The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1869-10-16
cu.ss;,.;ns Of Finance.

CursSitsfGs OF FlnHuces
II is an aW 1li heresy 10 advocate paying gov
srnment bonds in greenbacks., How solemn
vMr. Sumner excorlates the back of the pre-
sumptuous man, that so much as hints that it
may be done How emphatically all the heavy
respectable journals, oracles of sound opinion.
join in the exorcism. How assduously the
racy and numerous public writer's lend their
satirieal quilts to whip the eccentric Spragues,
Buffers and Shermans, whose giving forth have
had rustic of paper, where they should have
the clear ring of true metal We have our
selves Joined in the mad dog cry, and helped
hang what tin-kettles we could to the tails of
these apostatizing and fugacious brethren.
Well, the government are paying the bonds,
have paid some sixty millions of them. for who
expects that the five-twenties purchased by
Mr.. Boutwell, and sailed away in the Treasury
will ever get out again. Paying them in coin
in the true sense of the Republican platform?
Oh, mol Not silver in coin! Mr.. Boutwell,
had the coin, had much more than he has paid
out, but hard money is too good to pay bonds
with, so be sells it at such premium as he can
get, and actually pays these bonds in green-
backs. 't ~
Where are the answers for this, not poetical
thinking but heretieal acting? Or is it so
much worse to talk and write about paying the
bonds in greenbacl,s, along with an honest
purpose to make greenbacks as good as gold,
than it is to do the very abominable thing that
others talk about. Which is the worst bad
faith towards the government creditor? to tell
him that in 1875 he shall be paid in Treasury
notes redeemable in coin, or to actually nav
him in greenbacks in 1862 when they are at a
discount of 66 per cent, and when the govern
ment has indirectly postponed their redenp-
ton TO the end of the whole mass of the bond
ed national debt? -fs-s4sf" $50
But it may be said the Secretary is not pay
ing these bonds, but simply buying them at
their current market rates of the holders who
desire to sell them. 1t is just as fair for the
government to buy its own paper as for an in
divdual to do the same. The government
would be superfine in its notions of integrity,
to pay premium of So cents for one of its
bonds when it is offered in open market at
premium of IL cents. Let us examine this
If twenty poor men lent the United States
a thousand dollars apiece in 1862, and now in
in 1869 find themselves compelled to convert
ehO SOSuiby thSy nave ever SluCc Htlu iOT IL,
into cash to live Upon, and so sell their bonds
to Mr. Boutwell's agent in New York at such
price as he gives in legal tender paper, why is
it not payment to the,n9 If not when how,
and in what are they paid afterwards? What
does all the fine talk about paying in coin to
the last farthing avail to the most straitened of
the national creditors, who have been compell-
ed to take their pay in deprecated paper? Is
not so much of the national debt paid by the
government in the purchase of the bond, and
is not the honest fiction transparent enough,
that the government bugs the negotiable pa
per and then, having become its own creditor,
makes itself pay itself every dollar in coin ac-
cording to the Republican platform? -.
Is itjust and fair for the government to buy
| its own paper just as an individual can? The
| individual does not make and cannot control
| the state of things by which the market
rates OF gold, of currency and of bonds are de-
! termined The government can control, and
do in measure control the whole 1t could
make currency equivalent to coin tomorrow.
The government cannot speculate in its own
bonds without taking advantage of discount
created and maintained by itself at the expense
of its creditors. af-A2a ll85Eiz8J
But the question is not whether the policy
of buying bonds for greenbacks is honest or
profitable. We may admit that it is both We
do not see how with the checks and hindran-
ces imposed by Congress, any other course was
open to the Secretary of the Treasury. We
have only aimed to show that such policy was
paying United States bonds in greenbacks, the
very abomination and bugbear of all political
discussion during the late campaign. a 7Arsr
There is one way in which all the mischief
Of the talk about paying bonds in greenbacks
could have been checked in 1865, and every
Year after, and can noW be checked,-an that
Is by redeeming the greenbacks, or offering to
redeem them. 1t would not have required
the payment of so much coin, as has been
used to buy greenbacks to pay for bonds
with, to have brought the whole volume of
greenbacks to par value. But now the idea
of redeeming its over due paper has almost
ceased to be talked of. The Secretary is fas-
cinated with the splendid idea of paying the
whole national debt in twenty years, sweating
three billions oftaxes out of the very genera
ton that have paid as much for the war while
it was going on. He is actually paying it, at a
rate of paying the whole in twelve years. The
New York Tribune which from the overthrow
of the rebellion to the present year, steadily in
sisted upon specie payments. insisted that they
were safe and practicable, suddenly LETT off its
second On to Richmond CRY, and became possess
ed with the idea of paying the national debt
with greenbacks, and redeeming them some
fine day. Why this change, unless it was fore
seen that specie payments furnished no occa-
sion for heavy taxes, and that without COM
pelling this generation to pay the whole ma
tional debt, we should have no pretext for a
protective tariff. T.