Page:A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Confederacy, Including the Diplomatic Correspondence, 1861-1865, Volume I.djvu/522

490 after the return of peace as shall be sufficient for the final redemption of the entire circulation.

The details of the plan, the calculations on which it is based, the efficiency of its operation, and the vast advantages which would result from its success are fully detailed in the report, and cannot be fairly presented in a form sufficiently condensed for this message. I doubt not it will receive from you that earnest and candid consideration which is merited by the importance of the subject. The recommendations of the report for the repeal of certain provisions of the tax laws which produce inequality in the burden of taxation; for exempting all Government loans from taxation on capital, and from any adverse discrimination in taxation on income derived from them; for placing the taxation on banks on the same footing as the taxation of other corporate bodies; for securing the payment into the Treasury of that portion of the bank circulation which is liable to confiscation because held by alien enemies; for the conversion of the interest-bearing Treasury notes now outstanding into coupon bonds, and for the quarterly collection of taxation — all present practical questions for legislation, which, if wisely devised, will greatly improve the public credit and alleviate the burdens now imposed by the extreme and unnecessary depreciation in the value of the currency.

The returns of the Produce Loan Bureau are submitted with the report, and the information is conveyed that the Treasury agency in the Trans-Mississippi Department has been fully organized and is now in operation, with promise of efficiency and success. The provision heretofore made to some extent for increasing the compensation of public officers, civil and military, is found to be in some places inadequate to their support, perhaps not more so anywhere than in Richmond, and inquiry with a view to appropriate remedy is suggested to your consideration. Your notice is also called to the condition of certain officers of the Treasury, who were omitted in the law heretofore passed for the relief of other public officers, as mentioned in the report of the Secretary of the Treasury.