The daily phoenix. [volume] (Columbia, S.C.) 1865-1878, 1866-04-04
COLUMBIA.
Wednes lay Morning, April 4. 1866.
Financial.


The New York Times very truly
says that Secretary CullochA does
not exaggerate when he declares that it
will 'be national calamity if Con-
gress shall fail to grant additional
powers to the Secretary The whole
tenor of his letter to the Chairman of
the Ways and Means Committee
shows that these additional powers
are sought, not to magnify his Office
or enable him to carry out policy
Of the principles of which the coun-
try is ignorant, but merely to enable
him to hold gamblers and imitation
lists in subsection, and to maintain
unfalteringly the policy which has
already been attended with the hap
piest results. @
According to some of Mr.. McCul-
loch's opponents, the great source of
financial danger lies in what they
aIege to be excessive importations of
foreign goods. They complain that
speculation is rife, and that to restore
specie payments, it is only necessary
to restrain the speculative spirit in
business matters. It does not seem
to have occurred to them that the
speculative operations of which they
complain, are an incident inseparable
from an inflated currency-that they
originated, in common with many
other speculations, in the flood of in
convertible paper, which was occa-
stoned by the necessities of war-and
that they will continue so long h.
Congress shall resist the efforts of the
Treasury to ''adopt healthy finan-
cial policy" The gentlemen who
profess to deprecate balloonin1 in
business, and to desire the restora-
ton of trade to a. sound basis, make
themselves responsible for much of
the existing evil when they refuse to
sanction the policy of contraction, of
which the Secretary is the consistent
and the cautious advocate.
Others rest their refusal upon the
allegation that the country is pro-
crossing toward resumption rapidly
enough. That it has made some
progress in that direction is undenia-
BILE. That the appreciation in the
value of greenbacks during the last
few months has exceeded popular ex-
pectation, is perhaps equally true.
But to what is the gratifying circum-
stance attributable? Certainly in part
to the determined stand which the
present Secretary made against con-
tinuance of imitation and in favor of
q return to a specie basis. Nobody
doubts that the enormous premium
upon gold which was maintained
during the closing year of the war,
was less the result of legitimate
causes than of the gambling combi-
nations, whose operations were pur-
sued with an utter indifference to
everything but their own profit. But
for the gamblers, greenbacks might
have been kept at steady and not
1mmoderate discount. And why is a
paper dollar worth more to-day than
it was six months ego? Why has the
price of gold declined continually,
until men begin to speak with conf
dence Of the time when five dollars
in greenbacks shall be equal to FIVE
dollars in gold, and when honest coin
shall once more enter into the trans
actions Of daily life? Why? Is it
not because the known views and
policy of the head of the Treasury
Department have cowed the gold
gamblers, and broken up their COM
binations? Is it not because the
power already welded by the Secre-
tary has been exerted to check wild
speculation, to frustrate knavish ma
n9uvres, and to prepare the moneyed
and the mercantile classes for re-
turn to the honest, old-fashioned
basis of gold and silver? Is it not