se for its money. A government, like an individual, having a
large balance of superfluous cash on hand, can do no better with it than
to pay off its debts; but to do this, when there was every prospect of a
Mormon war to raise the expenditure, little prospect of retrenchment
in any branch of service, and a daily diminishing revenue at all
points,--it was purely a piece of folly, a want of ordinary forecast, to
get rid of the cash in hand. Mr. Buchanan and Mr. Cobb were guilty of
this folly, and, for the sake of the poor _eclat_ of coming to the
relief of the money-market, (which was no great relief, after all,) they
sacrificed the hard-money pretensions of the government, and sunk its
character to the level of that of the needy "kiteflier" in Wall Street.
Their true course, in the existing condition and aspect of affairs, was
to retain their capital, and to institute a most rigid economy, a most
searching reduction, in every branch of the public service. We have,
however, yet to learn whether any such economy and reduction have been
effected.

All this was simply weakness; but in turning from the conduct of
the Finances by the administration, to consider its management of
Filibusterism, we pass from the consideration of acts of mere debility
to the consideration of acts which have a color of duplicity in them.
On the Filibusters, as on the Finances, the First Annual Message of the
President was outspoken and forcible. It characterized the past and
proposed doings of William Walker and his crew, as the common sense
and common conscience of the world had already characterised them, as
nothing short of piracy and murder. Recognizing the obligations of
fraternity and peace as the rule of right in international relations, it
pledged the utmost vigilance and energy of the Federal powers against
every semblance of freebootery. In pursuance of this promise, orders
were issued to the various civil and naval authorities, (orders not very
clear, it is true, but clear enough to bear but one meaning in honest
and simple minds,) to the effect that they should maintain a sharp
watch, and execute a summary arrest of every person suspected of or
discovered in unlawful enterprises. The authorities on land, to whom it
was easy to hold secret communication with Washington, were found to
have very blind eyes and very slippery hands. General Walker and his
confederates were taken at New Orleans, but they passed through
the courts far more ra