courts. It is not impossible that in this way many millions would be placed in the treasury at moderate rates of interest.

The Secretary has already referred to the recommendation of the Commissioner of Internal Revenue in favor of increased duties. He cannot add anything to the general considerations he has already urged in favor of augmenting revenue by these methods. It may be useful, however, to invite special attention to some considerations which enforce the recommendation of a duty of 23 per cent. a year on corporate note circulation.

The proposition contemplates a duty of one-fifth of one per cent. per month on circulation; and the Secretary suggests, in addition, one twenty-fifth of one per cent. on deposits in each month, making twelve twenty-fifths a year. Under the existing law the duty on circulation is one per cent. a year on a certain proportion; two per cent. on amounts exceeding that proportion, and one-fourth of one per cent. on deposits. The small addition proposed will not be regarded as unreasonable or onerous, when it is considered that all corporate circulation is in fact a loan by the people to the banks without cost, except that of preparation, and without interest, except the duties imposed on it. The whole question then resolves itself into this: Is the duty proposed, added to the State taxation, and the cost of preparation, more than equivalent to a fair interest for the loan? If not, surely it should be paid without demur as a reasonable contribution to the common welfare. The duty proposed on deposits is much lighter for obvious reasons. Its whole amount is less than one-half of one per cent. per annum; and being in the nature of a tax on profits, rather than on property, will distribute itself among all who partake of the benefits of the deposits, and press hardly on none.

It is proposed to make the duty payable in small percentages, because it will be thus distributed over the business of the year; and, because, by requiring monthly returns of circulation and deposits with reference to the duties, information will be regularly obtained in respect to the amount of circulation of all descriptions in the whole country, the publication of which will be an important benefit to all men of business, as well as a valuable guide to financial legislation and administration.

Monthly returns are now required of many of the national banking associations, and should be required of all; and from them, as well as from the banks not organized under national legislation, should be required a fair contribution to the general burdens of the people. The Secretary refers to Congress the question, whether the duty on national currency and the deposits of national banking associations shall correspond with the duties on other circulation and deposits. He thinks that for the present, at least, some discrimination in favor of the national associations may be properly admitted in consideration of the indispensable importance of a national currency, not adapted only, like United States notes, to temporary emergencies, but permanent in its very nature, and adequate to all demands of business, and capable, at no distant period, of being made equal to and convertible into coin, and therefore its real representative and equivalent.

The operations of the mint have been of less importance than usual during

the last year.

The amount of coiuage was increased over that of last year at San Francisco alone. The value of the bullion received was $24,824,101 31; in gold $23,149,495 41; and in silver $1,674,605 90; from the total of which must be deducted the bars made at one branch and deposited for coinage at another, making the actual amount deposited $23,701,837 31. The coinage of the year was $24,688,477 12; of which $20 695,852 was gold coin; $1,949,877 90 gold bars; $1,174,092 80 silver coin; $390,204 42 silver bars; and $478,450 cents. Of this coinage $4,184,497 37 in 49,108,402 pieces was effected at Philadelphia; $18,551,598 68 in 2,872,173 pieces at San Francisco; and $2,137,642 82 in 3,404 gold and silver bars at New York.

The branch mint at Denver has been organized and put in operation during the year, but its operations are confined, for the present, to melting, refining, assaying, and stamping bullion.

A report has been made on a site for a mint in Nevada, and measures will be taken for its establishment as soon as possible.

The Secretary renews the recommendation of preceding reports in relation to the universal measure of commercial values by an international decimal coinage.

The operations of the treasury proper have reached unprecedented magnitude. These are conducted, under the direction of the Secretary, by the Treasurer, the Assistant Treasurers, and the Designated Depositaries, by whom money's which come into or go out of the National Treasury are received and disbursed. As receipts and payments have increased in number and amount, and assumed new forms, the labors and responsibilities of these officers have taken vaster proportions of magnitude and importance. The general operations of the year are seen in the statements already made of Receipts and Expenditures, but no general statement can convey an adequate idea of their, variety, extent, and perplexity. The labor, and care, and anxiety incident to the borrowing, receiving, and paying of the sums necessary to meet the debt becoming due during the year, or, in other words, the making and applying of the loans necessary to the renewing of maturing loans, make little show in the Report, and yet embrace transactions, often complex and necessarily multitudinous, which reached, during the year, an aggregate of more than a hundred and eighty-one millions of dollars. The responsibility and labor of the whole money operations of the Treasury may be inferred from this statement concerning a comparatively small part.

The receipts at the office of the Treasurer in Washington during the last fiscal year were $1,348,029,543 93, and the disbursements $1,334,615,175 57. At the office of the Assistant Treasurer in New York the receipts were $637,051,546 63, and the disbursements $622,842,627 92. At the office of the Assistant Treasurer in Boston the receipts were $118,900,000, and the disbursements $115,750,000. At the office of the Assistant Treasurer in Philadelphia the receipts were $113,248,031 27, and the disbursements $109,733,346 03.

The receipts and disbursements at the offices of the Assistant Treasurers at

San Francisco and St. Louis, and of the Designated Depositaries, especially at Baltimore, Cincinnati, and Louisville, have been large beyond precedent, imposing labors and responsibilities correspondingly large. The Secretary cannot express too strongly his satisfaction with the manner in which these officers have generally performed their onerous and multiform duties.

The act of Congress relating to captured and abandoned property, approved March 12, 1863, and the proclamation of the President of the 31st of the same month, devolved upon the Secretary the duty of regulating commercial intercourse in conformity with the acts of July 13, 1861, and May 20, 1862, and under license of the President, between the States declared to be in insurrection and the other States of the Union; or, to use the description commonly employed, between the rebel and the loyal States. This duty has been found exceedingly arduous and perplexing.

Prior to the act and proclamation of March, the Secretary had attempted some restrictive regulations with the view of preventing supplies to rebels; but the state of the law, and the terms of the original proclamation, made it difficult to act with much efficiency or usefulness, and the regulation of the trade was assumed almost exclusively by the military authorities. Immediately, however, on the publication of the proclamation of March, the Secretary issued regulations of trade, framed on the best information and with the best consideration he was capable of giving them; and earnest and persevering endeavors were made to bring the whole subject under their control and under proper supervision. Experience revealed defects in the regulations, and they were revised, amended, and republished in September last.

The subject is too vast and complicated, the appetite for trade is too eager and exacting, and the impatience of all restraint, however salutary or necessary, is too great, to allow any hope of avoiding many and sometimes just complaints. But the Secretary has kept steadily in view the plain duty prescribed by the law of preventing any supplies from being carried into districts controlled by rebels; the equally plain duty of allowing and securing, so far as practicable, without intercourse with rebels, supplies of necessaries to the inhabitants of districts in which the rebellion has been suppressed; and the clear policy of supporting and facilitating the efforts of loyal citizens to obtain wherever obtainable, without going beyond the lines of national military occupation, cotton, sugar, tobacco, tar, rosin, and such other products of the rebel States, for the benefit of lʊyal commerce. To this end he has selected persons of known intelligence and probity as supervising special agents, and through them others of like characters as assistant and local special agents, to exercise the necessary powers over intercourse, and has imposed, with the sanction of the President, and as conditions of license, such fees and contributions on the trade permitted, as were thought necessary to defray the cost of supervision, and add something to the means for the prosecution of the war. The agents of all grades have generally been diligent and faithful in the discharge of their several duties. A few of subordinate grade have proved incompetent or unworthy, and have been dismissed; and the same measure will be promptly applied to all, of whatever grade, to whom public duty may require its application.

By an order of the Secretary of War issued on the last of October last, the care of abandoned plantations and other real estate has been devolved upon the supervising agents, who have been instructed to accept the charge and use their best endeavors in its execution. The charge of abandoned lands and plantations necessarily carries with it, to some extent, the charge of freed men. The whole charge is at present under military sanction only; for the acts of Congress concerning abandoned property relate exclusively to personalty. The order is of too recent date to allow receipts of reports concerning its practical effects. It is only very clear that some system should be adopted and steadily pursued which will best serve the great objects of restoring tranquillity, order, and prosperity to the States and parts of States in which the national authority is or may be re-established, and at the same time securing the rights and welfare of the loyal and enfranchised people. To these results the labors of the Commissioners of Direct Taxes, as well as judicial action under the acts relating to confiscation, must largely contribute. Already, under the sales for direct taxes in South Carolina, considerable properties divided into small tracts have passed into loyal possession, and are cultivated successfully by the labor of freed men. In this connexion the Secretary asks permission to repeat a suggestion heretofore made, that the proceeds of cotton, raised by the freed men before emancipation, and collected from those properties, should be applied in some judicious way for the benefit of those who raised it. The whole subject will doubtless command the attentive consideration of Congress.

The important and responsible duty of receiving commutation money from drafted citizens, and placing it to the credit of the Provost Marshal General, with the Treasurer, assistant treasurers, and designated despositaries, has been assumed by the collectors of internal revenue, at the instance of the Secretary of War. In the judgment of the Secretary of the Treasury this money should be paid directly into the Treasury and drawn out upon requisitions for the purposes to which it is appropriated by Congress. The Secretary of War thought, however, that the other mode of collection and disbursements would be less burdensome to drafted men and more convenient for the payment of substitutes. His wishes were promptly complied with, and the whole matter is now submitted to Congress.

Under a resolution of the Senate, adopted on the 12th of March last, the Secretary has taken measures for the preparation of the fullest statement possible, with existing means of information, of the foreign and domestic commerce of the United States, including that of the Pacific coast. The learning and ability of the gentlemen employed in this work warrant the expectation that a very instructive account will be obtained of the condition and prospects of our ⚫ foreign commerce from and to the Atlantic and Pacific coasts, as well as overland, northward and southward, and of our internal and inter-State commerce, including the trade between loyal and rebel States, and between the bread-producing and gold and silver producing districts of our country. The materials for a proper statement of this internal commerce must be sought in reports of State commissioners of statistics, of boards of trade, of railroad and canal companies. and occasional or periodical publications relating to trade and business. This

is a department of statistics comparatively new and difficult of exploration, but no pains will be spared in the search, in the hope of being able to submit to Congress a result, of no insignificant value to the business community and to those charged with the duties of legislation and administration, which will itself suggest the action "necessary to enlarge and protect the important interests involved." Under the sanction of the acts relating to the subject, the Secretary has taken measures for preparing and printing fractional currency bonds and notes in the Treasury Department, with a degree of success which already assures decided economical advantages and warrants the expectation of satisfactory results.

The Secretary has already invited attention to the reports of the Register, the Comptrollers, and the several Auditors.

The Report on Commerce and Navigation for the fiscal year 1862, prepared in the Register's office, has been greatly delayed by causes explained in his report. The same report for the fiscal year 1863 is also nearly ready, and will be sent to Congress within the next month. Its important information will be found much better classified and arranged, and much more clearly stated, and therefore much more acceptable for use than heretofore. The Secretary suggests that it will promote the interests of commerce and expedite future reports if provision be made for the monthly, or at least semi-annual, publication of the returns of imports and exports.

The suggestion of the Second Comptroller that the salaries in the offices of the Comptrollers should be higher than in those of the Auditors, and that promotion should take place from the latter to the former, is respectfully commended to legislative consideration. If sanctioned by law, it will doubtless promote accuracy and promptitude in the revision of accounts.

The vast expenditures of the war, in life and treasure, have devolved unexpected labors on the Auditors' Bureaus, and especially those of the Second and Third Auditors; and the difficulties, attendant on the organization of a proper force for the settlement of the suddenly accumulated accounts, have caused some delays, which the most strenuous efforts have been made, in vain, to avoid. It is hoped, however, that the accumulation will now be arrested and henceforth steadily reduced. The Secretary respectfully suggests that some provision be made by which officers of the department may be enabled to attend the armies and collect information, and especially in regard to the wounded, the missing, and the killed, which will facilitate the promptest settlement of the claims made in behalf of destitute families, and widows and orphans.

The Report of the Solicitor will exhibit the action of that officer in the investigation of frauds perpetrated by certain persons formerly employed in the New York custom-house. The legislation of last session, the prompt dismissal of the guilty parties yet remaining in office, and the measures of prevention devised and adopted will, it is believed, sufficiently protect the government against the repetition of these or the commission of like frauds.

The Secretary renews the recommendation, submitted in his last report, of the purchase of the Merchants' Exchange in New York, now occupied under lease as a custom-house.