ever could have been any
misconception of the real cause of this
depreciation of the currency, or how any
one could have failed to discover the true
and only remedy, for the evil seems al
most incomprehensible unless it were
through some sort of persistent folly which
is by no means far fetched supposition.
The hallucination of these persons and
journals seems to have gone on the by
pothesis that there really was no end, and
therefore could be no exhaustion of our
National credit, and that, therefore, there
need be no limit to the issue of its pa
per. They seem to have fixed up in their
minds, an ingenious sort of financial puz-
zle by which the Nation might 60 on for
ever borrowing of the people-taxing the
people to pay it-issuing greenbacks and
bonds to the people for what the nation
has borrowed, and letting the people pay
them back again for taxes while all the
time the people would have plenty of money
and the government never was in debt
because it had borrowed entirely of its
own citizens. They never thought or at
least have never before been willing to
say so, that what in fact they loaned to
the government was the silver and gold,
and wheat and corn and labor of the
country while all they got back was the
promissory note of the government; and
that the government has kept giving these
promissory notes until she has issued over
twenty hundred millions of dollars and
was receiving last year from all sources
of revenue less than two hundred million
dollars to pay with. In other words in
almost three years of the war she has
passed her notes to the people for their
labor and material to the amount of over
two thousand million of dollars and during
the same period has not received from all
sources to pay it with, over fou hundred
millions or less thar one-fifth of the amount
required.
Now if an individual goes to obtaining
credit and raising money on bis own pa
per, and succeeds in pushing out his notes
to five times the amount of bis income or
ability to pay during the same period, he
will find, according to all financial and
commercial experience, that sooner "r
later be must stand ruinous discount if
he persists in raising money much longer
in the same way. 1t is just so with the
nation, and the people, whether they give
their gold or wheat or other material or
labor for her greenbacks are compelled
agreeably to fixed financial laws to exact
to-day the enormous discount: and even
this exorbitant rate must rapidly increase
even beyond the increase of disproportion
between the national indebtedness and ma
tional income should our national revenue
be enhanced by no other means.
Tie government itself anticipated the
idea of its greenbacks depreciating by pro-
viding that they should not be receivable
for duties on imports and interest on the
public debt, and it seems to have been only
through the stupid self-conceit of fanatics,
both in Congress and out of it, that the
proper means, by just system of taxa
ton, have not been long before provided
for, preventing this financial calamity. As
it is, the greater share of the hardships of
the times, growing out Of deprecated ma
tional currency, falls upon the poorer
classes, and are growing into almost intol-
cradle grievances, while men with capital
and the shoddy contractors are amassing
fortunes and feeling none of the burthens