The Charleston daily news. [volume] (Charleston, S.C.) 1865-1873, 1868-01-30
CHARLEsT TON
THURSDAY MORNING, JANUARY 80, 1868.
The Bills, tho Whole Bills and Nothing
but tho Bills.

It is useless for the convention to fatter
itself that the market value ofState Bills Re-
ceivable will not be injuriously affected by
an additional issue of those tills for the pur-
pose of paying the members and officers OF
the convention. The bills receivable have
I'D to this time been sustained in price
because there was no pressure OF sales.
They were bought in small lots at eighty
cents on the dollar, and sold at eighty-threo
or eighty-fve; but, at any moment forced
sale of twenty or thirty thousand dollars
of these bills would have run down the
price fifteen or twenty per cent.
The convention is of opinion that the
demand for State bills, to he used in pay
ment for taxes, will keep up their price;
that the bills will be absorbed by taI-pay-
ers in few months; and that the endorse
ment of the convention, and guarantee OF
payment, will do State securities more good
than the increase in the amount issued will
do harm.
These arguments have no solid founda-
ton, and show but little sense on the part
of those who use them. This State is now
bankrupt, As State, it ia bankrupt; as a
people, it is bankrupt; as community, 1t is
bankrupt The people of the State will not
pay their taxes; and they cannot be made
to pay, for they have no money, and no
means of raising money. If one man would
not pay, he could be compelled to pay; if q
hundred men would not pay, they could be
compelled to pay; but what can be done by
compulsion when the defaalters are num-
bered by thousands, and when the property
of the delinquents will not sell in the
market for the State claims upon it I? This
is sober fact; and every reasonable man
knows that not one-tenth part of the whole
taxation Of the current year can be ex-
pected to be collected before the first of
January next.
The State bills will not be absorbed in
six months, or in dozen months; and the
guarantee or endorsement of the conven-
tion, upon which so much reliance is
placed, is for all practical purposes, useless
and of no effect. Assuming that the en-
dorsement of the convention would give
the bills receivable the undoubted validity
of the State bonds issued before the war,
it would not make them worth more than
forty or fifty cents upon the dollar. But it
cannot even do this. The legality Of the
convention is extremely doubtful, and 30 is
the legality of the Reconntru0tiOn acts OF
which it is the creature. Going further
back, the constitutienality Of the conven-
ton of 1866, and of the Provisional Gov
ernments established by President JOHN
SON, is far from being beyond question, and
it is now patent fact that, within the next
three years, the course of events may over
throw everything that has been done since
the war closed, and throw to the ground
every obligation not incurred by the people
of the State according to the provisions OF
the State and Federal Constitutions.
While all else is in doubt, can the conven-
ton obills receivable" be made secure be-
yond dispute? They canrot; and nothing
else can be expected than such fall in
their value as will give the members of the
convention their first sad experience of the
danger of meddling with things which
they do not understand.