Financial condition of Yankeedom.
We yesterday published an extract from a letter of the Yankee General Meade, in which the following sentence occurred: "I am in receipt of many letters, some from persons in high positions, telling me I had better have my army destroyed and the country filled up with the bodies of the soldiers than to remain inactive." This sentence is very significant.It proves — what, indeed, may be gathered from the Yankee newspapers — that there exists in the North a general belief that military success of a decisive character, and immediate, is an absolute necessity. It can be so for no other reason than that the State of the finances requires it. Before the battle of Chickamauga the Herald, and other Yankee papers, believing the success of Rosecrans absolutely certain, hesitated not to declare that it was absolutely necessary to secure the country from a general crash. --The cotton of Georgia--rated at four or five hundred thousand bales--was expected to postpone the evil day. Unless that could be obtained, it was plainly intimated the end was near at hand. Rosecrans having been defeated, and the cotton not having been captured, the evil day was on the point of coming, when it was averted for a time by the defeat of Bragg. But for that defeat we have no doubt that it would have arrived before this time. The eagerness of Meade's correspondents — some of them, he tells us, men in high stations — to hasten his march, even at the cost of his entire army, proves the desperate straits to which the Yankee finances must be reduced. They look upon it as a gambling transaction, in which, if the cast be lost, all is lost. Even at the hazard of destroying a whole army, the risk must be run. If the army gain, they fancy all is gained. If the army lose, all is lost, and so great is the ruin that the mere destruction of the army is hardly worth thinking of.
There are general circumstances, apart from this letter, which strengthen the evidence that the Yankee finances are in a desperate condition. They have passed a law against the traffic in gold — that is to prevent the farther rise in that commodity. Now everybody knows that the appreciation of gold is but another name for the depreciation of currency. Secondly, the Herald has let out the secret, hitherto kept with much care, that the Yankee debt amounts to four thousand millions--at least it says five thousand millions is the sum of the two debts Confederate and Federal, and everybody knows the Confederate debt does not reach a thousand million. Lastly, there is a great drain of specie from England, the Herald estimating that two hundred millions have been exported from that country to India alone since this war began, and Yankeedom being fearfully indebted to England. If our Generals will only keep theirs from gaining any decided advantages this winter, we shall most probably see a crash in the spring.
