Federal Finance.
A significant debate occurred last week in the
Federal House of Representatives, on the bill which has subsequently passed, authorizing the issue of a hundred and fifty millions of Treasury notes, payable on demand, and of five hundred millions of Federal bonds, containing, also, a provision requiring the notes of the
Government to be receivable in payment of all public and private debts as a legal tender.
Mr. Spaulding, of New York, representing the district of
Mr. Seward, and a leader of the
House, said in the debate, ‘"we all agree that taxation must, in various forms, be imposed to the amount of at least one hundred and fifty millions of dollars, on which to rest the credit of these notes and bonds.
In the second place, we agree that hereafter the war must be carried on principally upon the credit of the
Government, and that paper, in the form of notes and bonds, must be issued to an amount equal to our expenditures, deducting be amount of current revenue not absorbed is paying interest and ordinary expenses of Government."’
Mr. Stevens, the chief financial oracle of the
House, spoke in more detail, and substantially as follows: "This bill is a measure of necessity, not choice.
It provides a means in the two forms of paper authorized, of six hundred and fifty millions of dollars.
The late Administration left a debt of $100,000,000 Congress, at its extra session, authorized an additional loan of $150,000,000, which has been all taken except fifty millions.
The banks, before they had paid all of the portion of this loan which they had taken, broke down under the load, and suspended specie payment.
The last of their payments was made yesterday, and on the same day the banks have refused to receive the Treasury notes, which must sink to depreciated money.
The remaining fifty millions the
Secretary of the Treasury has been unable to negotiate.
There is now a floating debt, audited and unaudited, of one hundred and thirty millions.
The daily expenses of the
Government are now about two millions.
To carry us on till the next meeting of Congress will take six hundred millions more, making about seven hundred millions to be provided for. But as this Congress must provide for appropriations to July, 1863. seven months more must be added to these expenses.
That would require four hundred and twenty millions, which, added to the amount before estimated, makes eleven hundred millions.
If the first seven hundred millions is forced on the market.
I have no doubt that the bonds would sell as low as sixty per cent, as in the last year; and even then, it would be found impossible to find payment in coin.
But a large part must be accepted in the depreciated notes of non-specie paying banks.
If the minimum discount that any reasonable man could fix say twenty-five per cent, the loss on eleven hundred millions to be sold would be two hundred and seventy-five millions.
It would therefore require at least bonds to the amount of thirteen hundred and fifty millions to produce sufficient currency to carry us to the end of the next fiscal year.
30th June, 1863. The sum is too frightful to be tolerated.
This is the language of an Administration man, a prominent Pennsylvanian, a hot advocate of the war. It is their own statement of their own case by the oracles of Yankee sentiment.
They confess that it will require the issue of thirteen hundred and fifty millions of dollars to pay the present floating debt of the
Federal Government, and to carry on the war till July of next year.
The aggregate Federal date will thus be, taking in the old debt, and the two hundred millions sold of the debt authorized last summer, sixteen hundred and fifty millions of dollars.
This amount results from estimating expenses at the rate of two millions a day, but it is well known that these expenses are near three millions.
The probabilities are, therefore, that, instead of the 1st of July, 1863, finding them with a debt of sixteen hundred and fifty millions, it will find them with a least two thousand millions, failing as a charge of one hundred and twenty millions annually to the account of taxation.
The bill now just passed imposes a tax of one hundred and fifty millions, and makes every man who has a debt due him or property to sell to receive payment in Government notes, which
Stevens thinks must go down to sixty cents in the dollar.
It remains to be seen what effect these measures will have upon the pocket nerve of the
Yankees.
We now see why their leaders are so anxious for early victories.
They want to exhilarate and tickle the people while they rob them.
Does the
South want to take a hand in paying this lag debt, and subjecting herself to this heavy taxation?
If so, she has but to fold her arms and submit to subjugation.
If her pride did not rouse her to resistance, her interests do. Submission would not only be degradation, it would be utter and everlasting ruin.
