Nobly have the people sustained their Government; with a wise instinct of confidence, they have freely risked their money, as their lives, in support of their own holy cause. This confidence at home has given us unbounded strength abroad. Nor do the facts in the least diminish the credit fairly due to the Secretary, whose great merit is to have organized a system so well calculated to attract the confidence of the people and to inspire them with a sense of perfect security in trusting their fortunes to the keeping of the nation for its help and support in the hour of supreme peril. It is the highest evidence of wise statesmanship to be able thus to arouse a nation to the cheerful performance even of its obvious duty: this has been accomplished by Mr. Chase, under the embarrassment of repeated failures on the part of those who had in special charge to defend and promote our noble cause. The entire merit of this grand success can only be adequately estimated by considering how slight a mistake of judgment or want of faithful courage in conducting these momentous affairs would have thrown our finances into inextricable confusion. Our own experience immediately before the war, when there was no adequate conception of the extent of the trouble about to come upon us, shows how easily the public credit may be shaken or destroyed by incompetent or dishonest agents. In spite of envious detraction and interested opposition, these great and successful labors of the Secretary will remain an imperishable monument of his ability to conduct the most intricate affairs of government, in times of the most appalling danger and difficulty. He has undergone the severest tests to which a statesman was ever subjected; his genius and his great moral firmness have brought him out triumphant.
There are a few prominent points in the lucid report of the Secretary which constitute the great landmarks of his system. Adequate taxation was of necessity its basis; and, from the very beginning, Mr. Chase insisted upon a rigid resort to every available means of raising a revenue sufficient to strengthen the hands of the Government, and sustain its credit through all the vast operations which it was compelled to undertake. And now by reference to the actual figures, and by an analysis of the facts embodied in them, the Secretary shows that since the first year of the war, the taxes collected have paid all the ordinary peace expenditures together with the interest on the whole public debt, and beyond this have yielded a surplus which, had the war ended, might have been applied to the reduction of the debt. This sound and indispensable principle, beset with so many temptations and difficulties in time of civil commotion, is the very soul of the public credit; and the fearlessness with which the Secretary meets the contingency of prolonged war and the necessity of additional taxes, evinces his determination to strengthen and sustain the principle, rather than to abandon it under any possible circumstances. The enormous loans already so advantageously obtained, to say nothing of those additional ones which will probably be indispensable, could not have been negotiated on any reasonable terms without a firm adherence to this policy.