Yankee finances at seen from Europe.
The London. Times speaks in the following Terms of the financial condition of Yankeedom, present and future:‘ "Under the influence of political chloroform the Americans are entering upon a stage familiar in the history of all nations. They have taken the step of suspending cash payment in a most balmy unconsciousnesses of its meaning and inevitable results. But we must tell our own countrymen what this means. The five dollar notes now issued by the United States Treasury and the Northern banks. Instead of the gold, are merely promises to pay that sum as soon as convenient after the termination of the war. The value of such promises depends upon a variety of considerations, and ranges accordingly from par to zero. When we substituted them for gold in the year 1797, we were at war with a neighbor divided from us by a narrow but boisterous strait, having ourselves a vast preponderance of naval power, and having also the best part of Europe on our side.--The Parliamentary session had opened with the promise of negotiation and a prospect of peace. There was no apprehension of danger to this country. One thing was very clear — that any day we pleased we might retire out of the quarrel, with the British dominions, the British constitution, the British commerce, the British revenue, wholly uninjured, and no loss, except some sentimental damage to our exalted character — just a rent in the British flag. But in the February of that year we suspended cash payment, and did not return to it for twenty years. Before that day gold had risen to forty or fifty percent premium, and guineas were to be found only in cabinets and old stockings. A comparison of England in 1797 with the Northern States of America in 1862, cannot be considered honorable to the latter. It is by no means plain that the Cabinet of Washington will be able to make peace without serious compromises and losses. It may have to give up much more than the Southern States. It may have to make terms with its own army as well as that of the foe."
"The United States are not a tax-paying country. Half the American tax-payers live in regions just reclaimed from the forest, and sprinkled over with settlements. The great State of Illinois, which may be said to occupy a mid-rank between New England and the far West, has hitherto paid in all about £100,000 in taxes. Of this the railway has paid £24,000. What security is there here for the future payment of the debts likely to be incurred under an expenditure of £100,000,000 a year? That rate is not likely to be diminished, or even brought under control. All the press are open-mouthed against an army of jobbers and speculators who are said to be making their fortunes by the rain of their country. There is not a circumstance in which America of 1862 can be compared with England of 1797, and if the British insolvency of which we have been lately reminded lasted twenty years, we may well ask when will it terminate in a redemption of every hit of paper in the States? When an inconvertible paper currency is once substituted for gold, it becomes the base of the whole financial system, and its rising or falling value affects every fixed payment, whether public or private. That value will rise with the prospects of peace, and fall as they recede from the eye. The defeat which throws the cause on its defence, and the victory which encourages it to perseverance, are equally fatal to the hopes of an early peace. Men may be sanguine, or may despond, but it is the probable duration of the war and the extends of the expenditure, that will rule the value of the dollar note. The Confederates have been over and over again pronounced to be so bankrupt of means as to be incapable of further exertion to any purpose; but the prediction has been repeated too often to be heeded; and, whatever the value of the desultory operations on the coast, the Federals find an organized, intrenched and well supplied force wherever they push their reconnaissances south of the Potomac. With twice the expenditure of our war, the Government of Washington cannot raise half our revenue by taxation. Let that speak for itself. To us it speaks of either bankruptcy and disorder, or the expedient of a European arbitration."
’ That the predictions of the Times are sure to be verified in the end, cannot be doubted. That the Yankee nation will come out of this war bankrupt in purse and in credit, we hold to be certain. The great West will not if it can, and cannot if it will, pay its portion of the debt. Instead of £100,000,000 sterling, the Yankee Government has been expending twice that sum. The war has not lasted quite a year, and it is already $1,100,000,000 in debt; that is to say, £220,000,000 starling. It is conscious of the ruinous condition of its finances, and it hopes to reinstate its credit by the conquest and confiscation of the South.
Yet it would be madness in us to relax our exertions in the slightest degree, in the hope that the bankruptcy of the Yankees will settle the question in our favor. The example of revolutionary France teaches us that bankruptcy is no impediment to the prosecution of war on the most gigantic scale. At a time when there was no money in the treasury, and the Assignats were not worth the paper they were written on — because they were not based upon specie, and were, therefore, altogether inconvertible — the armies of that republic overran nearly half the countries of Europe. Pitt fell into the same error into which some of our own statesmen seem to have fallen. Month after month, and year after year, he was accustomed to rise in the House of Commons and assure his hearers that the war was drawing to an end; that all that was wanting on their part to its successful termination was a little more perseverance, a little more energy, and the grant of a new loan; that the enemy had issued many thousand millions of inconvertible paper; and that, as it was already worthless, they must soon be without the means to prosecute, hostilities further. How miserably he was disappointed in his calculations, is matter of history. The French, in spite of their valueless paper, overran all the neighboring States. Belgium, Holland, Italy, Spain, and Germany, were deluged with their troops. The great minister did not reflect that they were living on the resources of their enemies, and that the value of their money was, under such circumstances, a point of no importance.--What cared they for the market price of their assignats, when they could convert them into gold with the bayonet whenever they pleased? What concern was it to them that a merchant objected to their shinplaster, when, by denouncing him as a depreciator of the currency, they could consign him to the tender mercies of the Provost Marshal? The very system which carried them victorious over half of Europe, the Yankees propose to inaugurate in the South. They design to live on our resources, and force their Treasury rags into circulation here at par. If persons having anything which they want demur to taking a depreciated and irredeemable paper, they will either give them a taste of the guard-house, or what will answer their purpose better, take their property without paying anything for it. In this way they will be enabled to spin out the war indefinitely, in spite of broken banks and ruined credit. Let us not depend upon any such contingency as the bankruptcy of the Yankees. Let us be assured that our only dependence is in ourselves. We must fight them and whip them. We must expel them from our own country, and march into theirs. They have invaded us without provocation. They must be taught that they cannot do this with impunity.
Although the state of their finances may not prevent a prosecution of the war, however, yet the day of settlement must come for the Yankees at last. And it will be a day such as was never dreamed of in their philosophy. There must be an universal crash throughout the dominions of Yankee Doodle. Nothing but repudiation will save them, and repudiation is the half-way house on the road to absolute ruin. The debt even now incurred every day amounts to twenty cents for every man, woman, and child in Yankeedom, and that amounting seventy three dollars per annum. How is Yankeedom ever to pay such a sum, or even the interest on it?
