nterest, is usually more efficient
in imposing limits to improvidence than a general sense of duty on the
part of official personages. But if funds could be obtained _ad
libitum_ by the speculator, without the necessity of giving security
for the payment of principal or interest, bankruptcy would soon become
the rule and solvency the exception. Still more urgently, in the
administration of the National Treasury, is the wholesome corrective of
taxation required, to make economy a necessity as well as a virtue.

Much must be pardoned to the urgency of the public service, in a crisis
like that of last summer, when the Government was compelled to improvise
the forces, military and naval, required for the suppression of a
gigantic rebellion, long concocted and matured in treacherous secrecy.
With the capital of the country beleaguered by open foes without,
swarming with hardly concealed traitors within, who privately thwarted
and paralyzed when they could not openly defeat the measures of the
Government, and conveyed information of them to the enemy with the
regularity of official returns, some degree of improvident hurry in
every branch of the service was inevitable, and must not be too severely
scanned. You cannot stand chaffering at a bargain as to the cheapest
mode of extinguishing a fire kindled by a red-hot cannon-ball at the
door of the magazine. But the crisis and the necessity for precipitate
action are past. The rebellion, dragged to the light of day, has assumed
definite proportions. The means for its suppression are ample, and
nothing is requisite but the firmness and sagacity to apply them. In
other words, the one thing needful for the successful prosecution of the
war is a judicious system of taxation.

With such a system, as we have already intimated, there is no limit to
the credit of the Government With an efficient system of taxation to
sustain its loans, the entire property of the country--that is, all that
is needed of it--may be consecrated to the public service. We must not
be terrified by the ghost of the paper-money with which the country was
Hooded daring the Revolutionary War. It became worthless because there
was no limit to its issue and no provision for its redemption or the
payment of Interest. The Congress of the Confederation possessed no
power to lay a tax, and the States which had the power were destitute of
resources, without mutual concert, and often moved by influences at
variance with e