The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1871-02-01
HOW OUR NATIONAL FINANCES
ARE MANAGED.

HOW OUR NATIONAL FINANCES
ARE MANAGED.
NEW Japanese embassy, headed by a ia
panese Assistant Minister of Finance, has
arrived at Washington for the purpose of
making minute investigations into the fnan-
cial policy of this country, and the general
management of the public funds. Jushe
Hirobumie Ito, who is the leader of this
mission, will find much to admire in the or
ganization of the Treasury Department and
its diversified branches. He will discover
that admirable plans have been devised for
the collection, safe-keeping, and disburse-
ment of thousands of millions of dollars
that a series of checks and counter-checks
make vulgar defalcations nearly impossible;
and that immense numbers of huge accounts
are correctly adjusted. He will behold won
derful evidences of the capacity of the peo-
pie to endure onerous taxation, of an unfalter-
ing determination to maintain the public
credit, and of fidelity, in many quarters, in
matters relating to the receipts and expendi-
lures of the Government.
If the Honorable Jushe Hirobumie Ito
stops after making these Investigations, he
will carry back with him to Japan the i'm
preston that we have discovered the secret
hidden from all other wealthy nations, of
spending the public money solely for the
public good of putting on taxation only to
the extent absolutely required; of spending
money only where expenditures imperatively
necessary; and of guarding the national trea-
sure as vigilantly as the miser
guards his worshipped heard. But
the Honorable Ito will commit a sad
error if he prematurely adopts such
conclusions. He will have to look beneath
the mere machinery by which money is col
lected and paid out, to the influences that
mould the laws and issue the orders under
which payments are made, before he can
fathom tie secret springs OF the financial
policy of the United States. He will have to
comprehend that while Congress theoretically
holds the purse strings, it necessarily intrusts
practical disbursements to various executive
officials, and by the time he understands how
these officials occasionally exercise the dis
cretionary power with which they are
endowed, he will see that there
is good deal of human nature
in man on this side of the wide waters of the
Pacific as well as in Ormus or in Ind
Travellers have affirmed that in the domains
of some despotic Oriental princes the ap-
proaches to power were guarded by such an
exacting set of intermediate officials that it
could be set down as o rule that articles for
which the vender received but dollar usually
drew ten dollars from the strong-box of the
prince. We have got nothing quite so bad
as this, as a regular system, in this
country, but in some ramiications
of American government there are dangerous
approaches to it. To an unscrupulous man
who possesses superabundant political infu-
ence in the United States, all the laws on the
statute-books and all the checks of the Trea-
sury Department furnish but feeble safe
guards for the public treasure. The golden
apples cannot easily be stolen by uninhuen-
tial thieves; but if 8 smooth-tongued and
plausible pilferer happens to have the ear of
a Cabinet minister, the special favor of the
head of an important bureau, or the power
to smuggle few insidious clauses into an
appropriation bill, it is wonderful how
quickly fortunes may be made out
of airy nothings, and how speedily
vast sums disappear from the Treasury for
which the American people receive no sub
stantial equivalent. Take the case exposed
in the House of Representatives few days
ago by Mr.. Dawes, as an ilustration-we
mean the Chorpenning case. The Honorable
Ito will find it hard to discover a parallel in
all the annals of corruption in Japan, China,
or India. Thirteen years after a mail con-
tractor has completed his contract, and got
all the money to which he was legitimately
entitled, he is only prevented,
by fortunate accident, from
pocketing half million dollars of the peo-
ples money on pretext SO flimsy that it is
not worth a moments consideration! They
cannot do much worse than this under any
system of extortion that the genius of
Asiatic official corruption can invent. For
tunately, the contemplated wrong seems in
this instance to have been arrested, but the
mere fact that it was so nearly consummated
may we'll make the American people shudder
with the fear that from time to time similar
schemes are completely suceessful and that,
as the years roll on, official corruption in
oreases with frightful rapidity.