Boutwell's Finance

Mr. Boutwell's lecture on " Finanoe " geems to "catchit" on all sides. The Chicago Trihvne saya of it : Mr. Vansittart, Chancellor of the Exchequer of the Bvittish Empire, duiing a suspension of specie payments, once introduced a motion into Parliament declaring that " the notes of the Bank of Kngland aro now and always have been of equal valué with the coin of the realm." Notwithstanding Parliament was stupid enorugh to adopt his resolution, Mr. Vansittart has ever since been the laughing-stock of financiers and Bt.atesmen at hotua and abroad. The extracts with which we have been favored from Mr. Boutwell's lecture on " Finance," delivered in New York Tuesday evening, indícate that he regards greenbacks in the same light that Mr. Vansittart regarded the depreciated notes of the Bank of England. This is what he must have meant when he declared that there is no need of resuming specie payments, but only " to equalize the commercial valué of paper currency of the country with coin." If this is to be done in any other way than by resnmiug specie payments, we presume it must be in imitation of the Vansittart policy, by a resolution of Congress ! The people who shoud, after this, refuse to sell their property for gold and greenbacks on the same terms would suffer the withering penalty of Mr. Boutwell's indignatiou. He is willing to concede something, however, to the insensato demand of some folks that money shall have a fixed valué ; and so he says that the government may some day resume, but that it is entirely impracticable for the banks to do so. That is to say, if the banks redeein their notes in legal tender, as they are now required to do, and government redeems the legal tender notes with coin, it would be impossible for the banks to resume specie pay menta! In other words, there is some mysterious and metaphysical obstacle which will prevent the banks from sending the legal tenders, which they hold for the redemption of their own notes, to the Treasury Department at Washington to get coin for them, as it becomes necessary. These are the words of wisdom which Mr. Boutwell, the ex-Secretary of the Treasury, throws out to the country to set the public mind right on the i subject of the national finances and the i recent panic. '