New-York daily tribune. [volume] (New-York [N.Y.]) 1842-1866, 1860-03-02
wKsTRRN pRBrsERRPUDIATION.


to be known in life and in history as having always
resisted and discouraged to the extent of our abil
jty. all appeals TO the East to lend money Or its
equivalent to the West. AS it is, We cannot claim
to have consistently aud sternly fought the whole
deusiye, miscbievous business in question; but we
can confidently say that the general, habtua course
of this journal has discouraged and dissuaded from
loans of Eastern capital to Western settlers or
operat0rs-that we have in the main, tar ed deal
eur TO moving appeals and alluriDg prospects, ana
declined TO answer most, while answering Mega
lively the residue of the thousand appeals made TO
us throughout the last ton fte years to devise
and suggest facilities for obtaining in New York or
elsewhere loans in aid of promising enterprises or
distressed debtors in the West Yes, friends IN the
Great West we wish you collectively ana dlStinct.
" 10 understand that should you hereafter succeed
in borrowing money in the East to pay your
debts or sustain your various business opera
tions YOU will be indebted to others than TO US Tor
uch present relief at the cost of future nbarrass-
mens and misery. Whatever you may for the mo-
mept suffer, you ought not to borrow money away
from home. and will not be benefited by 80 doing.
One in twenty may derive advantage from such
loans; but the great majority will be harmed oy
them. It'll, the readiness with which EasteIn cap
itsl has been invested (much Of it irrecogerably)
in Western opt ratiCns, which has raised The price
of most OF your wild lands so high that poor men
carnot buy and improve them 1t is the facility OF
borrowing money at the East-most oft at IL to 30
Der cent per annum-which has whemed so many
of you in bankruptcy. And now, if you could sew
orally Dor :ow the additional sums that you think
YOU need it would only be the druDkard's remedy
for his shattered nerves and palsied limbs-mOre
rum We shall regret to hear that you can bor-
row another dollar, even to pay what you already
owe and to avert what you doubtless consider
uinous sacrifices. If you are embarrassed, better
surrender your property to your creditors let them
divide it equitably with the least possible coat and
delay, and go to work with unfettered hands and
nothing in them. This may lead to individual and
general relief, which borrowing will never secure.
We have been impelled TO these reflections by
glance at the present financial and moral attitude
of Wisconsin. That State was peopled mainly
Though in part at second-hsnd) from NewEn-
gland; and there is no better stock. She has had
very rapid growth and will probably exhibit pep
ulation Of Seven Hundred Thousand by the census
of 1860 She is well tmbered well watered, has
an excellent soil, is eligbiy located, and has a
healthy though rather severe climate. She has
already amused considerable wealth, and would
have been richer by this time if she had been con.
tent to make haste slowly But her villages were
sll eager to become cities at the pace Of Jonahs
gourd, while her farmers wanted to enrich them
selves at railroad speed. SO every little port on
Lake Michigan must undertake to run its railroad
back to the Mississippi and every county must run
in debt for few hundreds of thousands in aid Of
some advantageous line. Not content with these
evidences of public spirit, thousands Of farmers
uOrtgaged their farms for the largest that they
could be made to carry, subscribed the mort
cages as stock exchanged tn for bonds in these
embryo railroads, expecting thus TO be made rich.
Every was conducted for time on high
pressure principles, and the result is general burst.
The disastrous consequences of this epidemic
delusion are wide ,pread and very severe. Some
Of the railroads thus constructed are worth to-day
Just what their rails would sell for us old ron less
the cos. of taking them mp and marketing them.
Others are doing better; but hardly of the rail-
roads thus iinanciered can pay the interest on its
bonds, leaving its stock dead loss anyhow. OF
eourse, the farm mortgages have been exchanged
for what has no pecunary value. Cities and couh-
ties have furnished their ten, and hundreds of
thousands, and invested them in stocks that are not
worth so much white paper. The scanty means OF
widows and orphans at the East have been Invested
in these stocks, these bonds, these mortgages and,
as no interest or dividend is paid on any of
them, there is much resulting privatiOn
and distress. Worst Of all is the moral bankruptcy
thus created or developed. Au utterly insoyent
man may be thoroughly upright; but, if there be
any latent rascality in mans nature bankruptcy
is sure to bring it to light City and County loans
are repudia.ed, and suits brought to enforce col
lectiors or f,reclose mortgages thereon are de.
Tended on pretexts which Tom5s lawyer defend
ing pickpocket in our Police Courts, would be
ashamed to stoopto. The creditors are few or dis
tant the debtors are many, compact and powerful.
They elect the Judges, and the Judges remember
their (humsn) creator. The long and short of the
matter is that neither bonds nor mortgages princ-
debts are practically repudiated, and Wirconsin
hides her burning bushes on the bosom of Missis-
sppi Her project last in logical sequence is one to
stop the collection Of debts by law-an experiment
that we shoud like to see tried in any State with
reference to obligations contracted after the pas.
cage of the act but which, as applied to debts pre-
vlou,ly incurred, is nothing less than wholesale