The New Orleans crescent. [volume] (New Orleans, La.) 1866-1869, 1869-02-04
PARTIAL REDEMPTION AND REPUTATION.
The purpose and tendency of the resolution

the treasury are maple 10 DO misunderstood.
1t will doubtless seem to many, at first glance.
that the prohibition is conceived in the in
terest of those who are hostile TO contrac-
ton of the currency, and to resumption,
through that process, of specie payment.
But the effect of the measure, if it is to have
any effect of public importance, must be to
sustain the arguments and inyigorate the hopes
of bondholding creditors who claim that the
government is indebted TO them, in gold, or
its equivalent, to the full amount of what is
nominated in the bond" This will be clear to
any one who reflects moment on what was
really signifed by those operations called sales
of gold by the government. In such cases the
government deliberately went into the market
and shaved its own paper at discount avera-
ging about thirty per cent. At this rate it
has been accustomed to buy gre enbacks, that
class of its promises topay which are payable
on demand without interest But, in morals
and in logic, it is immaterial whether the
debt which it has discharged by paying sew
enty cents on the dollar was in the form of
greenbacks or of bonds. The material fact
ty per cent. Of all its own obligations which it
has received in exchange for gold. This is
not the less reputation because it is COM
pounded with redemption. Another very
noteworthy circumstance is that government
creditors whether bondholders or currency
holders, is unimportant-hav voluntarily
accepted seventy per cent. in full acquittance
of their claims. We say that it makes no diff
ference whether the vendors in these transac-
tons gave greenbacks or bonds in exchange for
gold, because the public debt, in the sense of
explicit and undisputed promises to pay spe-
cited sums of money, is a unit qualitatively
as well as quantitatively, and one portion of it
cannot be good for its entire face, and another
portion deprecated or worthless. Its vita
ton in any form must consequently be inte-
grail and essential. Nor is it to be doubted
that in numerous instances bondholders have
sold greenbacks to the government at seventy
cents on the dollar. Indeed, it is certain
that the spectators who have made this dis
position, for their own profit, of greenbacks,
haDitually speculate in all kinds of govern
ment securities, and that, if occasion should
offer, they would be equally ready to sell in a
like manner, for their own profit, the bonds
which they hold, at an approximate rate of
discount.
The fact is that they do every day sell to
private purchasers bonds and greenbacks on
substantially the same terms, when allowance
is made for the few cents of additional value
which the interest clause imparts to the
bonds. Here, then, is the curiously absurd
spectacle of the bondholder presenting him
self in these two homogeneous characters: on
the one hand, a creditor willing to accept
seventy per cent of government gold in pay
ment Of his claim, and, on the other hand,
creditor insisting that his claim is good
against the government for every title of its
face in gold. He is a lucky fisherman who
can either use his bait with the certainty of
catching what fish he may momentarily de-
sire, or save it with the assurance of catching
a thirty per cent. larger supply of fish after
wards. No less felicitous is the position of
the bondholder who may sell his portion of
the national debt for what it is worth in the
market, or keep it with the confident expecta-
ton of realizing about third more than it is
worth in the market, in addition to accrued
The sales of gold by the government have
usually been secret; through agencies, that is
to say, not known to be operating for the
government. But that does not alter the
matter either in equity or expediency. If it
is honorable and just for the government to
take up portion of its debt by process
that signifies partial reputation and par
tial redemption, it could not be dishonorable
and unjust for it to take up all the remaining
portion of its debt on the same terms, and by |
the same or a different process. On the other |
hand, if national creditors can afford to sell |
% a secret agent of the government at thirty
per cent. discount such of its obligations as
may furnish the gold to buy, they surely
'ould not account themselves disastrous
osers, and the victims of spoliation, if the
government should take measures to paw off |
n gold, or in an equivalent, all its outstand-
ng obligations at their current price in the |
market The time is not yet ripe, perhaps,
or the taxpayers of this country to under.
tand thoroughly the relations in which they
tand to the national creditors. In a few
ears the bondholders will have received
ack from the government the whole
mount of the original cost of their
onds, with interest equivalent
D from twelve to fifteen per cent If the time
yer come when the public conscience will
ddress itself to this matter in downright
arrest, then the bondholders will rue the
ay that they we're seduced by dreams of
peculative gain to stand out for duplicate
ayment and triplicate interest. No large
ar debt, it is true, has ever been paid. That
the United States will be no exception.
he bondholders are doubtless satisfied of
us. But the great capitalists who WELD this
lterest hope to make the debt perpetual.
i'd the unfailing source of large income
rained by remorseless taxation from the
ldustry and commerce of the country. The
reat struggle that awaits the American peo-
10 is to free themselves and their children
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