The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1869-08-04

/ advanced to the Pacific Road Cor roads) which
they are under obligation, but not yet able,
| to day. The total reduction of the debt since
General Grant assumed the Presidency Give
months) falls little short of forty-four mil
! lions of dollars.
We are reaping the bitter fruits of Mr.. Nc
| Cullochs persistent violation of an imperative
law of the land. That law peremptorily re-
! quired him to buy up and hold as a sinking
fund one per cent. per annum (between
twenty and twenty-eight millions) of the en-
! tire national debt. Had he obeyed this law
he could have bought twenty-five millions per
annum of the debt for less than twenty mil
lions of gold, and saved over ten millions in
interest which we have been paying on, bonds
winch should have been long since snug in
the sinking fund, BY violating the law he
deprecated the national credit and cost the
country at least twenty millions of dollars
ten millions that would have been saved by
buying when the bonds were cheaper and ten
millions of interest that would have gone into
the sinking fund instead of the pockets of the
bondholders.
MIR. boutwell, seems to be doing his best to
regain the ground so wantonly thrown awav
lie announces that he will buy ten millions
more OF bonds in the course of this month:
and we infer that he will Keep buying so long
as he has the meaus. unless Congress should
"'N llllb' ne NONiu uOuDIlCDo. buy ltoJGI-
perhaps fifty millions forthwith-but for the
fact that this would raise the price of bonds
exorbitantly. He is buying, we presume, as
fast as he thinks he can and avoid this rock
in his course.
The end plainly in view is the funding of
our debt at a lower rate of interest. Over
sixteen hundred millions of it is in the form
of fve-twenties, whereon we are paving six
per cent. interest when most of them are.
and the residue will soon be, subject to re-
demptlon at the pleasure of the Government
1t Is shame that one bond should be out
standing on which this right of REDEMPTION
has accrued. If we could fund these sixteen
hundred millions at four per cent. (and we
nope a long bond, untaxable, and paying in
terest wherever the borrowers shall prefer
may be fioated at or near that rate), it would
save to the country no less than thirty-two
millions per annum-a sum that, invested in
the sinking fund, would of itself pay off
the debt within forty years. To fund the
debt at low rate of iterest is to be the great
triumph of General Grants administration.
unless his enemies, by their projects of direct
or indirect (greenback) reputation, shall
succeed in preventing it. They are working
to this end with unscrupulous desperation
Hence the swlndling resolves of their West
ern State Conventions; hence the various
knaveries in our dealings with our public
creditors proposed in their journals and
speeches They must be met and beaten.
To the funding of the debt at a low rate, it
is an indispensable prerequisite that we shall
go on steadily and vigorously paying it. To
reduce the revenue to the current needs of
the Government and stop paying debt, is to
postpone indefinitely the prospect of funding
at four per cent, and thus maintain the pre-
sent exorbitant rate of interest. Let no
friend of the administration consent to pur-
chase present ease at the cost of permanent
burden. Let us keep the revenue up to the
present standard, economic expenditures
to the last degree possible, and keep on paying
off debt at the rate of eighty to one hundred
millions perannum, and we shall soon be able
to fund the Five-twenties on our own terms.