The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1868-08-18

majority either Of the House of Representa-
tives or of American citizens at the polls would
be, on the repudiators' own theory, piece Of
unprecedented absurdity as well as OF iniquity.
We have a letter of correspondent lying
before us, asking us to show that reputation
will not "pay" in a pecuniary sense, If We
mean to make any impression on the D5mo-
Gratis; that our talk of honor and good faith is
all very well, but it does not reach them. 10
which we reply, that the very strongest arGu-
ment of this kind we could use is, from its
very nature, worthless as far as all Copper
heads and secessionists are concerned-the
argument that reputation, in any shape, Will
leave the Government powerless, or greatly
hamper It, if it should again be called on to
defend its existence in the field. To say this
to them is to put musket in their hands to
use against us. To talk to them of the enor-
nous desolation that would be worked by re-
pudiation. of the shock to the whole frame
work of society it would cause, is likely to be
ineffective for the same reason. They do not
particularly care about the framework OF
society. as we understand it. We have no
means of computing the loss to the country
that reputation would cause. The actual
sum of which holders of Government seouri-
ties would find themselves deprived would re-
present only very small portion of 1T. The
shock it would give to industry, the dark cloud
it would cast over the future, the fear it
would inspire among capitalists, would
produce an amount of damage the extent
and duration of which neither we nor any
other man can compute; and the effect of such
prodigious stroke of baseness on the morals
of the rising generation would be something
worse and more lasting, even from CONNER
cial point of view than the visible effect on
business. We rely mainly, too, on appeals to
the popular conscience, because this question
is not TO be decided by the Democrats, but by
the majority of the American people; and
whenever appeals of this sort cease to indu-
ence the bulk of American society, although
the nation may remain tremendous by land,
tremendous by sea- and flow with milk and
honey, the form of government will change,
and the forces which hold society together will
change too. The government OF the strong
hand will be instituted for the government Of
reason, and the gems d'drmee will do the work
of the newspaper. Whenever we believe
that day has come, our occupation, and all
others like it, will be gone; and, unless We
are greatly mistaken, we shall know it,
and stop talking. But with the graves of
three hundred thousand men still fresh,
and with cripples in every village-all sacri-
feed to the popular devotion to an idea, to a
remote imagined good-it is impossible not to
feel that the arguments addressed to the popu-
lar sense of justice, the popular sense of
honor, the popular appreciation of the value
of distant results, are, after all, the arguments
which tell on the greatest number. The i'm
mediate loss or gain to each individual tax
payer, in country as rich and growing as
this is, of the payment or repudiation of the
national debt, is, after all, so small that the
material side of the question looks strangely
insignificant beside the moral one. What
makes reputation most dreadful, is the
moral condition it would indicate; and when
one sees the small wits of ''the moral wing'
of the Republican party exercised in sneering
at the idea of a national conscience, and such
people as General Butler Offering himself again
to the suffrages of Massachusetts constituency
with the air Of Christian martyr, one feels
that the question, "Will it pay ?' is, after all,
not the greatest question of the day, but-Can
this Government be conducted successfully on
principles of unmitigated rascality3