For the year ending June 30, 1866, the estimated receipts are given as follows:

Let us now compare these sums in tabular form with the

There is nothing in this comparison to indicate that the Secretary is not correct in his estimate of receipts for the future. An instructive lesson is gained, though, from observing how, by gradual means, colossal sums are year after year extracted from the industry of the nation to support the public burthens.

The receipts from Public Lands do not appear to amount to much, while those from Direct Tax are dwindling down to nothing.

Of course there is no Overplus to deal with in the Report. We have now to consider Mr. Fessenden's estimates of Deficit.

DEFICIT. As we have already stated, the Secretary assumes, whether right or wrong, we have had some previous opportunity of judging, that the Deficit for this year will amount to $482,374,188.

This is reached in the following way:

Difference between Expenditures and Receipts,- $551,216,746 Less Cash in Treasury, July 1, 1864,

Making the Actual Deficit,

18,842,558

$532,374,188

But the Secretary does not stop here. He actually goes beyond his own previous estimates of Receipts, and subtracts from the above sum, "an additional sum of fifty millions, if it should be realized, as proposed by the Commissioner, from internal duties (revenue), &c."

In this extraordinary manner the Deficit for 1865 is reduced to $482,374,188, which tallies with the future annual increase of debt assumed in the Report, and mentioned above' on page 33.

The amount to be raised during the current fiscal year by loans, would therefore be $645,727,508, as follows:

Assumed Deficit,

Add to this the following portion of the public debt matured and maturing during the year, viz.:

$482,374,188

Treasury Notes under Act of March 2, 1861,

and prior thereto,

278,511

$645,727,507

Total, to be raised by loans during the fiscal year ending June 30, 1865,

This is all plain sailing; but turn to the Report, and after a bewildering maze of figures dashed in here and there, without much regard to relevancy, if the reader catches at anything but the final sum, we are much mistaken.

Through this want of methodical arrangement, the important document which forms the subject of this review, is found to be almost unintelligible. Add to this, an equal lack of precision, and a Report which ought to form the most inflexible of all national guides, at a moment like this, becomes a sealed book to the majority of the nation, and a riddle to

the rest.

We now turn with pleasure from a division of the subject, the details of which, with its figures and estimates, must have taxed the patience of the reader, to that which comes under

the head of "Plans for Improving or Increasing the Revenue."

Expressed in the briefest manner, the following are the most noticeable measures recommended by Mr. FESSENDEN:

First. The various suggestions of the Commissioner of the Internal Revenue; to whose report on the subject the Secretary of the Treasury makes reference. These are chiefly suggestions concerning the taxes on cigars, tobacco, coals, matches, spirits, petroleum, assays, publications, iron, and rents. Secondly. A uniform tax upon sales.

Thirdly. A "pledge of the proceeds" of the public lands, other than mineral lands, should the Homestead Law be repealed.

Fourthly. A revenue from mineral lands owned by the

nation.

Fifthly. A system for deriving revenue from the purchase of "any products of States declared in insurrection."

Sixthly. Loans.

Those of less importance are concerning the National Banking system, abandonment of the Sinking-fund system, provisions for more effectually preventing evasions of the Revenue Laws, etc.; but the limits of this review compel us to pass these measures over without comment.

Before proceeding to investigate in detail these numerous recommendations of the Secretary of the Treasury, a few remarks upon the general subject of taxation, may not be amiss to the better understanding of the questions involved.

In the first place: Is an increase of the revenue desirable? Obviously: Yes. For terrible and lasting as are both the direct and indirect consequences of taxation, the people have manifested, in the most unmistakeable manner, their desire to shoulder them. A minority, it is true, have said-No. But our system of government has no respect for the rights of minorities; and the majority having said Yes, there is no appeal. It may be argued that the majority, when it said Yes, said it without understanding its consequences: that it was said in a moment of political excitement; that it was said by the interested, the ignorant, the indolent; and, even in many

cases, not said at all, but made to appear so by the raising of false issues and other simulated means. But this is not proved; and furthermore, we are met by precisely the same answer as before: Our system of Government-a Government which we fondly term "the best one on earth"-provides no remedy for these mistakes, if mistakes they are.

The people having decided in the affirmative, it obviously became requisite to point out the best means for raising the increased revenue rendered necessary by the action of the people. To tax is one thing; to tax judiciously, another. It was a matter of no very great difficulty to bleed a nation which had never been bled before; but to bleed it so that neither its life should be endangered, nor its health impaired, was a task of a very different nature-and to call upon it for further sacrifices, after it had already suffered during a period of three or four years of active warfare, was a duty requiring no ordinary amount of tact and discrimination.

This arduous task Mr. FESSENDEN was called upon to perform. It had been partially anticipated by his predecessor in office, who left him a system of fiscal measures more or less complete.

For the most part, therefore, Mr. FESSENDEN's duty was to observe the workings of these laws, and make such suggestions for improvement as might be deemed expedient; and if it was thought they would fail, even with those improvements, to yield sufficient revenue, then, to recommend such additional legislation as would effect the desired result.

The question now is: Has he done this properly? To perform this task, required that he should not only keep in view the system which the "combined wisdom" of the nation had already established, and, if it seemed best to change it beyond an ordinary amount of modification, only to change it as a whole, for tax systems must be consistent in their parts, and will not bear patching; but to be careful that the taxes imposed did not defeat the very end in view, by driving away or suppressing any of the industries which constituted sources of revenue-in other words, killing the goose that laid the golden eggs. In addition to this, he was required to remember that (as all taxes are more or less unjust, and inconsistent with the spirit of liberty and free government,) it became his

solemn duty to omit no means that could lighten the selfimposed burdens upon freedom, decentralization, and individual enterprise. These were the main conditions; but the labors of Political Economists had furnished detailed rules which might have proved an easy guide to Mr. FESSENDEN'S inexperience, had he chosen to avail himself of them. Some of these rules, or maxims, like those of Adam Smith, from general concurrence, may be said to have become classical.

But we find, upon referring to his Report, that the Secretary has ignored many of these now well-recognized rules. He has turned aside from the paths of experience, and plunged into a wilderness of ancient errors-a wilderness through which all the nations of Europe have passed, but in which only a few of the least progressive are still involved.

The changes proposed in the administrative provisions of the present laws are most of them highly commendable, and conform to the advice of the great Economists from whose works we have just quoted. But beyond this we find little to praise. The very first thing we come upon is a proposal that the Government should monopolize the business of assaying gold and silver, as though Governments were made to usurp private rights.

We next come upon an old and worn-out Continental measure in Mr. FESSENDEN's Report-a project to exempt the national securities from taxation and seizure for debt. And still another, for making the public lands a basis of credit.

But we look in vain for anything new and striking-anything adapted to these times, and to present circumstances. Even the tax upon sales, which the Secretary recommends, commendable as it is in many respects, is an ancient device, which can be made to sit too easily upon the shoulders of a nation, to be consistent with the exercise of a free form of govern

ment.

All we perceive is a system of taxation, imperfect at the best, but rendered still more so by the hideous old clothes raked up from medieval times which the Secretary has thrown over it, and recommends it to wear. We do not believe that the Secretary has cased our system in these rags from any deliberate desire to add to its repulsiveness; but, like the renowned Don Quixote, who, when he considered