his situation, Memminger had
advised falling back on the ancient system of tithes and the support
of the Government by direct contributions of produce. After licensing a
great number of occupations and laying a property tax and an income tax,
the new law demanded a tenth of the produce of all farmers. On this
law the Mercury pronounced a benediction in an editorial on The Fall of
Prices, which it attributed to "the healthy influence of the tax bill
which has just become law." *

* The fall of prices was attributed by others to a funding
act,--one of several passed by the Confederate Congress--
which, in March, 1863, aimed by various devices to contract
the volume of the currency. It was very generally condemned,
and it anticipated the yet more drastic measure, the Funding
Act of 1864, which will be described later.

Had these two measures been the whole program of the Government, the
congressional session of the spring of 1863 would have had a different
significance in Confederate history. But there was a third measure
that provoked a new attack on the Government. The gracious words of the
Mercury on the tax in kind came as an interlude in the midst of a bitter
controversy. An editorial of the 12th of March headed "A Despotism over
the Confederate States Proposed in Congress" amounted to a declaration
of war. From this time forward the opposition and the Government drew
steadily further and further apart and their antagonism grew steadily
more relentless.

What caused this irrevocable breach was a bill introduced into the House
by Ethelbert Barksdale of Mississippi, an old friend of President Davis.
This bill would have invested the President with authority to
suspend the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus in any part of the
Confederacy, whenever in his judgment such suspension was desirable.
The first act suspending the privilege of habeas corpus had long
since expired and applied only to such regions as were threatened with
invasion. It had served usefully under martial law in cleansing Richmond
of its rogues, and also had been in force at Charleston. The Mercury had
approved it and had exhorted its readers to take the matter sensibly as
an inevitable detail of war. Between that act and the act now proposed
the Mercury saw no similarity. Upon the merits of the question it fought
a furious journalistic duel with the Enquirer, the government organ at
Richmond, which insisted that