New-York tribune., 1875-02-18

Sinking Fund Commissioners, though for every
dollars worth of stock transferred to them
still greater amount of new debt had to be
contracted. "And yet" rs Mr. j. X. McCul-
loch tells us, "this miserable juggle was
"lauded by all parties. The Opposi-
"tion We'd with the Ministry in cele-
"brating its praises. The Sinking Fund was
universally considered as the great bulwark
"Of the country; as means by which
90 vast treasure was to be accumulated out OF
4" nothing And 80 lasting and powerful was
I" the delusiOn, that after fourteen years ex-
"perience of its worse than absolute nullity
"when new financial scheme was introduced
Gin 1907 it contained a system of checks to
"prevent the evils likely to result from allowing
I" the Sinking Fund to accumulate without any
"limit, and deuging the country with a
"'fl food of wealth by "a too prompt discharge
"'Of the Public Debtp We doubt whether
"the history of the world can furnish another
"nstance of so singular an infatuation." We
have to-day instances of the same sort OF
mummery in the Sinking Funds of this city
and of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts,,
though it is hard to think that any one really
believes that debt can increase and decrease
at one and the same time. The present Congress
has already authorized Mr.. Bristow to issue
bonds to provide himself with gold wherewith
to resume specie payments in 1879. Suppose
he issues thirty millions in bonds to get gOld
and pays out thirty millions in gold to buy
bonds for his Sinking Fund, and that the
bonds issued for the gold are the identical
bonds bought for the Sinking FUND.-
what will have been accomplished by
this hocus- pOcus7 Just nothing at all
Everything would remain exactly as before.
We are not sure, however, in these days OF
financial quackery, that it would not be pub
lished as % full contribution to the Sinking
Fund, and @) an application of thirty million
dollars in preparation for resumption, while
(3). which would not be published Syndicate
would walk off with commissions from the
Treasury for buying and selling the bonds and
gold.
BY dint of the "damnable iteration OF
Cobbett and the Scotch professors the British
nation at last discovered that Sinking Fund
without a surplus was stupendOus cheat and
tbey abolished it in 1929 and enacted that
tbenccforth the sum to be applied to the reduc-
ton of the National Debt should be the actual
annual surplus of receipts over expenditures.
Mr.. McCuloch computes the actual dead loss
occasoned by keeping up the Sinking Fund
during the war at 1885, ,233 pounds sterling, or
about ninety million dollars, exclusive of the cx-
penses of the Commissioners. When the surplus
revenue is equal to the contribution required
by the Fund, and no loans are contracted then
Indebtedness is reduced just as it would be IL
Sinking Funds had never been heard or
When new loans are contracted, as they
must be in war and frequently are In
peace, as witness the example of our own
city, Sinking Fund is sheer nullity, and
commonly source of positive expense The
TRIBUNE believes in rapid reduction of the
Public Debt in time of peace, but IN the
present emergency it thinks the required
surplus can and should be obtained by a
reduction of expenditure and not by the I'M
position of fresh taxes.