New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1869-12-17
TIE PARTING OF THE WAYS.

Whether our National Debt shall i'll good
part be paid by the generation which con-
tracted it, or made perpetual burden upon
the American People for all time to come, is
one of the gravest questions that ever chal-
lenged public attention. We entIeat that Peo-
pie to decide it for themselves, and not let it
be made the football of aspiring politicians.
If we now reduce the taxes so as to stop
paying the principal of our Debt, we shall
never resume it. Next day the fatal pre-
"cedent will plead and the Debt will remain
a burden forever The next War will largely
increase it the next will swell it still farther,
and our pOsterity will bitterly rue the short
sighted selfshness that compelled them to
sweat under a load that should never have
been piled upon their shoulders
Our country was less able to pay its RevO-
lutOnary Debt than 1t now is to pay It's present
obligations; yet it did pay it. The War of
1912 heavily burdened it again; but it paid the
last farthing within the next quarter of a CEN
tury, and had a surplus in the Treasury to dis
tribute to the States. III short, paying War
Debts is a part of the American System, as con-
tradistinguished from the European method of
adding debt to debt, and charging over the cost
of each War upon future generations.
Had our fathers followed the European
method, and left their War debts as a legacy
to this generation, the late Rebellion would
probably have been successful. With the three
debts incurred in the Revolutionary, second
British and Mexican wars resting upon JUS, we
could not have borrowed the vast sums re-
quired to maintain the late struggle for the
Union. Prudent capitalists would have said,
" How can the United States bear up under
" this new load, seeing that, in the long inter-
"vals of peace and prosperity, they have not
wiped out the old onesf' 1t was the fact
that we had twice paid off our entire debt that
enabled us to contract a third so immense.
We cannot forecast the future. Another war
NAV come upon us as suddenly, as inexOraby,
as the last did. We are not ready to breast its
shock, and shall not be while our present debt
hangs over us. TO be ready for such emer
gencies as any nation should anticipate and
provide against, we must rapidly and steadily
reduce our National Debt.
Our Federal taxes are little more than half
their amount four years ago. 1t will be posi-
BILE to reduce them further so soon as we shall
have funded the bulk of our Debt at lower
rate of interest-a Peace rate, instead of the
War rate We are still paying. So soon as we
shall have saved Ten, Twenty, or Thirty Mil
lions per annum in interest we may safely re-
duce our taxes by like amount. But, in
order to do this, the Treasury must be con-
tinually buying up its outstanding obligations,
and thus making them scarcer and scarcer in
the market. Arrest this process, and the great
volume of our Debt would press heavily upon
the market, dragging down the price
of bonds and rendering it impos-
sible that we should fund those outstanding at
a lower rate. Were it morally certain that we
should henceforth pay One HUNDRED Millions
per annum until we had reduced the Debt to
Five Hundred Millions, an American COnsol,
untaxable, at four per cent, having thirty years
to run, could be sold at par. Were it settled
that we should pay off no more principal, we
doubt the feasibility of keeping the Five
Twenties at par. Fortune favors the courage
GUS; Thrift follows the thrifty; and Capital
presses Its loans upon those who are steadily
reducing their debts. Let us never stop re-
ducing ours, at least while we are intent on
funding our Five-Twenties at to Al per cent