Green-Mountain freeman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1844-1884, 1868-12-09
Shaving" the Bonds.

Senator Morton OF Indiana mas enough
prominence in the Senate and in the nation to
make his position on laying bonds in green
backs or gold Of importance to the public.
In q recent letter written to correct some
he says:
What / urged during the canvass was that
the first duty of the government was to re-
turn to specie payments, which, when accom-
plished, would settle all questions as to the
mode of paying the bonds. | further urged
that the government had no right TO issue
new legal-tender notes, and make them ap-
plicable to the payment Of the bonds, argu-
ing that such notes could not be made to
sustain the same relation to the bonds, in
law or equity, that was sustained by the ex-
isting notes, and that the further issue Of
such notes would indefinitely postpone the
return to specie payments.
These propositions were fully stated in my
speech in the Senate, last summer in which
| argued the legal right of the government
to use the eri,ting Iegul-tender notes in the
payment of the bonds. l also argued at
| various times during the Canvass that, what
ever might be the law or the subject, the
government could not pay the bonds CT any
considerable portion Of them in coin while
the currency remained deprecated, and that
the improvement Of the currency, by bring
ing it up to par, was a necessary condition
precedent to the payment of the bonds IL
gold that, If the government could not
| procure gold enough to redeem three Lun-
dred and sixty-fYe millions of legal-tender
notes, it was folly TO talk about paying the
bonds in gold that the question Of the
mode Of paying the bonds will become i'm
portant only by the continuance of Z de-
PRAYED currency without taking steps to
improve il; that 70 take the surplus gold in
the treasury and apply il to the purchase Of
bJnds in the market, which will not fall due
for fourteen years, =. would net be paving
the bonds" but :" shaving them, and
would be an improper use of the means by
which the paper Of the government, overdue
and dishonOred, should be redeemed.
We cannC imagine what objection Senator
Morton has to the government shaving
its own paper. The government il confessed
~ unable TO pay all, Or any considerable por-
ton of its debt Most OF the debt,-except
the greenbacks-is not due, and VIII not be
for many years. The greenbacks it does not
now try to pay or redeem and when it tried
to do q little in this way some months ago,
Congress, mainly BY reason Of western pres
sure, forbid the secretary Of the treasury to
reduce that class of Indebtedness. If the
government has any surplus gold, what bet
ter use can il make OF it than by shaving
bonds not yet due? 1t thus diminishes the
interest-paying debt, and relieves the treas
ury. And wouldn't it be better to use
surplus gold for this purpose, than to allow
millions of it 70 lie in the treasury without
interest until greenbacks and gold come to
Do Of equal value and it takes a hundred
dollars in gold TO redeem a bond that can
now be bought for about eighty dollars L?
Nobody suffers now by this 50 shave" be-
cause the man who sells his bono parts with
it Voluntarily, and gets as much RS il cost
him But if Senator Morton's idea should
prevail. the government would lose twenty
dollars on every hundred dollars of it's in
! debtedhess which il has now tho ability Ia
bay N open market at the current rates,
AID would at the same time get credit. not
for superintendent honesty, bu. FOX extra.
ordinary stupidity. What the government
should do, is to collect revenue enough to
enable it to have "a surplus to buy up its
bonds, and use this surplus for that purpose.
In this way its credit would be improved,
the premium on gold would decline, and the
monthly debt statements would be more
favorable in their figures than now.