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CAN NORTH AND SOUTH BE RECONCILED? Southern editors, in their paroxysmal way, assure us it is impossible that north and south can ever hereafter come together as one people. We must live apart, say they. Blood has been too profusely shed in this strife to permit reunion. Now we cannot see this. Many nations have had the same sad experience, and have reunited more firmly than before. Scotland has forgotten or forgiven Glencoe and Culloden. La Vendee is not less loyal than any other department of France. The Spanish Christinos and Carlists fraternize as though their civil war had never added unusual atrocities to the catalogue of human crimes. The insurgent cantons of Switzerland, brought back by force of arms, again form integral and harmonious parts of the free confederacy, although a wide religious difference gave bitterness to the contest, and rendered submission unpalatable. Why then should there be in our case any separating barrier so high and strong as to overcome the power geographical considerations which render it imperative that the republic should never be dissevered? 
It is a shallow pretence, invented and urged by crafty demagogues, to say that the people of this country are not sufficiently homogeneous to live under a common government. So far from it, the truth is there is scarcely a country on the globe where the language, habits, religion and general modes of thought assimilate more completely. The single jarring interruption to this harmony comes from slavery, and before this contest ceases we hope to see that disturbing element so changed or removed as to abate materially its power for evil. 
But not withstanding that this disturbing difference prevented that full cordiality which would doubtless otherwise have existed, many countervailing circumstances operated to draw together in intimate connexion people whose feelings and interests were mainly identical. Intermarriages and friendly personal relations were very frequent, whilst the volume of business between the two sections was quite large. In both respects, free inclination alone had control. Our political connection by no means necessitated such ties of relationship, friendship or business. Nor need southern people have resorted for summer recreation to northern watering places. Numerous establishments of the kind, dotting the Atlantic or Gulf shore, or placed in hilly situations, invited summer tourists to stay on the southern side of the Potomac or the Ohio. 
Why were their children sent north for education and manners, if the degree of antagonism were so extreme as the leading slave demagogues would have us believe? There was no absolute necessity in the case. Many seminaries, and some universities, proffered educational opportunities to every southern who chose to avoid any real or opposed moral contagion attendant on northern tuition. 
All this communication between the two sections was purely voluntary. It was not necessitated by the political connexion. It would in all probability exist again, even were the republic dissevered, unless some hostile legislation, far more prejudicial to the south than the north, was interposed to prevent it. Still more ceriable will this condition. 
THE NATIONAL DEBT
A few days since we expressed a wish that the Secretary of the Treasury would publish as soon as possible a statement of the whole amount of the national debt up to the latest dates, in order to contradict the exaggerated estimates which have been put in circulation, for political effect upon the fall elections. Mr. Chase has not as yet seen proper to do so officially, but he has employed a letter to a friend as the medium of disseminating correct information on this subject, and the result fulfills what we predicted. We call the attention of all connected with trade or finance to this exhibit, for it is one of the highest importance. 
It now appears that the whole amount of the national debt is only six hundred and twenty millions, including the entire Treasury note and stamp circulation, and between seventy and eighty millions of the debt of the late Administration From other authentic sources we learn that unadjusted claims cannot exceed twenty millions, which, added to the above, would make a total debt of six hundred and eighty millions of dollars. On this the average rate of interest will not exceed four per cent., and is probably less. There is a wide margin between this and the total of two thousand millions, which some politicians have persisted in giving as the amount of the debt. 
It thus appears that the national finances are perfectly manageable, and not obnoxious to that sweeping censure which has been so freely bestowed on Mr. Chase's policy. It is difficult to see how the Department could have been conducted better than it has been under the very embarrassing circumstances which have impeded his progress at every step. Indeed, in view of the enormous cost of this gigantic war, it is surprising that we have spent no more than the sum now stated, and there is great room for congratulation that we have got off so easily, and are still solvent and prosperous. 
We submit to every candid man that this exhibit of the national Treasury dissipates the alarming phantoms of endless debt which cunning financier had conjured up to form the basis of their exaggerated theories about gold. They represented that the financial chaos of the government was hopeless, and that the debt of the nation was becoming so vast that there was no possible way of paying the interest on it, or of meeting our expense Day after they reiterated this absurdity, and strange to say, found numerous believers in financial circles, so that the condition of the money marker was materially affected. They drew extravagant pictures of boundless issues of irredeemable Treasury notes flooding the whole conntry, and drowning out all our standards of value; of immense bonded debts sold at a fraction of their face value and of the credit of the national government ruined past all hope. 
It now appears that there is not even enough Treasury notes to supply the pressing needs of the country, that the whole debt, notes and all, is less than a third of the exaggerated sum stated publicly, and that the interest is comparatively very limited amount. There is, therefore, no occasion for alarm respecting our financial condition and especially there is no reason why this notion should be made the excuse for a gold panic and derangement of the general trade of the country. An interested in finance, banking, commerce, trade politics should preserve these figures carefully, and have them always at hand to contradict the statistics so glibly passed from mouth to mouth by thoughtless dabblers in public affairs.