Daily Ohio statesman. [volume] (Columbus, Ohio) 1855-1870, 1868-02-11
From the Cincinnati Commercial, Feb.7l
COncerning Several Things Of
COnseOueuce.


The public debt was increased by twenty
millions of dollars during the month of
January-nearly twO-thirds of a million
each day. This does not bear the appear
ance of a speedy extinction of the debt.
Those eminent financial theorizers who re-
gard national debt as national blessing,
and who have been disturbed in their
minds lest we deprive posterity of its share
of the burdens and benefactions OF the
debt, can, we think, afford to dismiss all
further apprehensions. Posterity will not
be cruelty bereaved by our intense zeal to
extinguish the debt before the close of the
present century.
Congress to hasten legislation on financial
and revenue questions. 1t was as well
known on the first day of the session, as
now, that the Government was deriving no
considerable revenue from the tax upon
distilled spirits. Those who had given at
tention to the subject and were in position
to obtain tolerably exact Information, fixed
the rate of revenue actually collected upon
liquors at ten cents on the gallon, and as a
plea for reduction of the tax, urged the
utter impOssibility of collecting the two
dollars assessed by law. Our Chamber of
Commerce has declared. by resolution, the
opinion that the tax should at once be re-
duced to fifty cents. The motive for fraud
would be lessened; illicit distillation in a
small way. and in places which the revenue
officers were not likely to discover, would
stop, and the collection of the tax be rem
dered comparatively easy, end in any event
possible.
Notwithstanding such declarations, and
the positive evidence of the failure of the
law. Congress has done nothing beyond the
abolishment of the transportation of bonded
spirits toward the better management of
this important source of revenue. The off,
GERS, who have grown rich in the business
of cheating the Government, sharing the
spoils with the whisky spectators, are re-
tanned, the rate of taxation remains un-
changed, the Government derives from the
manufacture OF distilled spirits almost
enough revenue to pay the expenses of it's
collection, and the public debt grows at
the rate of twenty millions month.
In the mean time Congress reconstructs
reconstruction, virtually undoing one day
what it did the day before; strings act up
on act, provision upon provision, and seems
to plunge into more inextricable mire with
every effort topull the Southern States out
of the bog. The Secretary of State divides
his time between schemes of new conquests
by purchase and diplomatic correspondence
apparently as interminable as Mr.. Dicks
memorial, while the President talks of per-
emptOry demands on the Government of
Great Britain, and fills the imaginations of
: Fenian heroes with limitations OF the pos
sibility of war with their hereditary en-
emy.
We are in pretty condition truly to buy
territory and engage in a costly foreign
war, when. without such splendid opportu-
mites for expenditure, wecan not run the
machine" without adding twenty millions a
month to the grand total of an enormous
public debt. Before we put on the supreme
airs of monarchs, and undertake to dictate
to the Insignificant portion of mankind not
included within the limits OF the United
States. would it not be well to fix upon a
substantial financial policy, adjust revenue
to expenditure, equalize taxation, recreate
the civil governments of ten shattered
Southern States, and set the wheels OF in
dustry running throughout the country
When this shall have been done, we can
then with some propriety discuss the ques-
ton whether it will or will not be better to
negotiate differences with other nations,
populate and cultivate the territory we
have, and mind our own business.