cause a larger export of bonds to foreign countries, thereby increasing the annual drain of gold to foreign creditors. It is seriously to be feared that the natural tendencies of this, as of other countries, would be to repudiate its debt, if it should adopt such legislation as would cause but few of its own people to own its bonds. The honor of a nation is always endangered when it is separated from the interests of its people. As a financial statesman, Mr. McCulloch is an impressible and open listener to the advocates of conflicting policies, but cautious and conservative in the formation of his own views. His reports often recognize the premises on which adverse theories are based, while coming to modified or opposite conclusions. He is non-partisan in finance, as in politics. Often facts on which persons with a less comprehensive grasp of financial questions base an entire creed or policy, serve with him only to modify different views, or qualify other conclusions. He appreciates much with which he does not agree, and cares more to harmonize practical difficulties than to ride hobbies or be sustained in pet theories. He is more able than brilliant, more safe than original, more successful than talented. His industry in prosecuting business, and promptness in despatching it, are remarkable. Appearing at his office regularly at half-past eight o'clock in the morning, he goes straight to work, and never pauses nor tires until every item of business has been disposed of, or referred to the proper bureau of the department, and every visitor has been seen and his complaint or other business considered. For twenty-five years he has not lost a day from the like vigorous and rigid attention to business. If he has not the imperious and combative genius of a professional reformer, he is open to all suggestions, and his entire influence is given to prevent abuses.

His successor will enter upon the office relieved of those stupendous difficulties which beset the administrations of Chase, Fessenden, and McCulloch. He will find the financial policies

of the country, relative to debt, taxation, and currency, in many respects matured, and the machinery of government adjusted to its new conditions and running smoothly. Instead of being called on to raise vast sums by loans in excess of the annual revenue, upon a credit which must sink lower with each new burden, he will be engaged in reducing the debt by steps which, however unskilfully performed, can only advance the national credit. Eleven hundred millions of short debts fell due during McCulloch's administration, the funding of which into long bonds has constantly increased the gold-bearing portion of the debt, and so kept gold up, and the national credit depressed. His successor will find these short debts all funded, and demanding no further attention within twenty years than the payment of the interest. The questions of financial policy which have been agitated in the pending election will be settled by its result. The policy of so adjusting our tariffs to our internal taxes as to protect American manufactures having been inaugurated by the Republican party in the Morrill tariff of 1861 and '2 and its amendments, which were passed pursuant to the protective clause in the Chicago platform of 1860, and having been distinctly adopted and endorsed by the protective section of the Democratic platform adopted in New York, may for the present be regarded as the undisputed policy of the American people without distinction of party. The fact that the Democratic party in its recent platform made no assault upon the National Banking System, removes that much-vexed question from the arena of politics and leaves the system intact, to be expanded and perfected as the wants of our people require. The questions involved in Reconstruction are also settled, and the national credit will be relieved of their embarrassment. This alone should take off a third of the premium on gold which has prevailed while they were pending. The funding of our accruing short debts into bonds due twenty years hence, the effect of which is now just beginning to

be felt, will tend strongly towards a rise of our bonds and currency, and a decline of gold to par. Our bonds could not rise to par so long as new issues were constantly being thrown on the market. Now that this has ceased, their advance toward par must begin. While this advance results from work performed by Mr. McCulloch, its effects, viz., a fall of gold and return to specie payments, will be manifest during the term, and will redound to the credit, of his successor. It only remains, to perfect our national credit, that our annual productions shall once more exceed our expenditures, so that our exports, exclusive of bullion, may pay for our imports, and the balance of trade with Europe turn again in our favor. This will cause an accumulation of gold in the vaults of the banks, and the advance of public and private credit to par with specie.

While the incoming secretary, should the country remain at peace, will find flowers thus blooming in his path where only thorns beset his predecessors, his office will still be one requiring great practical acquaintance with the details of banking and finance. One of the first measures of the new administration, if it shall not be accomplished during the remainder of Mr. McCulloch's term, must be the retirement of the remnant of the greenback currency and the expansion of the National Banking System, so as to make it free, and its benefits equal throughout the country. A bank is a shop for buying and selling money. There are the same reasons against allowing the privilege of banking to be monopolized by those now engaged in it, as there are against confining the right to sell meat to the number now selling meat. The latter would make meat dear, and the former makes money scarce and high, and prevents the banks from rendering their full service to business. The present banking system went into effect when the West was too poor to embrace fully its advantages, and when the rebellion prevented the South from doing so. The total amount of currency which

may be issued under it to all the banks is $300,000,000, and this having all been issued, no new banks, with the privilege of circulating notes, can be started. So large a proportion of this $300,000,000 has been issued to the States east of Ohio and north of Maryland, and so little to those South and West, as to give the former about $100,000,000 more bank-note circulation than they had before the war, and the latter nearly as much less. This inequality is felt in a great dearth of currency in the South and West relatively to the East. The banking system with its present limitation is bark-bound. It must have leave to grow, or die. Great practical difficulties surround this question.. Many of the measures which have been proposed in and out of Congress would flood the country with an unlimited issue of irredeemable paper currency. The greenbacks must be withdrawn in order to make room for the bank-notes. But heretofore the latter have derived their fixed value from the fact that they were redeemable in the former. When the greenback shall be withdrawn, in what shall the bank-notes be redeemable? If in each other, then there is no end to their expansion and depreciation. If in gold, then our banking system cannot be made free till we return to

specie payments. Yet it is as unjust that men should be prohibited from entering into the banking business, or rather that some should be prohibited and others permitted, because our national bonds are not at par in the markets of the world, as it is that the sale of meat or drygoods should be confined to the shops already started for that purpose. And it would doubtless tend little more to injure our industry, and delay a return to specie payments, to limit our drygoods trade to the dealers now in the business, than to limit our banking to our present number of banks and bankers. And whatever is unjust is unnecessary. This is one of the opening channels of difficulty for the new Secretary, in which it will be indispensable that he shall go forward, and yet disastrous unless he steers wisely. We are

not yet in a condition where the affairs of the Treasury may be allowed to drift while the man at the wheel is inquiring "what he shall do to be saved." We might enlarge upon the other difficulties which beset the Treasury Department, but until the reader has solved the last, it suffices to show the danger of regarding this important office as something to be struck off to the highest bidder. Better, like the ancient Romans, sell our leading offices at auction, than consign the administration of our national finances to a mere politician who, without any pretence to familiarity with finance, may bring the

strongest partisan pressure to bear. In the present declension in importance of our diplomatic service, our foreign ministries should afford ample asylums for disappointed aspirants, and they may wisely and safely be reserved for that purpose. But the country should protest, with solemn earnestness, against the disposition of politicians to claim leading cabinet offices for mere party services without regard to personal experience or fitness. We believe that at no time would such a protest coincide more fully with the views of the appointing power than under the administration of General Grant.

UNITED STATES.

OUR record closes on the 3d November, before the results of the election are received. The political campaign has absorbed every energy of the people throughout the Union, and has been characterized by unprecedented earnestness. This presidential election is the first in the Southern States in which the two races, the late masters and the late slaves, will vote together at the same polls, and on terms of political equality. In most of the elections in which blacks have heretofore voted, the whites have abstained from voting. The situation has given rise to vastly different modes of treating the blacks, all depending on their relative strength or weakness. In the lower districts of South Carolina, where the blacks have a preponderance which gives them two thirds of all the voters of the State, prudent Democrats, like Governor Orr, have abandoned all further opposition to negro suffrage, have invited colored citizens to their political meetings, have encouraged the formation of colored democratic clubs, have spoken on the same platforms with colored orators, and have imported John Quincy Adams from Massachusetts to deliver a semi-Republican-Democratic address, to prove how nearly South Carolina Democrats approximate in their views to Northern radicals. In the upper sections of South Carolina, around Abbeville and Newberry, where the colored element is numerically weak, out

rages have been perpetrated which foreshadow serious violence on the day of election. So throughout the South. At Opelousas, in St. Laundry Parish, Louisiana, Mr. Bentley, an editor of the St. Laundry Progress, a Republican paper, was assaulted and beaten by a party of rebels. Some negroes rallied to fight in his defence and punish the aggressors; but he restrained them and resorted to the courts for redress. Warrants were issued against the rebel aggressors; but, before they could be served, they assembled en masse, mobbed the Progress office, seized its editor, Mr. Durand, carried him into the woods, murdered him, and scoured the town, killing every Republican they met, including about 100 negroes, and wounding fifty more. Only four whites were wounded, and none killed. At Shreveport, La., 3 Democrats and 15 Republicans were killed in a political quarrel. At Audrain Co., Mo., the Republican inspectors of registration were shot by ex-rebels and killed, about 50 shots being exchanged, and many wounded on both sides. At Ashpole, Robeson Co., N. C., on Sept. 27, a Miss Hill, daughter of Roderick Hill, a Republican, was being married to a young man, also a Republican, when the house was surrounded by rebels, the bride and bridegroom shot, the latter being killed instantly. Hon. James Martin, a Republican member of the legislature for the Abbeville district, S. C., was as sassinated on Oct. 6, near his residence, by

four Democrats, for having mildly and moderately identified himself with the Republican party. The agent of the Freedmen's Bureau in the same district reports 18 murders and other outrages, and resigns because the district is "too hot" for him.-On Oct. 15 about 50 Ku-Klux, of Arkansas, seizing a steam-tug, boarded the steamer Hesper from Memphis, bound for Little Rock, laden with 3,340 muskets consigned to Gov. Clayton for the State Militia; firing into the vessel, they drove captain and crew ashore, destroyed the arms and threw them into the river, reserving one musket each for themselves.-W. S. Walker, a Republican speaker of Early Co., Ga., and Charles Fryer, a colored Republican who accompanied him, were murdered while canvassing the county for Grant and Colfax.On Oct. 18, the office of the Rapides Tribune (Repub.), of Alexandria, La., was destroyed by a mob.-About the same time, the Sheriff of Iberville, Rep., was murdered in his bed, and Judge Valentine Chase and Gen. H. H. Pope, the Sheriff of Franklin, formerly of 22d Illinois Regiment, and a justice of the peace in Caddo Parish, La., and the President of a loyal league in Alabama, were murdered.On Oct. 16, Hon. B. F. Randolph, a colored Republican member of the Senate of South Carolina, was murdered by three white Democrats in front of the Depot at Cokesburg in Abbeville Co. He was a political speaker of some ability, and was engaged in stumping the District for Grant.-On the 19th, Hon. Lee Vance, a member of the State Constitutional Convention, was murdered at Newberry Court House. Hon. G. W. Dill, a prominent Republican of South Carolina, was also murdered-also two freedmen named Tabby Simpson and Johnson Gloscoe-also Peter Cornell, a young man from New York, and a freedman who was travelling with him.About the 24th and 25th October, a series of riots broke out in St. Bernard Parish, adjoining New Orleans, in which the first parties killed were several negroes, one of whom was a member of the new Metropolitan Police. The negroes gathered, and in retaliation mobbed a bakery kept by the assailants, and burned it, killing the baker and his son. The first rebel statement, that women and children were killed, proves to be untrue. The excitement extended to New Orleans, where Gov. Warmouth resigned the control of the peace to Gen. Buchanan, and the troops were concentrated. Democratic clubs paraded the streets in force at night, and no blacks were permitted to appear in the

streets. The Democrats demanded the dismissal of the negroes who had been appointed on the police. About 200 of them failed to report for duty on the morning after the riots, and were discharged, and whites appointed in their places,-On Oct. 3, Adjt. Geo. Washington Smith, who had entered the Union armies as a private, served gallantly through the war, and settled in Texas in 1865, a young man of temperate habits and remarkable per sonal virtues, and a member of the Constitutional Convention, addressed a Republican meeting at Jefferson, Marion Co., Texas. Immediately after the meeting dispersed he was attacked by six or eight Democrats, and several shots exchanged. Major Curtis, in charge of 20 U. S. troops in the town, thought prudent to place Adjt. Smith in the jail for safe keeping. The excitement increased, and on the 5th 300 armed Ku-Klux broke open the jail and murdered Smith, who died fighting bravely. Twenty-seven murders of Republicans were published in rebel papers in Marion Co., Texas, in one week, and in the same week Judge Hart, a Republican of an adjoining county, and Wm. S. Kirkman, Bureau Agent of Northeastern Texas, were killed. Of course, negroes and Unionists were fleeing from the region.-Hon. James Hinds, State Senator of Arkansas, and a Mr. Brookes, Republican, were shot and killed on Oct. 22d by James A. Clark, Sec'y of the Monroe Co. Democratic Committee.-About the same time Dr. I. M. Johnston, of Mississippi Co., was killed, and Senators Wheeler and Barker, of the Arkansas Legislature, were very nearly killed by their would-be assassins.-The rebel citizens of Ware county, Ga., being desirous of obtaining a saw-mill which a Northern settler had started there, disguised themselves as negroes, took the carpet-bagger, gave him 76 lashes with a rawhide, and drove him out of the county.-In Upshur Co., Texas, on Oct. 1st, 11 Ku-Klux, in white gowns and conic hats, and masked, took an elderly black couple out of their bed, tied the man by the ankles, drew him feet foremost after their horses on a run for a quarter of a mile to a stream, let him down head foremost into the water, then dragged him back to his cabin, and lashed him on his báre back until they had skinned him from his neck to his waist.The committee of the Louisiana Legislature appointed to investigate violence in that State, report 204 persons killed, 51 wounded, and 143 assailed.-Col. A. T. Akerman, a Grant elector and old resident of Georgia, was refused permission to stop at the Hotel