The currency and Tax laws.
Nothing can be more happily adapted to the condition of the country than these judicious and searching measures of the recent Congress. They not only promise to set the Confederate Government upon a firm and solid financial basis, but they achieve a national desideratum of a yet more important nature. Theoretically and politically, under our system, the people are the Government, and the Government is the people. But in the absence of taxation, and while the Government was flooding the country with its paper credits to meet its enormous expenses, there was no financial ligament apparent or felt maintaining this mutual relation. The people were detached from the Government financially, and every occasion of the payment of depreciated Confederate money for anything was a fitting one for jibes and jests at the expense of that currency, and often in ridicule of the Government. This kind of pleasantry to some, of pain to the great body of the people, will soon be at an end. The people will be bound to their own Government by the important financial link which is indispensable to a proper appreciation of their responsibility for the Government of their own creation. They will become the creditors of the Government in the most direct form, and they will take upon themselves the burthens of supporting it at a time of all others when their support is needed, and when it would be the deepest degradation and damnation to withhold it — at a time when the enemy is at the door threatening the land with abasement, servitude, and nationalization.This glorious result is obtained by these measures, which the country hails with joy. The Government will now be sustained.--Every man will be working for it — every man will serve it either in the field or in his occupation at home. They will serve it because it is their Government, and because it is now struggling in a war for their deliverance from a hated and oppressive connection with the Northern States, and to secure that national independence which the people themselves have determined to enjoy.
The energy of the administration of the Government will be inconceivably increased by these measures. Its improved credit, as well as its actual means, will give it a lever by which it will achieve greater results than ever. The dignity of its position has been promoted, its respect among the people elevated. The jibe and the jest at its fallen credit will be changed into public approbation of its solvency and financial ability. Each man will be gratified that he is a creditor and a constituent of such a Government — and even the remorseless Speculator, when called on for one-fourth of his profits, will feel exalted as a partner in business with the Confederacy! Could there be a more valuable and acceptable partner than one, who, while withdrawing a fourth of the profits of the concern, makes the remaining three-fourths worth more than the whole was? Certainly not. Speculators are smart enough to see this, and all their grumbling, if they grumble at all, will be mere affectation.
Politically and financially, the measures are most admirable in their effects. Morally and socially, they will be equally so. They will reduce to rational degrees inflated profits from an inflated currency. They will administer to Avarice and Cupidity a whole-some check, and improve the morality of men who had given themselves, soul and body, to selfishness and money seeking.--These will be taught the lesson that they owe Fealty to their country — a lesson next in dignity to that which teaches them what they owe to their God.
