The New York herald. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1840-1920, 1868-10-27
President johnson ON the Debt and Taxa.
tiOn-A Flemish Account.

tiOn-A Flemish Account.
The letter of the President on the national
debt and taxation, which we published yester-
day, is to the point and every word true. In
fact he was careful not to- overstate the
astounding extravaganza of the government
and the burden of taxation, and took the
aggregate official statement Of the Treasury
Department for the last three years and the
estimate for the present fiscal year. Had he
gone more into details, and had he shown that,
enormous as the revenue of the government is,
it does not represent the entire burden of taxa
ton, he would have made the case much worse.
Besides the four or five hundred millions
year actually carried into the Treasury, there
has been a hundred millions or moro year
stolen through the revenue frauds and by
plundering officials. Then, tho burden of
taxation is vastly increased upon the indus
trious classes by the exemption from taxes Of
that enormous amount of capital invested in
government bonds and by that Infamous law
Of Congress which relieved the manufacturers
of New England from their share of the ma
tional burdens. =
II is idle for the radical newspapers to deny
the facts set forth by Mr.. Johnson or to at
tempt to explain them away. They stand out
in alarming proportions, so that every one can
see and understand them. The expenditures,
as he says, during the last three years of peace
have been, successfully, FIVE hundred and
twenty million dollars, three hundred aud
forty-six million dollars and three hundred
and ninety-three million dollars, while the
amount estimated for the present year, ending
the 3oth Of June next, is three hundred and
seventy-two million dollars-that is, during
four years Of peace the expenditures of the
government amount to over sixteen hundred
millions. In comparing this with the previous
expenditures Of the government the President
shows that, from the 4th of March, 1889, when
the federal government went into operation,
two years, the sum expended was only seven
teen hundred millions. In the last four years
of peace the expenditures have been as much,
within hundred millions, as in seventy
two wears before. Let IL be remem-
bered, too, that during these seventy-two
years the republic had to bear the
debt of the war of independence, amounting
in 1889 to seventy-fvc millions the cost Of the
war of 1912, with an addition Of eighty-two
millions to the debt; the war with Mexico,
which added sixty-four millions more, besides
the costly Indian wars and the amount expend :
cd for the purchase Of Louisiana, Florida,
California, Arizona and for the indemnity to
Texas. These extraordinary expenditures OF
the government amounted probably 10 over
two hundred millions 80 that, in fact, the
current and ordinary expenses amounted to
less in sevcnty-two years than they have
during the last four years Of peace. What
startling picture is this for the people to con-
template! What comment on radical legisla-
ton and rule
The gigantic civil war we passed through
and the vast sum required annually to pay the
interest on the debt contracted by II are referred
10 by the radicals as the cause OF such
monstrous expenditures. Without adverting
TO the fact that we had no civil war till the
radicals came into power, there is this other
fact standing out against them, that they
ever since the war commemorative, since
peace was restored--and to them, and
them only, are the enormous cNpendi-
lures TO b. charged. The nation had
costly wars before. ~ those with Great Britain
and Mexico: but no such extravaganza ana
mismanagemen, were known then. Had tho
war and finances been properly managed dur