Cowardly armies and Grumbling tax-payers.
It is customary for Government to pledge some fund adequate to the redemption of any loan which it purposes to put upon the market.
This measure is very important and often absolutely necessary to give credit to the bonds proposed to be sold.
The Federal loan proposed for the present war cannot be sold without some such pledge.
The capitalists of the
North have informed
Mr. Chase that no money can be borrowed, unless specific revenues are set apart and pledged for the redemption of the war loans by the acts authorizing them.
The Federal Congress finds itself confronted by this difficulty in framing its financial legislation.
It would be very easy to enact a law merely directing the sale of four hundred millions of bonds.
But the bonds thus authorized would not be taken by capitalists, and the war does in the legislative chambers find their chase of the
South impeded by the obstacle to which we have alluded.
They must not only vote millions, but they must vote taxes of some sort to liquidate the interest and provide for the principal of those millions.
Their only means of providing for the liquidation of the new loans is of course that of direct taxation.
They know very well that the tariff revenues of the
North must always be very small now that they have lost the
Southern trade.
They know that these revenues, however productive, will not be adequate to meet the current expenses of the
Federal Government.
They are therefore forced to resort to some other fund to meet their new loans, and they have no other fund than what they may raise from direct taxation.
To direct taxes, therefore, they are obliged to resort; and an irrepressible conflict has arisen between the representatives of the landed interests and those of the commercial interests of the
North.
The rural members insist that the tax shall be levied upon all classes of the community --upon the income, salaries and wages of the manufacturing and commercial classes, as well as upon the lands of the farmers.
Mr. Chase committed the indiscretion of recommending the imposition of a direct tax on land alone, and would have exempted the urban populations of the
North from the extra burden.
His plan does not please the rural classes of the
North, and the following significant debate took place in the
House on the 26th ult.,
Mr. Spalding, who is the immediate representative of
Mr. Seward, leading off:
The
House then went into committee on the direct tax bill,
Mr. Colfax in the chair.
Mr. Spalding, of New York, obtained the floor, and in an elaborate speech urged the passage of the act as a matter of pressing necessity to the
Government.
Already Government loans bearing interest at six per cent, were found unsaleable, or could be disposed of only at 82 or 85 cents on the dollar; and it had become absolutely necessary to induce the capitalists to take loans, by the liberality of the rate of interest and by the ample guarantees of their ultimate repayment.
He earnestly asked gentlemen not to evade the responsibility of the occasion, but to come boldly forward to the support of the country, which must else go into bankruptcy.
The system of taxation proposed to be introduced is one which will last for many years, and whatever defects may be discovered in the present bill could be remedied in time.
Mr. Egerton, of
Ohio, opposed the bill chiefly on the ground that while the lands of the farmers, which pay but three per cent., were pledged to the payment of the expenses of the war, the wealth of stock-jobbers, of merchant princes and of commission merchants, bringing in not less than ten per cent. profits, was exempted.
The common sense of the people would, he was sure, revolt against the bill.
Better that the country should temporarily become bankrupt than that so odious a bill should pass.
Let it become a law, and the farming interests of the whole country would rise up against the war.
Mr. Edwards, of
New Hampshire, thought this bill could not be forced through the
House by appealing to the fears of the members, that they would be placed in an attitude of hostility to the Administration.
The tax, he contended, was unequal, and therefore unjust, and he had no fears that in opposing it he ran counter to the wishes of his constituents.
Mr. Diven replied that if this Congress shall adjourn without providing the requisite means demanded by the
Government, they will be greater dastards than those who fled from the battle-field on Thursday and on Sunday.
He confessed that the probability of this
House adjourning without passing this bill was to him more appalling than the disasters which befell the
Government on Sunday.
‘"Ample guarantees for their ultimate repayment"’ must be provided in support of the war loans, and the taxation proposed must ‘"last for many years,"’ is the language of an Administration leader.
An
Ohio member resists the bill as unduly burdensome upon farmers, and says that the ‘"landed interests of the whole country will rise up against the war"’ if this bill is pushed to its passage.
Congress will compromise, by taxing incomes, salaries and wages as well as lands; or else members will all unite in voting down the bill altogether.
This is the real test of the duration of the war. At the first proposal to levy a tax absolutely necessary to its maintenance, members manifest a temper to abandon it. If their soldiers in the field have no stomach for fight; and their people at home none for war taxes, it is clear that the war must break down.
If the dastardism of the farming and commercial classes is, by
Mr. Diven's rule, as great as the dastardism at
Stone Bridge,--these classes fleeing from taxes as their regiments fled from our ‘"masked batteries,"’ then, by the double dastardism, the backbone of the war must surely be broken.
Bankrupt of money and bankrupt of pluck, the successful prosecution of the war is simply out of the question. --With pluck in their armies, they might conquer and confiscate the funds by which to prosecute the war. With free and liberal contributions of money and taxes by the people, they might hire foreign soldiers, in the absence of courage among their own, to carry on the war. But without courageous armies or willing tax-payers, it seems to us that the war cannot be maintained.
