The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1867-10-21
General Buffers Finance.


That COpperheads and Rebels should hate
the national debt and.seek to swindle the pub
lie creditors, we can fully understand. That
debt is a necessary and onerous result of the
Shareholders Rebellion. 1t symbolizes the
efforts and sacrifices whereby our national ex-
istence was preserved. Whenever poor man
buys food or clothing for his family, he is COM
PEELED to pay some share of his hard earnings
to defray the inevitable cost of raising the ma
tiOnal flag over the forts, arsenals, armories,
ETC., whence the Rebels had torn it down and
trampled it in the mire. If the GOvernm snt
could not have borrowed enormous sums, the
Rebellion must have succeeded, and become
Revolution. OF course, whoever wishes it had
succeeded, whether in dividing our country,
or in demonstrating" it on the Basis of
slavery everywhere and always, hates the
debt, libels its holders, and will swindle them
if he can.
General Butler stands ON different plat
form. He holds that the war for the Union
was necessary and righteous. He holds that
the money wherewith 1t was prosecuted was
rightfully lent by the loan takers and borrowed
by the Government. What else he holds,
that seems to us strangely inconsistent with
these positions, our patrons have read with
pain in his two elaborate letters, whereof the
second appeared in our last
We do not care to follow him through the
various positions taken in his last. They
seem to us utterly incOnseqUent and inmate
rial. Grant that some, or even most, of the
loans on which interest is expressly payable
in specie do not specify chat the principal
shall be so paid, as in all our old loans nothing
was said of specie. General Butler is quite
aware that our Government borrowed money
during our last war with Great Britain at II
per cent, taking the amount-nO a good deal
less than the amount-in the notes of sus-
pended banks which were 10 to 80 per cent.
below par; yet every cent of the face of these
loans was paid in coin or it's full equivalent,
no matter though this was not stipulated.
But suppose this were not so. Suppose our
Government, like other Governments, had
often defrauded its creditors-what of it /!
Villainy is, unhappily, an everyday occur
renee does it therefore cease to be villainy
Here are the essential facts, which General
Buffers assertions and arguments seem to us
in no respect to shake -
The Government of the United States, fight
| ing for its life against formidable Rebellion,
must have mOney-vast sums of it. One OF
| its desperate eXpedients was the making of its
own promises a legal tender within certain
| limitations. 1t said to its people, "You must
| take my demand notes as money in payments
| from me and from each other save that shall
| still collect my impOsts in coin and pay out
that coin as interest on my bonds. If you do
not choose to hold my notes, you may at any
| time convert them into my bonds bearing six
| per cent. interest in coin.' Thus the illegal
tender" became postponed debt, on which
six per cent, interest in specie was to be paid
at the holders option. And, when nothing
was said Of paying the principal in coin, the
| reason was that nobody imagined or dreaded
that when the loan fell due, there would be
any illegal tender" or paying otherwise than
in coin or in its full equivalent.
But some timorOus soul raised the question
-'Will the Government pay the principal as
| well as the interest in coin?'-and the Secre-
tary OF the Treasury at once responded-"Cer-
tainly; principal as well as interest is payable
| in specie"
On the strength of this assurance, men sold
houses and farms for less than half their
present value and loaned the proceeds to the
Government. More was thus loaned in the
two years preceding Lees surrender than any
people ON earth had ever before loaned to their
Government. Trust funds, the deposits of the
poor in savings banks, the Presidents salary,
and almost every loyal mans savings were
poured into the national Golfers. Foreigners
Germans especially-invested largely in our
bonds, as they clearly would not have done
had they not trusted to the assurances given
by Secretary Chase, and reiterated by every
Treasury agent and by the journals intent on
selling the Donds-conspicuOusly by the Tn
JuRe. From day to day, week TO week, month
to month, we urged every one to invest all he
could spare in the bonds from time to time on
the market, assuring them that they would be
paid, principal and interest in coin. General
Buffers pay and allowances could not have
been handed over to him even so promptly a.
they were, and would have been worth far less
when he get them, if our oountrymen and