The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1869-03-25
Our National Finances.

&T0rn the NJ r. tribune.
Whoever gave any credit to the bulletin Of
Mr.. Alexander Delmar, issued some eight or
ten months ago, in gleeful response to call
from few Of our leading Copperheads,
wherein he demonstrated that our Treasury
would be empty and our finances utterly down
at the heel by the 1st of July next, must be
rather astonished to learn that, though no
fraction of additional burden has since been
laid on the people, we have still about one
hundred millions in the Treasury, whereof
seventy.fve millions belongs there (the resi-
due being balanced by certificates of deposit
afoat), and are able to resume in earnest the
extinction of our debt by buying up and pay
Ing off at least fifty millions of principal We
might do this tomorrow without endangering
xhe prompt payment Of our accruing interest;
and we do earnestly hope to see the process Of
paying off resumed and vigorously prosecuted
at an early day. We are tired Of printing
monthly statements that our debt is about
twsnty-s six hundred and fifty millions, from
which deduct cash in the Treasury one hun
dred millions, and there will remain due
twenty-five hundred and fifty millions, or
thereab0ut: we want to state at an early day
that the cash lately on hand has been mainly
devoted to the purchase or payment of
debt, so that there remain but ten millions or
30 In the Treasury, while the debt has been
actually reduced to twenty-five hundred and
fifty millions.
We object to the retention of so much, or
(indeed) or of any large amount in the Trea-
sury, on these grounds
I. II sggravates the premium on gold. The
Government makes gold needlessly scarce in
the street by piling up cords of 1t in the Trea-
sury. The gold certificates are the gold
gamblers chips or checks, whereby they are
enabled unduly to depress the public credit.
We insist that the Treasury shall desist from
banking their pernicious game.
III. II subjects the people to heavy loss.
Had the surplus gold in the Treasury been
persistently applied, from the lst of January,
1866, to the purchase and extinction of public
debt that debt would have been at least twenty
millions less than 1t is. We have seen the
time, not long since, when seventy rlillons
of gold would t'vN boi 81 inety
millions of bo. K. ,,,...- d y nas passed,
never to returHs 9We must now pay at least
eighty millions for ninety millions OF bonds,
and perhaps more. But our bonds are creep
ing surely up to par, and we should buy
while we can still buy at considerable dis.
count. At all events, we should no longer
keep the Treasury full of gold and pay in
terest thereon.
III. There ia danger in this vast accumula-
tion. We presume all our Treasury othoial
are honest men, yet they are subject Il
Temptation, like the rest of us. Suppose on'
who had access to the treasure vaults should
be persuaded, by some sanguine or desperate
broker, that he conld borrow 100000 from
the millions without detection, and that tn
broker had "dead sure thing" for making
fortune suddenly Herewith, when the golt
could be replaced, two families made happy
and no harm done; and suppose there shoul'
be a "slip-up" in the 'dead sure thing" re
uuiripp another 100000, and then another
and another, until the abstraction had run u
70 millions, and could no longer be concealed
would there be anything different in thi
tragedy from what traDspires periodically al
around usf When banks cannot protec
themselves against defalcations, can we rea
sonably expect the Treasury to. escape fol
evers We should feel sense OF relief II "
should hear that all the spare coin in tn
Treasury had been converted into bonds, an
the bonds burned TO ashes.
We believe that such conversion, togethe
with the redemption Of the gold certificates
would take us at least half way to resumptio
at once. We make gold scarce by hoardin
1t: Our hoard subserves no good purpos
ThAssver. NdOes mot. as has been asserted