on. Some
disturbance of business may perhaps result from the consideration of
this subject by Congress, but this temporary ill effect will be reduced
to the minimum by prompt action and by the assurance which the country
already enjoys that any necessary changes will be so made as not to
impair the just and reasonable protection of our home industries. The
inequalities of the law should be adjusted, but the protective principle
should be maintained and fairly applied to the products of our farms as
well as of our shops. These duties necessarily have relation to other
things besides the public revenues. We can not limit their effects by
fixing our eyes on the public Treasury alone. They have a direct
relation to home production, to work, to wages, and to the commercial
independence of our country, and the wise and patriotic legislator
should enlarge the field of his vision to include all of these. The
necessary reduction in our public revenues can, I am sure, be made
without making the smaller burden more onerous than the larger by reason
of the disabilities and limitations which the process of reduction puts
upon both capital and labor. The free list can very safely be extended
by placing thereon articles that do not offer injurious competition to
such domestic products as our home labor can supply. The removal of the
internal tax upon tobacco would relieve an important agricultural
product from a burden which was imposed only because our revenue from
customs duties was insufficient for the public needs. If safe provision
against fraud can be devised, the removal of the tax upon spirits used
in the arts and in manufactures would also offer an unobjectionable
method of reducing the surplus.

A table presented by the Secretary of the Treasury showing the amount
of money of all kinds in circulation each year from 1878 to the present
time is of interest. It appears that the amount of national-bank notes
in circulation has decreased during that period $114,109,729, of which
$37,799,229 is chargeable to the last year. The withdrawal of bank
circulation will necessarily continue under existing conditions. It is
probable that the adoption of the suggestions made by the Comptroller
of the Currency, namely, that the minimum deposit of bonds for the
establishment of banks be reduced and that an issue of notes to the
par value of the bonds be allowed, would help to maintain the bank
circulation. But while this withdrawal of bank no