Year: 1868

Financial FoIlies.
Ever since the close of the war
wiseaeres of every party, sect and
creed have been husying their
brains to devise ways and means to
pay the national debt without OPP
pressing the people, and bringing
serious embarrassmcnts upon the
business interests Of the country.
And there has probably been more
nonsense written and spoken on
this subject within the lrst year,
than upon any other since the efforts
of some Thousands of wise men to
invent a plan to put down a thor
oughly organized rebellion without
fighting.


We need not name the numerous
financial schemes that have been
deyised-from the Pendleton ras-
cality of setting the Goycrnmcnt
/ printing presses at work, grinding
out greenhaclzs by the million, and
SAYING to our creditors this or
nothing to the more honest but
equally foolish Greeley hobby, of
at once commencing specie pay
ments, with not enough gold in the
treasury to pay one tenth Of the
paper currency that would be pre-
scribed for redemption within a
week from the time the experiment
should be inaugurated.


Expansion was an easy matter.
Notwithstanding the heavy drains
of the war and the Inauguration of
a system oftaxation, against which
our enemies predicted the people
would rebel, we went along smooth
lily enough IS long as money was
every day growing more plenty,
and prices advancing in a CORE
spending ratio. The taxes were
cheerfully paid, and business gen
orally was prosperous.


But this could not always con
tinue. The war ended, and with it
came q stop to the issue Of paper
currency, and afterwards came the
tightening up process in the shape
of contraction. The taxation has
been continued, and the insane idea
seems to have taken possession Of
some in authority, that the bust
ness interests of the country i'm
peratively demand that we shall
Immediately return to specie pay
ments, and that our national debt
must be paid off in fifteen or twenty
years.


This may be craftsmanship, but we
submit to any practical business
man that it is not good, sound com
mon sense.


tits very much like the folly of
man who should by gradual ascent
wind his up the side of a high
mountain to the edge Of q precipice,
and in his haste to return to the
foot OF the mountain, should jump
off the prccipice. He would reach
the bottom very quickly, and thus
far his purpose would be accom-
plished, but he. would not be of very
much use in the world thereafter.


So our financial tinkers can so on
with taxation and contraction, IN
til they reach o point where they can
resume specie payments, but the
business of the country will be in
very much the same condition rs
the corpus Of the individual who
JUMPED to the bottom of the noun
tain instead of returning by the way
he came.


Admitting that our inflated cur
rcncy is an evil; granting all that
the contractionists say against it to
be true, yet we have it Oh our hands
and like many another evil, we can
not rid ourselves OF it by q simple
BE it enacted OF Congress or all
our State Legislatures combined.


We Submit that there is no ne
ccssity for hurry-ing this matter
This generation has done q great
work in crushing the rebellion, and
our successor on the stage cannot
complain if we allow them the hon
or of bearing q portion of the ez-
pense. And it may be an evil to
have al irredemable paper currency,
but it will be a far greater evil to
crush the business OF the country
in getting rid Of it. Let us go slow
in this business, and our rapidly
growing wealth and resources will
in q few years render the burdens of
debt and taxation comparatively
light, and the problem that states
meat y have been puzzling their
brains over, will solve itself.-Io-
Ieao BJcde.