New-York tribune., 1868-08-08
THE AIR-LIyE ROUTE TO FINAYCI4L RUIN.

THE 4IR-LIAE KOCIE ~ NIHCiAb ~ HCi-''
A correspondent, recently writing to THE
TRIBUNE, says:
1--WE favor the payment of The FveTwentes in green
backs You ask how, then, will we pay the green
backs3 In god to the uttermost arhng when ~e cam
but meantime will avoid the runous interest we pay
at present"
Let us analyze the effects which would result
from this blunder, if it could be consummated.
The above statement is a step in advance OF
the PendletOn theory. The writer has discOv-
cred, by dnt of hard pounding, that, when the
bonds have been all withdrawn and greenbacks
issued, the principal Of the debt is as large as
ever Not dollar of it has been paid. The
! United States still owes the holders of the
greenbacks S2,5OO,COO,COO, which our corre-
spondent says should be paid in gold
Bat ne says we have stopped the
payment of the interest. Waving the point
that it would be as just to repudiate the prin-
cipal as the interest of any debt on which we
have agreed to pay interest, and hence the
plan, if a good one, stops short of its full fru-
itiOn by S250O,0O0,00O we will suppose the job
done. The bonds are recalled. The green
backs are issued The blow is struck-whom
has it felledq
First: We have agreed to pay $2,5OO,0OO,0OO
in gold on demand for debt which we could
buy to-day for 70 cents per dollar, or for
81 200, 600 in gold altogether, thus losing at
the outset Gf the greenbacks are ever to be
paid) SS000OO,00O in gold, or Gi years interest
on the National debt.
Secondly: The National Debt could not be
paid out of the surplus earnings of the people,
after paying for the wear and tear of working
capital and the support of the people, III less
than twenty years. A note without interest,
payable in twenty years, is worth that sum
which, if placed at compound interest for
twenty years, VIII produce the sum for which
the note is given. The note of the Government
for 800, due in twenty years. without interest,
and sure to be paid in coin, would be worth
only $40. Even were there absolute certainty
therefore, that every greenback note would be
paid in full in gOd at the end of twenty
years it would be worth only twenty cents
on the dollar. If used as a currency in which
prices were to be stated and debts paid, all
prices would go up $50 per cent above what
they now are, or 400 above the gold price, and
all debts would be payable with less than one
third the actual value which would now pay
them. If all values would rise at the same
at by computation. But they would not. I'm
ports and exports, dry goods, wheat, pork,
beef, and other eXpOrtable merchan-
disc, would rise in price long before
wages and rents, and these still long before real
estate, and real estate in commercial cities
would rise long before, and more than, country
property This would set on foot a general
gambling and speculating era such as the cOun-
try has never seen. Gold would go up from 40
to 500. The poor man who to-day sells his shop
or cottage, that has heretofore been worth 81 900,
for 81 800 thinking hc has made great advance,
finds before long that he ought to have sold it for
$1,000 in order to make himself whole, and
that he has lost three-fourths of all he was
worth, unless he can swindle somebody
as badly as he has been swindled.
In such a chaos and wreck of prices and of
business the honest workingman is ruined;
the hardearned property he has accumulated
melts like the dew-he scarcely knows why.
Such a condition of things is favorable only to
the gambler and land-shark, and fatal to all
honest and legitimate industry. Talk of saving
S12O,OO0,OO0 of interest per annum 1t would
unsettle and tumble into chaos the entire
property of the country, so that no man
could be certain of saving anything.
The twenty thousand millions of dollars,
which the entire real and personal
property of the country is worth, would
rise to one hundred thousand millions, and in
the rise eighty thousand millions of it, at its
advanced values. would pass from the hands of
those who have honestly earned it into the
hands of spectators. This proposition launches
us on n shOreless sea. 1t has no element in it
but certain destruction, widespread and terri
bic disaster. The very existence of bust
ness and industry depends on preventing
the fools from running our finances upon
this rock of repudlation. 1t is not not a
question of mere honor but of overwhelm
ing interest-nay, of self-preservaton. The
sO-called payment of the debt in greenbacks,
sren II they Wero certain to be paid in gold IN