New-York tribune., 1868-08-25
Comments By The Tribune.

]. In so fdI as senator CHclIliIu ludf Iltdh
, that we ought to pay all our National obga-
tions in coin or its full equivalent we heartily
agree with him. We have steadfastly held
and urged that Our Government should
have resumed Specie Payment in full directly
after the surrender Of the Rebel armics-at
least as early as the 1st Of August, 1865. The
depreciation Of our Paper Currency was then
yeyy mOderate-far less than it now is-Our
Revenue was much larger than at present, be
cause of the higher rates and wider sweep of
our Internal Taxes If Hugh McCullOch had
then acted as well as he talked-if, after un-
answerably demonstrating, in his Fort Wayne
speech, that Resumption was at once our duty
and our interest ne had not stultifed himself
by proposing to effect that Resumption after
eighteen months more Of needless and there
fore disbonorable banRruptcy--if he had sim
ply (say on the 1st of January, 1860 posted up,
over the front door of his Department, "Thc
United States have resumed Specie Pay
/ mentn and thencefOrth acted accordingly,
receiving, paying, and ievery way treating
Gold and Grccnbacks as of equal value-we
should have this day been Half Billion less
in debt to Europe and in no danger of Ma
tiOna disgrace through National villainy.
Our debt to Europe was then very small, and
would have grown no larger under Resump-
ton We had Two Millions of bales of Cotton
TO sell at good prices and only needed to offer
our creditors whose debts were aCcruing or
past due some new bond that they would take
as soon as cash, and there was no serious OBJ
stace to Resumption. Had Mr.. McCullOch been
a man of true courage ready to translate his
words into deeds, the crisis would have been
met and passed long ago.
II. Since Mr.. Sherman prOnOunces every
. Greenback a promise to pay coin on demand
and asserts that the failure so to pay it is ga
"breach of faith"-since lie adds that we can
so pay them if we will-since he nowhere init
mates that it would be honest, OF even lawful
to issue additional Greenbacks wherewith to
paylD our interest-bearing bonds-and since
he truly says that the only obstacle to Resump-
tion is a popular dislike to have our sham val
ues reduced to real valueS-we cannot realize
that the partisans of the proposed Pendleton-
Vaandgham National Swindle can make much
capital ont of John Sherman. And what little
they do make is based on a falselOod For
Ill Mr.. Shermans one mistake-and it is
very grave One--lurks in his assertion that,
under the law the contract between the
United States and its creditors was that " the
United States might, at the end of five years,
return TO the creditor his principal sum an the
"Same moneB loaned to the Government, or might
postpone it for twenty years" We will prove
this not so, to the conviction of any impartial
arbiter Here are our proofs:
/. No human being intimated, at the time
tlp Legal Tender act was DasSed, that the Five
Twenty bonds authorized by the same act might
be paid off in Greenbacks. On the contrary,
that act guarded against such presumption by
providing, not that the Fiye-Twentics should
I've payable in Greenbaeks, but that the Gr,sn-