Lord of the Treasury

“ Never before did men suffer such a penalty for having befriended an embarrassed state. To this injustice and cruelty the magistracy winked. But, in addition to this, the coin was debased to such an extent, that seventy-two millions of livres were thus added to the treasury. Yet even these gains were not enough to satisfy a profligate government. There still continued a constant pressure. The national debt had increased even to fifteen hundred millions of livres, or almost seventy millions sterling—equivalent to what would now be equal to at least one thousand millions of dollars. ”

“ The Whigs, according to Lord Russell’s letter, have really done so much when out of power, and—as he insinuates, are again ready to do so much the instant they are expelled the Treasury—that for the sake of the country, it must be a matter of lamentation if ever they get in again. ”

“ But I cannot look to what has taken place of late years, even in my own time, when I filled the situation of first Lord of his Majesty's Treasury,—cannot look to what took place then without seeing the advantage of having an overplus of income over expenditure, such as would tend to the gradual diminution of the public debt. ”

“ From the very commencement of his career at the Treasury Lord Randolph began the exertions for economy to which he felt himself bound by his electoral pledges. In his private affairs he was usually extravagant and often unbusiness-like; but public money seemed to him a sacred trust. The character and extent of Treasury control over expenditure is very often misunderstood. ”

“ Now is the time to ask the proprietors themselves and ascertain whether in starting a bank they ever had the intention of letting it work to the detriment of their country? The public Treasury is the heart of the State—did they ever wish, do they to-day wish to strike it with a dagger? ”

“ And this is the exchequer plan so far as it may operate in furnishing a currency.
I can not forego the occasion to urge its importance to the credit of the Government in a financial point of view. The great necessity of resorting to every proper and becoming expedient in order to place the Treasury on a footing of the highest respectability is entirely obvious. The credit of the Government may be regarded as the very soul of the Government itself—a principle of vitality without which all its movements are languid and all its operations embarrassed. ”

“ There need be no fear that we can not pay our current expenses with such money as we have. There is now in the Treasury a comfortable surplus of more than $63,000,000, but it is not in gold, and therefore does not meet our difficulty. ”

“ To secure the latter I see but one way, and that is to authorize the Treasury to redeem its own paper, at a fixed price, whenever presented, and to withhold from circulation all currency so redeemed until sold again for gold.
The vast resources of the nation, both developed and undeveloped, ought to make our credit the best on earth. With a less burden of taxation than the citizen has endured for six years past, the entire public debt could be paid in ten years. ”

“ I would issue a bank-note for every dollar of Treasury obligation cancelled; but I would issue no bank-note that did not absorb an equal obligation of the Treasury. By this distribution of a portion of the demand obligations you restore to the Government the full ability to meet the remainder; and at the same time the people know, that, so far as the currency goes,—and it is of this only we are treating,—every promise of any bank has its ultimate recourse in the Treasury of the United States. ”

“ In the present state of legislation the only pretense of any existing executive power to restore at this time any part of our surplus revenues to the people by its expenditure consists in the supposition that the Secretary of the Treasury may enter the market and purchase the bonds of the Government not yet due, at a rate of premium to be agreed upon. ”

“ In the sphere of financial policy, it was the Treasury’s own responsibility to plan the appropriate precautions—a programme of taxation without any misjudged mercy in it, and a programme of borrowing to bring in the genuine savings of the people. ”

“ We should not collect revenue for the purpose of anticipating our bonds beyond the requirements of the sinking fund, but any unappropriated surplus in the Treasury should be so used, as there is no other lawful way of returning the money to circulation, and the profit realized by the Government offers a substantial advantage. ”

“ Others may regret that the exigencies of the country were not promptly met by taxation,—or that at the beginning a different system was not organized by the Treasury, through which the national securities might have found a readier market,—or that the national credit was not sustained, at the period of bank suspension, by the resolute redemption of the Government securities in coin at any present sacrifice. ”

“ Chase's administration of the Treasury, could not be maintained except from the pockets of the people, and that every man must expect to contribute of his substance to the support of the government in the great task it had assumed. ”

“ Under existing legislation it is in the power of the Treasury Department to maintain that essential condition of national finance as well as of commercial prosperity—the parity in use of the coined dollars and their paper representatives. The assurance that these powers would be freely and unhesitatingly used has done much to produce and sustain the present favorable business conditions. ”

“ In order to meet every demand upon the Treasury without delay or peradventure and in order to keep the Treasury strong, unquestionably strong, and strong throughout the present anxieties, I respectfully urge that an additional revenue of $100,000,000 be raised through internal taxes devised in your wisdom to meet the emergency. ”

“ By a selection of political instruments for the care of the public money a reference to their commissions by a President would be quite as effectual an argument as that of Caesar to the Roman knight. I am not insensible of the great difficulty that exists in drawing a proper plan for the safe-keeping and disbursement of the public revenues, and I know the importance which has been attached by men of great abilities and patriotism to the divorce, as it is called, of the Treasury from the banking institutions. ”

“ The prosperity of twenty years is annihilated at one stroke! The sources of revenue are dried up. The Treasury, indeed, may be now full—but it must continually diminish—and, without its usual supply, it must soon be empty. We have still some credit. But how long, sir, can that be maintained, when it is known that we have no longer the means, allowing us to possess the disposition, to fulfil our pecuniary engagements? When you cannot collect a cent upon imposts, and dare not lay a direct tax, how far you will be able to obtain money on loan, is, to say the least of it, very questionable. ”

“ I do not ask the merchants to take the bills of my agents: it is an honour, a mark of credit, to which I do not aspire; if the merchants do take them, it must be at their own risk and peril; I only acknowledge and consider as sacred the acceptance of my Minister of the Treasury.’ Upon this they again expostulated, and a great deal of idle talk ensued. They should be obliged, they said, to declare themselves bankrupts; they had received these bills, for ready money; their agents abroad had committed the error of taking them, through respect for, and confidence in, the government. ”

“ Should it be adopted, the Treasury, aided by the ample resources of the country, will be able to discharge punctually every pecuniary obligation. For the future all that is needed will be that caution and forbearance in appropriations which the diminution of the revenue requires and which the complete accomplishment or great forwardness of many expensive national undertakings renders equally consistent with prudence and patriotic liberality. ”

“ Under the system of sales, matured as it has been by experience, and adapted to the exigencies of the times, the lands will continue as they have become, an abundant source of revenue; and when the pledge of them to the public creditor shall have been redeemed by the entire discharge of the national debt, the swelling tide of wealth with which they replenish the common Treasury may be made to reflow in unfailing streams of improvement from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean. ”

“ The report on this subject, page 2, states the only general convenience to be, the preventing the transportation and re-transportation of money between the States and the treasury. (For I pass over the increase of circulating medium ascribed to it as a merit, and which, according to my ideas of paper money, is clearly a demerit.) Every State will have to pay a sum of tax-money into the treasury; and the treasury will have to pay in every State a part of the interest on the public debt, and salaries to the officers of government resident in that State. ”

“ Either the surplus must lie idle in the Treasury or the Government will be forced to buy at market rates its bonds not then redeemable, and which under such circumstances can not fail to command an enormous premium, or the swollen revenues will be devoted to extravagant expenditure, which, as experience has taught, is ever the bane of an overflowing treasury. ”

“ Let us begin with the word treasury. In the fourteenth century treasury meant simply a storehouse, or at its narrowest a storehouse of valuables. To us the “treasury” is the government department of finance, but under Edward I the state office of finance was the Exchequer, which, as we saw, was located normally at Westminster, but since 1298 at York. When at Westminster the Exchequer had a “treasury” or storehouse there also, yet in its absence it is not likely that it kept either valuables or money at Westminster. ”

“ Yet our experience has proved that a revenue consisting so largely of imposts and tonnage ebbs and flows to an extraordinary extent, with all the fluctuations incident to the general commerce of the world. It is within our recollection that even in the compass of the same last 10 years the receipts of the Treasury were not adequate to the expenditures of the year, and that in two successive years it was found necessary to resort to loans to meet the engagements of the nation. ”

“ I do not doubt in the least either the integrity or the capacity of the present incumbent of the treasury department. I have as much confidence in him as anyone; but this question of the currency is one that affects so intimately all the business relations of life, the property of every man in this country, his ability to pay taxes, his ability to earn food and acquire a living, that no man ought to have the power to vary the volume of currency. ”

“ Be that as it may, when these bills appeared in Paris, where they arrived before the letters of advice, the First Consul was applied to from the treasury, to point out what was to be done. ‘Wait for the letters of advice,’ said he, ‘in order to learn the nature of the transaction. The treasury is like a capitalist ”

“ And there was the British Treasury, the talisman of whose power has destroyed the efficacy of title-deeds, and converted the land and houses of the empire into paper-money and stock-debts, for the purpose of carrying on wars and performing deeds, which impartial history will justly characterize, when alas! the truth will be useless to the suffering victims! ”

“ He took the treasury at a period when it was little more than a great national bank of discount, with rates varying from day to day; the coin standard a commodity of speculation on Wall street; the credit of the government a football in the markets of the world; and our bonds begging favor of European capitalists. He leaves it what it ought to be—a treasury pure and simple, making no discounts, offering no concessions, asking no favors ”

“ It should provide a perfect way of obtaining money to move the crops, and furnish an all-sufficient means of preventing or breaking panics. It should make the money of the United States still more current and acceptable in all parts of the world. This would make the nation greater in the eyes of other nations, and give the United States Treasury a proper command of the commerce and finances of the world, within ten years after being put into operation. ”

“ The king wished the out-goings for the government to be kept quite distinct from the private expenditure for the court and royal family. Factories, which, owing to their nature and the circumstances of the country, could not exist without assistance, would no longer be supported by the Treasury, and the support of others would be given in the shape of premiums, as the king wished to have no partnership in them ”

“ The wealth of the country, although it is security for your fiat money, cannot be handled in that way. You may think it best to present your fiat money to the Secretary of the Treasury who must be presumed to be a sound fiat man, and knows what the mortgage on the wealth of the country means. ”

“ You might, indeed, attain the same end if you could put a man into the Treasury, who has the cause of honest government and reform just as sincerely and strongly at heart, who represents the same principles of official conduct, enjoys the same popular confidence and possesses the same qualifications as Bristow. ”