payment of the interest of her debt in gold throughout the war, still
hopes to reduce the interest to five per cent, and, when gold falls, to
diminish the taxes.

But if our course of inquiry into the causes of the present ruinous cost
of living has not given much solace to Mr. Smith, we may, nevertheless,
from the facts elicited and from the arguments of the different
tradesmen draw a few useful conclusions and decide what are the evils to
be removed or obviated before we can reduce the cost of living; and the
chief of these, we have learned, are the following:--

The premium on gold.

The taxes on productions.

The duties on materials.

The charges on transportation.

The duties and taxes which absorb income.

Let us consider whether these evils may not be boldly met and
surmounted, and this, too, without impairing the ability of the nation
to meet the interest of the debt incurred as the price of freedom, or
interfering with the payment of army and navy pensions, and similar
expenses.

RESUMPTION.

What is there to prevent the nation from resuming specie payments during
the present year?

There are those who profit by the fluctuations of gold; who gamble in
gold, and would make fortunes regardless of the consequences to others;
who control the columns of venal papers and write financial articles;
who claim to be the leaders of opinion, and tell their confiding readers
that Great Britain did not resume for a quarter of a century; that
resumption implies contraction and portends ruin; that we have a
thousand millions to fund within three years, and therefore cannot
resume.

But is not all this fallacious? Our position is not that of the British
Isles half a century since, exhausted by a war of twenty years, without
a railway, with less than half the wealth and half the population, and
one twentieth of the land and mineral resources that we possess, while
their debt was fifty per cent more than our own. They were almost
stationary, and we are progressive. In descending from a premium of 180
to 30 on gold, we have already accomplished five sixths of the journey
towards specie payment without serious disaster and with an easy
money-market.

As respects contraction, the instructive report lately addressed to the
Secretary of the Treasury by Mr. Carey, the veteran advocate of
manufactures, shows that the compound-interest notes are withdrawn; that
a large portion of the greenbacks is held as a reserve f