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Shannon, because the rules of evidence and court procedure here admitted of no interruption of the prosecution in presenting a case, then went on to describe from his own point of view how Cowperwood had first met Stener; how he had wormed himself into his confidence; how little financial knowledge Stener had, and so forth; coming down finally to the day the check for sixty thousand dollars was given Cowperwood; how Stener, as treasurer, claimed that he knew nothing of its delivery, which constituted the base of the charge of larceny; how Cowperwood, having it, misappropriated the certificates supposed to have been purchased for the sinking-fund, if they were purchased at all all of which Shannon said constituted the crimes with which the defendant was charged, and of which he was unquestionably guilty.
He had not deposited them in the sinking-fund, and did not intend to for the present could not, unless considerable free money were to reach him shortly for he had used them to satisfy other pressing demands, and had no free money to buy them back or, in other words, release them. And he did not want to just at this moment.
* These expenses were defrayed by a continuation of the duties on malt, &c; a land-tax at three shillings in the pound; a duty on licences, to be yearly paid by pawnbrokers and dealers in secondhand goods, within the bills of mortality; the sum of one million four hundred thousand pounds advanced by the bank, according to a proposal made for that purpose; five hundred thousand pounds to be issued from the sinking-fund; a duty laid on gum Senegal; and the continuation of divers other occasional impositions.
It was his painful duty to move the adoption of the following resolutions: That copies of the papers authorizing the foreign loans should be made; that the names of the persons to whom and by whom the French debt had been paid be sent to Congress; that a statement of the balances between the United States and the Bank be made; that an account of the sinking-fund be rendered, how much money had come into it and where from, how much had been used for the purchase of the debt and where the rest was deposited.
It is said that the belief in the potency of a sinking-fund for clearing off the debt inspired public confidence in the stability of the funds, and that it was wrong to shake this confidence even by the promulgation of truth.
Cowperwood was referring to the system under which certain portions of city money, like the sinking-fund, were permitted to be kept in certain banks at a low rate of interest or no rate banks in which Mollenhauer and Butler and Simpson were interested. This was their safe graft. "Don't throw your chances away, George. Don't quit now.
It has often been supposed, indeed, that the statesmen who mainly carried out the system were in secret conscious of its fallacy, but were content to carry it out so long as they saw that it inspired confidence in the public. It is in allusion to this that we have spoken of the sinking-fund as a great hoax.
It was, he believed, undeniable that nothing could equalize our revenue with our expenditure, but the putting down entirely the army and navy, or the extinction of one half of the national debt; but when he looked to the actual receipt of the last quarter and found a falling off of 2,400,000l., which, with a corresponding decrease in the three succeeding quarters, must create a new deficit of 10,000,000l., and, added to the 3,500,000l. to which he had alluded, would form a sum equal to the whole amount of the boasted sinking-fund, he felt that it was worse than trifling to suppose we could go on upon the present system.
This was now remedied by the Act approved March 3, 1875, to protect the sinking-fund and provide for the exigencies of the Government. This Act repealed the provision for a reduction of ten per cent in certain customs duties under the Act of June 6, 1872, which had really been passed without full consideration or due appreciation of its probably effect.
It was in the days of the younger Pitt, however, that it came out in full bloom. After it had been for several years in operation, a retired and absent-minded mathematical student, Robert Hamilton, shewed its falsity in a book printed in 1813. The exposure was conclusive, and no one since that time has ventured to support a sinking-fund.
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