The daily phoenix. [volume] (Columbia, S.C.) 1865-1878, 1868-01-09
COLUMBIA.
Thursday Morning, January 8. 1868.
sensatIon CipherinG.

arithmetic by the head and hands OF
the Finance Department and bureaus
of the Government, aided by very
liberal contributions from outsiders.
Two years ago, the Secretary of the
Treasury fixed upon period Of thir-
ty-two years for the liquidation of
the debt, by the application of the
sum of 100000, 600 per annum to
its principal and interest. In this
suggestion, there was no attempt to
adjust the burden to the growing
ability of the country to bear it.
Neither increase of wealth nor of
population was taken into the calcu-
iation. In his last report, he sub
mits a proposition, credited to "a
very intelligent gentleman of Massa-
ohusetts," showing how. by regular
and uniform assessment of $500 pe1.
capita per annum, the debt and inte-
rest may be provided for, and COM
plete extinguishment effected in
seventeen years from date, beginning
with an appropriation Of $175, 0O0,-
600 for the purpose in 1868, and
winding up the process with $685.
100000 in 1884. This last project OF
the Secretary, it will be observed. by
increasing the agony, lessons the
period of torture from his former
notion of thirty-two years to seven
teen. Contraction everywhere-con-
traction of the currency, of the debt,
and of its duration-a tonic contrac-
tion, promising a general lock-jaw as
soon as his system spreads over the
body corporate. But it is not these
schemes and their workings, but the
fantastic statistical figurings en-
ployed in these demonstrations, that
just now occupies attention. The
grand total of the debt is now ex-
pressed in billons-a word 80 new in
the political arithmetic of the United
States, that few compass the height
and depth, the length and breadth Of
its meaning; but the amateur cipher
ers let loose by this magnificent sub
.ject, and the problems which it in
wolves, seem to make nothing of
figures running to ten, eleven or
twelve places. Moreover, they are
as minute in exactitude as they are
sublime in magnitude calculations
at once telescope in sweep and mi
croscopic in detail, of which we have
the finest example extant in the late
encyclical letter of the late Secretary
of the Treasury, Hon. Robert J.
Walker. 1t concerns him, it seems,
somehow, to forecast the wealth of
the nation for the next generation or
two, and with robust confidence in
ratios, averages and per centages, he
goes to work at the calculation of
predictions of the greatest proper
tions ever revealed to a benighted
world. He gets his ratio of the ma
tion's growth in wealth from the
census of 1860. The rate in the
Immediately preceding ten years, it
appears by that authority, was 1876
per cent. and assuming this increase
for the next coming four decades, his
multiplication table takes the respon-
sibility of putting the national
assets in Ammo Domini 1900 at
the sum of 1923, 3SS, 439, ,2SS. This
neat little sum is just twenty six
and half times the wealth of the
Union, in real and personal property,
in the year 1860, according to census
valuation, which Mr.. Walker unre-
servedly accepts. An increase OF
twenty-six and a half times in forty
years, is not bad for new country;
but it is as nothing to the results of
another score of years increase. cal
culated by the same rate that the
ex-Secretary so courageously adopts.
-Four hundred and twentythree bill
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