It is not difficult to understand how the steady decline in gold from 135 to below 120 should have excited more interest than is usually felt in the fluctuations of the premium. In the first place, the change involves an appreciation in the gold value of the currency from 74 cents on the dollar to 83 cents, which calls for a very important modification of prices generally; and, in the next place, it brings us much nearer to that stage of decline at which public opinion would materially incline toward preparations for a return to the specie basis. It is, therefore, most important to appreciate correctly the uses of this decline and the probabilities as to its permanence.

For several months past, we have seen a decline in thepublic expenditures and an increase of the revenues. This surplus of income has been devoted to the purchase of the Government obligations; so that, within the nine months end-ing with the present year, $90,000,000 of six per cent

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bonds have been taken into the Treasury. In making these purchases, a large amount of Government gold has been placed upon the market; and yet so ample has been the coin revenue that the sales have not reduced the surplus in the Treasury below the average amount. This great fiscal achievement, accomplished without any special effort and from revenues which the country has yielded without complaint, is such a conclusive evidence of the ability and the disposition of the Government to liquidate its debt that it has necessarily effected a material improvement in the public credit; which, so far as it affects the value of United States notes, implies a decline in the premium of gold. These operations of the Treasury were, for some time, prevented from having their due effect upon the premium by speculative obstructions. There were those who had no faith in the wholesome tendency of Secretary Boutwell's policy, but, on the contrary, regarded it as affording an occasion for speculation in favor of a higher premium. The result of their operations was exposed in the panic of September 24; since which period, speculation having been too feeble to affect the market in either direction, the premium has been free to take its natural course; during this interim, however, the effects which had been previously postponed by artificial operations have found expression, as well as those resulting from a continuance of the Treasury policy. Here, then, we have one prominent cause of the decline in the premium.

The improvement in the public credit has naturally augmented the demand for our securities abroad; and, within the present month, this demand has been further stimulated by the favorable reception in Europe of the President's message and the report of the Secretary of the Treasury, and especially the allusions in those documents to the refunding of the debt at a lower rate of interest-recommendations which, perhaps, have commanded even more confidence abroad than at home. The export o securities from these causes may not have been so large as to augment the shipments beyond the average of former years; but as the bonds have gone out at higher prices they have made a very large amount of exchange. Nor is it to be overlooked that the extension of railroad enterprises in the South and West has been attended with the exportation of an important amount of mortgage bonds, which have been extensively taken in Germany and England; and so far as these securities have been exported, they have tended to keep the foreign exchanges easy, to limit the outflow of the precious metals, and consequently to depress the premium on gold, which always advances as coin is exported, and vice versa.

The course of our foreign commerce, taken in connection with these movements in securities, has also favored a decline in the premium. Ever since the close of the war, one of the principal causes sustaining the