It is quite evident that the American Government will shortly
be compelled to try some large experiment about the currency. The West and South are determined to have more "money," and are asking, first, for the free coinage of silver, and next, for a large issue of paper, inconvertible, but to be received in payment of taxes. The President dreads free coinage; but it is believed that the West and South, aided by the Silver States, which are furious at the refusal of silver to rise to a level with gold—the price of the inferior metal being actually lower than it was just before the Silver Bill passed—will carry an Act over General Harrison's head. The Senate is willing, and only twenty more votes are wanted in the House of Representatives, which will be secured if argument, cajolery, or bribery can do it. We may judge of the apprehension at Washington when we remember that the Secretary of the Treasury wishes to ask for the issue of 260,000,000 in small Exchequer Bills, bearing 2 per cent.
interest, which are to be legal-tender currency, or ex- changeable for it at any post-office. The plan is not accepted yet, and American officials talk with a recklessness to which we are unaccustomed ; but the project should be noted, both because it is new, and because it fits in with the agrarian question now rising in the States. The farmers want the Central Government to pay off their mortgages in paper bearing 2 per cent. interest, and take their farms as security. Is Mr. Windom, perhaps, looking in that direction P If he is, he may be President of the Union, and may also perform the nearly impossible feat of reducing the Union to financial straits. Lending some hundreds of millions sterling on im- movable and unsaleable security is a big operation, even for the Treasury of Washington.
Previous page
