FINANCIAL CONDITION' OF NORTHERN AMERICA.

New Zealander, Volume XXI, Issue 2265, 3 November 1864, Page 6

FINANCIAL CONDITION' OF NORTHERN AMERICA.

(From Mitchell's Maritime Record.') Dr. Macky, writing to the Times from New York on the 15th July, gives a very gloomy account of the financial condition of the No theru States. Gold had fallen f.tom 180 to 150J premium, it is true, but the belief of most persons competent to judge was that the fall could not be maintained, but that the apparently inevitable issue of more greenbacks will lead to further inflation. Tlie fifty million of dollars which Mr. Fcssenden reqivres for the payment of ai rears due to the army, and which he expected to obtain by loan from the bankers of New York, have not been forthcoming. It is supposed that they will eventually be obtained, however, but in the meantime liabilities go on increasing at an almost fabulous rate. On the sth instant the "unpaid requisitions" upon the Government amounted to no less a sura than 91,814,000 dollars, and on the Ist cf September, on which day the loan is to be repaid, it is expected that they will, at the lowest computation, amount to 171,000,000 more. Taxation cannot supply this deficiency. There remain, therefore, according to Dr. Mackay, two courses open to Mr. F ssenden to adoj-t—he must either enter upon a new loan, or he must print off to ihe last dollar the whole amount of greenbacks that Congress will allow to be put in circulation. The latter course will inevitably send up gold to a most dangerous premium—a course which Mr. Fosenlen a extremely anxious to avoid. He therefore proposes, or rather it is proposed for him, that the forfner course shall be adopted, but that the ordinary routine of banks and financial agencies shall be set aside, and an appeal be made to the nation at large —the farmers, tradesmen, and shopkeepers—to bung their small accumulations into the National Treasury at a fair rate of interest. Considering the growing unpopularity of the war, even in the most fana'ical districts of* the North, there is something almost touching in the blind faith which could dictate such a scheme as this. Consid>;r----i tg, too, that repudiation has already been threatened nnd that if one debt be repudiated another is scarcely likely to be acknowledged, it is difficult to imagine what grounds Mr. Fessenden has for thinking that any class of persons—especially one so astute as the Yankee proverbially is—will be at all likely to risk the savings of a lifetime in so dangerous a speculation.