The Hillsborough Recorder

THE PRESIDENT'S MESSAGE.

We cannot indulge our readers with this document. It is too long for any of them to read. And we prepare only a brief synopsis, premising that it is better written, and a better considered document than might have been expected from President Grant.

In the beginning, after the usual laudation upon the prosperous condition of the country, he touches sharply upon the financial condition of the country. Business and labor he says are frustrated, while labor and capital are abundant. In regard to the currency, he says the large issue of paper which it is impossible to keep at par has induced a pernicious spirit of speculation and extravagance among the people. He thinks it might have answered the purpose when introduced, but thinks the time of its usefulness now past, and he leans to a resumption of specie payments—in which by the way, he is more than sustained by Secretary Bristow, who boldly fixes the period—three years, for resumption. He thinks that the delay in the return to specie payments savors somewhat of dishonesty, and the only way to get through is by the positive action of Congress.

He says that the first great requisite to a return to specie payments, is, a return to prosperity. The legal tender clause to the law authorizing the issue of currency by the National Government should be repealed, to take effect as to all contracts entered into after the day fixed in the repealing act.

Provision to be made by which the Secretary of the Treasury can obtain gold from time to time from the date when specie redemption commences, and a revenue sufficient in excess of expenses to insure an accumulation of gold in the Treasury to sustain redemption.

The President favors free banking at the same time with resumption.

We have no room to follow him through the history of our foreign relations.

We are rather surprised at the tenacity with which he holds on to his errors in connection with the South. Surely a candid and intelligent mind would have been convinced by the impartial testimony of northern correspondence, by the investigations had in Congress, by the confessions of conspirators against the peace and prosperity of the South, that the troubles in this region were not political in their nature, were not conceived in hostility to the government, were not originated in hostility to the black man, but grew naturally and irrepressibly out of a resistance to intolerable oppression.

What the Southern people did all others would have done, and more, in like circumstances. They deserve praise for a forbearance and patience so foreign to their ascribed character, rather than reproach and condemnation for the little they did to throw off the yoke.

But we will not pursue this subject, since the late elections show that General Grant stands almost solitary and alone in his estimate of our affairs.

And with this we will close our notice of a document which does the head of the author more credit than he has hitherto received.