The daily republic. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1853-1853, 1853-08-15
The yellow Fever In New Orleans.
voluntary ResumptiOn-Miss issippi
Bonds.


voluntary Resumption-Missis
Bonds.
We unite in the general qualification which
pervades the American public upon the removal
of this impuiation upon American faith by the
recent decision that the repudiaied bonds are le
gally obligatory upon the State Of Mississippi
1t presents the admirable spectacle of people
who have voluntarily acknowledged obliga
lions which no authority could have imposed
upon them. The resumption Of Pennsylvania,
Maryland, and Illinois, have furnished striking
proofs of two peculiar features of American
finance. The first: that as almost the entire
amount of State Indebtedness has been invested
ment Of the State, the debt has furnished the
means of its own liquidation. The second
that these debts having been contracted with
an honest purpose, the States have faithfully
employed the earliest means of returning abili-
~ to reinstate their credit and reimburse their
creditors.
10 both these particulars the European gov
ernments present wide contrast with our
own. European debt has generally represented
little excep: that writing on the sand-"the
balance Of power"-ever to be renewed with
every dash Of the popular surge; or it repre-
sents wars, subsidies or intrgues. Bunker
Hill cost Eng land an immense item of her pre-
sent debt. Trafalgar, Waterloo, New Orleans
added to the same obligation. Yet il England
should fail to meet the quarterly interest
upon the sum of nearly five thousand mil
lions Of dollars, for which she is respon-
sible, she could not obtain an advance
upon the national acquisitions or honors for
which she incurred the original investment.
But the States of the Union to which we have
referred are in widely different condition.
Pennsylvania has property in canals and
railroads upon which the public creditor could
rely, and the State government has a tax
able value enhanced by the expenditures
with Maryland and Illinois. Even the com
paratively injudicious investments Of these
two last States has laid the foundation Of pop
ular wealth and demonstrated an honesty Of
popular purpose which has restored them td
the confidence of men of morals as well as
TENS Of European and American Indebtedness is
obvious: the former live the lives of improviden,
debtors who subsist chiefly upon their credit.
If they suspend, resumption is impractical Die,
since the debt represents no investment which
can be subjected to responsibility or made avail
able in market. Hence the error of European
capitalists in applying to the United States the
rules of public credit as they have been estab-
lished upon the other side of the Atlantic; and
hence the immense depreciation of American
securities consequent uponsthe cases of suspen-
sion to which we have adverted. The moral
of these assumptions is, that money judicionsly
invested with an honest intent Of repayment
cannot fail to be ultimately responsible.
There is, however, another American pecul-
arity, in the acknowledgment of the Mississippi
debt, which should not fail to produce it's in
fuence upon the reflective mind. This debt
has not been very large. We do not think i,
has exceeded five millions of dollars. The
State Of Mississippi could always have paid i
without material sacrifice. OF late years shs
has had an actual surplus sufficient perhaps Il
have extinguished it. The legal argument has
been against Mississippi, for whilstit was clear
that her agents had made an immoral applica-
ton of certificates Of credit entrusted to them,
it was equally clear that the innocent purchasers
of those certificates had no notice of the mis-
application. The creditors purchased on the faith
of the character and ability of the State to redeem
her engagements, and in no wise participated in
the fraud practlsed upon her. Such we believe
to have been the circumstances of the case.
Now the efforts to compel the State of Missis
sippi to acknowledge the debt, by the satires
of SIDNEY SMITH or the homilies of the foreign
moralists, have had exactly the same effect,
with The Iidicule and reproach employed by
the Abolitionists to destroy the institution Of
slavery, so far from producing a good result, it
has enhanced the stubborn determination to
yield nothing to compulsion. But the stringent
force employed by foreign intervention to effect
the recognition of the protested debt having ex-
hausted itself, the tribunals of the State have
as matter of domestic jurisdiction taken up
hequestion of State liability, and have decided
in manner gratifying to every friend of repub-
lican faith and public justice. We hope that
this result may not be without its moral. and
that the philanthropists who propose to force
the shareholders TO acknowledge themselves
the most unworthy Of mankind as a prelirni
nary to submitting to the dic,ation of Exeter
Hall or Buffalo, will have the wisdom to see that
while Americans tolerate no such Intervention,
but that left to themselves they will modify an
institution or acknowledge debt according to
their own sense of their own duty.
W L,,,o r-o1 fI,r