Republican Herald

SCHOOL FUND AND STATE FINANCES.

Our friends of the Journal, have lately twice stated in their columns, that the School Fund and Finances of the State were left in a depreciated and ruinous condition, by Governor Fenner, the last year, and that Gov. Arnold has replenished the one, and repaired the other. We have waited with patience, to see this statement supported by proof. We have expected our opponents would reduce their statement to some convenient tangible form, that all may have an opportunity to judge of its accuracy. But as yet we have waited in vain. No data, no proof, no exhibit have yet been made. We ask for the documents, on which this barefaced statement is founded. Let us see it gentlemen. Why keep it from the public? If the statement on which these insinuations are made are correct, certainly they cannot prejudice your cause. The people will suspect you of unfairness, if a precise statement be not made. It has also been said, that the revenue for the present year will amount to nearly $50,000. If this be so, we certainly shall rejoice at it. But, why not give us the precise data on which this statement rests? Why make an assertion and withhold from the public the evidence necessary to prove it? Where is the harm of giving the exhibit of our expenditures and receipts? Give us the facts, on which these statements are founded, and let us and the public examine them. If any credit is due to Governor Arnold, we will cheerfully award it to him. It is doing him injustice to attribute to him acts of great benefit to the State, without giving the proof—equally as much as it is unjust and unfair towards the late Governor to ascribe acts to him as injurious to the State. We ask for fair play. We are equally as unable to award merit to Gov. Arnold, as we are to defend Gov. Fenner from the mere skirmishing statements to which our opponents have resorted. Put on paper, gentlemen, a full exhibit of your debits and credits, in relation to the School Fund, the finances of the State, and the available sources of the revenue. No longer rest upon the one sided statements of James F. Simmons, who has undertaken and actually superceded the official duties of your own General Treasurer. In the Wednesday's Journal, we have a fair sample, of the mode in which our opponents are striving to injure Gov. Fenner, and praise Gov. Arnold. A letter purporting to be from a correspondent in Smithfield, is there published, rehearsing the stale and inflated statement of Mr. Simmons in the General Assembly. This is all deception. There is no such correspondent. The author of that pretended letter is doubtless none other, than Mr. Simmons himself—and we hope he will date hereafter from his own town, Johnston, at least until the third Wednesday of April!!! Do our opponents expect to deceive the people by such shallow pretences? To show that this pretended letter is a mere fabrication, its contents are said to be taken from the debate in the General Assembly, on the last day of the session, Saturday. Now, no such debate was had on that day. It was occupied in the discussion of the report of the Committee on Masonry and the U. S. Bank resolutions. The statements to which this letter writer refers, were made on Thursday previous—and it will be recollected, that no one participated in the discussion but the self-created Secretary of finance from Johnston. It will also be recollected, that Mr. Potter merely observed, "that the gentleman's statement from Johnston, was calculated more for electioneering purposes in the spring campaign, than from any just views of the subject, which he had taken so much time to elucidate." This prediction is daily verified.