The schedule.
We should have informed the public yesterday that the
Commissioners, acting under the pressure of an universally-felt and powerfully-expressed public sentiment, have abolished their lately- established schedule, and substituted one much more nearly in accordance with common sense and the requirements of the country.
It is well that they have done so. Had the repealed schedule been allowed to take effect, we see not what could possibly have followed short of a general repudiation of the currency and the acknowledged bankruptcy of the
Government.
When the people found that it took thirty dollars Confederate currency to buy a single bushel of wheat, they would soon have refused to take any quantity of it for any article, however small its value.
It was the most singularly ill-timed stroke of policy, moreover, that has ever fallen under our observation.
It came just at the time when there was reason to hope, from the great reduction effected in the volume of the currency by the law of the last Congress, that Confederate money would rapidly appreciate, and commodities rapidly fall in price.
This change had already begun to take place when this schedule came to inflate prices to a far greater extent than they had ever been inflated by the enormous redundancy which Congress had been at so much pains to check.
It set at naught all that body had ever done, and carried us at once back to the glorious days of the paper mill — or rather, we should have said, it would have had that effect had it not been arrested at the commencement of its career.
The schedule places prices nearly where they were.
We should have been pleased to see them reduced upon a scale somewhat proportionate to the reduction of the circulating medium.
If seven dollars were enough for a bushel of wheat this
time last year, when the crops were so many failures, and the currency enormously redundant, surely it is greatly too much now, when the crops are finer than they have been for many years, and the circulation has been reduced to such an extent that money has become scarce and difficult to obtain.
We are, however, so well pleased with the last act of the
Commissioners that we are disposed to overlook all other shortcomings.
We do not fear that the farmers will not send in their crops as early as possible.
Fear of Yankee raids will be stimulant enough for that purpose.
A precious number of hoarders were cleared out by the late raids, and that the most avaricious farmer will be apt to remember.
He may care nothing for his country or the army.
He may be willing to see both perish, provided it tenure to his advantage.
There are men of that sort, though we hope not many.
But even men of that sort do not like the idea of losing everything at one fell swoop.--Even men of that sort would prefer a certain sale and a fair profit to a perilous uncertainty of making any sale or profit at all. And we do assure the farmers that their wheat crop is in danger every day they hold it, and that the danger increases with the advance of every hour.
The enemy has still a large force of cavalry, and his avowed determination is to starve the country into submission.--This, indeed, is the principle upon which he is conducting the campaign.
He has found that fighting "won't pay," and no Yankee holds on to what is both unprofitable and dangerous.
Raiding, they believe, will pay, and it is less dangerous than- regular fighting.
Besides, it encourages the natural propensity of the
Yankees, who are, with a few exceptions, all base thieves.
They will stick to it and push it as far as it will go. Of
that let the farmers rest perfectly assured.--And lot us advise them, too, to put everything they possibly can out of their way. We do not know that they need this hint — indeed, we are sure that most of them do not. Yet it will not be amiss for them — especially for those holding up for a dozen prices — to take it. They may chance to lose everything while they are calculating upon realizing fortunes.
