Rensselaer Union, Volume 2, Number 3, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 14 October 1869 — Commissioner Delano on the Debt. [ARTICLE]

Commissioner Delano on the Debt.

We suspect the grief of tbe Chicago Timet, at the absence of Commissioner Delano from the Revenue Department, js not so much on acoount of the loss of his services at Washington as from dislike of tiie facts he is spreading before the people ih Pennsylvania. If it weie true, as the Timet asserts, that he “ comes before them to proclaim two audacious falsehoods, knowing them to he so,” his character would l>e such that the less he was present at the Rcvenne Department the better. And yet, while branding Mr. Delano thus as a willful liar, our neighbor declares that the duties of the Revenue Department “ cannot he properly performed hut by his daily and constant supervision,” and says ‘‘liis reputation as an honest man will give to his statements on financial questions an authority which will impress the people.” The two “ audacious perpetrated by this honest liar, to whose “ daily and constant supervision “ wo owe, in the estimation of his enemies, the collection of the revenue, arc, ft rut, that the debt iq decreasing, and, secondly, that this decrease is being accomplished through the fidelity of Grant’s administration. As these assertions are a thorn in the Copperhead flesh, it is well, doubtless, to brand them as ‘‘audacious falsehoods.” Blit there our neighbor should leavo' it. It should not ; after charging an “ honest liar ” with uttering the audacious falsehood that the debt is being reduced, proceed to argue that “ the public debt hat been reduced, under Secretary Boutwell’s management of the Treasury, becauu the receipt» from customs and internal revenue have largely increased.” Such a mode of sustaining his charge against Mr. Delano lays the writer open to the suspicion of having written the article in a condition of physical helplessness and moral irresponsibility. The fuddled Bohemian then supports lire denial that any credit is due to Grant, Boutwell, Delano, or any other part of the Radical administration, for the collection of more customs and revenue, by averring that the increase of reveuue is wholly due to the reduction of the taxes effected by tbe late “ imbecile and infamously corrupt Congress.” This staggers us! AVe can understand how the duty and mission of a Democratic journalist may require him to deny that any credit is due to a Republican tor anything. But we fail to sec the “great Democratic.' gain” by taking the credit ,of collecting the revenue from a Republican administration in order to give it to a Republican Congress. Mr Delano avers that during the hsctil year ending June 30, 1868, while 100,000,000 gallons of whisky were made and consumed, only 0,709,540 gallons paid tax. But, during the last fiscal year, including four months of Grant, there have been 62,009,331 gallons returned subject to duty. He shows that, comparing the last six months of the year ending June 30,1868, with the like six months of 1869, of which four months are Grant’s, we find an increased revenue from spirits, tobacco, sales, banks, stamps, incomes, and one or two other small sources of $22,541,000, while there is a falling off in no item of importance, except one of $242,000 in thp salaries paid for collecting them, owing to discharge of superfluous officers. He shows that m the quarter, July, August and September, 1868, we collected less than thirty-nine millions of internal revenue, while in the same months of 1860 wc collect forty-nine millions—an increase of thirty per cent. He declares that, apart from any gains on the customs revenue wc will collect in internal revenue $25,000,000 more than last year, while our expenses will be $25,000,000 less—making a total gain from these two sources of $50,0j0,000 a year. As, during the last year of Johnson, we paid off $50,000,000 of the debt, during every year of Grant we will pay off, without increasing a single tax, one hundred millions. Within the eight years during which President Grant may, perhaps, continue in office, the funded debt will be reduced, probably, to $1,200,000,000. To all these revelations our irate and apparently intoxicated neighbor replies that the ,credit is due to “ a Congress so imbecile and infamously corrupt that it is spoken of with contempt by the press of its party.” The readers of the Times will, doubtless, agree with us that its editor,- in compounding this theory, must have got entangled in the elbows of a financial Minico. The next time he essays to criticise the Government upon its success in collecting the whisky tax, it would, at least, promote the coherency, if not the truth, of his assertions, to improve the quality of tfie whisky wliich inspires his own essay.— Chicago Tribune.