The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1869-10-20
JUST so!
From the ". Y. Tribune.

From, the ". T. Tribune.
The Comme,cioy CCincinnati) closes re-
view of the recent contest in Ohio and its
result, as follows
'pThe course of the administration stands indorsed
by the people of Ohio and Pennsylvania, and will
grow in favor with them il it is known at the end of
each financial year that one hundred millions of the
public debt has been eNtinguishcd. To accomplish
this is the intention OF the President and his able
Secretary, and they will work with an eye single to
that purpose.
Truer words were never spoken, and he is
an unwise or an insincere friend of the ad-
mnistration who does not lay them to heart.
When the Copperheads were trying to defeat
General Grants election they paraded Del
mars official calculation that the Treasury
would be one hundred and fifty millions
minus at the close of the fiscal year then
passing. They chuckled over that prospect
as though it were new Bull Run or Frede-
ricksburg And now they would have worsted
us in the late elections but for the fact that
the debt is being steadily reduced by pur-
chase and payment. Stop that process to-
morrow and the Government is a shorn Sam
son, and gold ''bulls" in Wall street will vie
with Copperheads at the polls in their anti
national triumphS.
The naked truth is that the great mass of
our frugal, thrifty, hard-working people want
| the national debt paid, and that within the
| next generation. They do not regard it as a
| blessing but as burden, which they mean to
be honestly rid of. They have no faith in
financial juggles; they fully understand that
it is to be paid from the fruits of their labor,
and they propose to work and save on pur-
pose that it may be paid Each successive
monthly statement which shows that five to
ten millions of the debt have been paid off
within the preceding thirty days makes them
feel as they did when they first read the news
from Fort Donelson, or heard that Vicksburg
| had surrendered to Grant: or that Atlanta
| had been abandoned to Shermans victorious
arms. Nothing succeeds like success; y
and the fact that we are paying eighty
or ninety millions of the debt per annum is
the best answer to those who argue that we
can never pay it. We shall have five millions
less interest to pay next year than we must
pay this year, because of the principal we
have meantime wiped out; and we must not
weary in we'll ll-doing. In order to fund oul
debt at a lower rate of interest, we must con-
vince the holders and other moneyed men
that our debt will surely be paid-that the
bonds are to become scarcer and scarcer
yearly, so that their market price will ad.
vance; and we shall soon be able to fund the
fVe-twenties at a lower rate of interest, and
thus save twenty or thirty millions per an.
mum. But let the payment OF the bonds be
stopped, and we shall have the credit of
the Government falling off, the burden of the
debt increased by the feeling that there is tc
be no end to it, and all manner of repudiatine
schemes commended and made formidable
There may be friends of the administration
who unite in the clamor for reducing anC
taking off taxes; but that will be dark da,
for General Grant which sees the taxes so re
duced that we can no longer persist in stead,
and rapid reduction of the debt. The wisdom
of such a course would have been exactl
paralleled by stopping the augmentation 0
our armies in July, 1864, and mastering on
100,0 veterans to return to their homes.
we keep on paying the debt, it will come to b.
generally understood that the debt is to b
honestly paid.