The New Orleans bulletin. [volume] (New Orleans [La.]) 1874-1876, 1875-11-10
A NATIONAL MISFORTUNE IN STORE
FOB Us.

Harmless as it now looks it is pregnant VILE
storms and destruction. 1t will expand and
thicken until the welkin is covered with dark
ness and the light of day is turned to
murky twilight. Out of its bosom will come
tempests, cyclones, foods and devourips
flames It's name is Reputation, and from
it our country has more to fear than from wars
and all other forms Of national calamity.
The makers of the present public debts,
those who have bee ome debtors and those
who have become creditors, those who have
expended the money received for the sale OF
Federal, State, county and city bonds, are all
or nearly all living. The people OF this era
will say that these contracts OF debt are OF
their own making through the action OF the
| representatives Of their own selection, and
while the aggregate is stupendous sum-not
less than ten thousand millions OF dollars, or
an average Of two hundred and fifty dollars
for every inhabitaat OF the Republic-still
they say the debt Is the work Of their own
hands and that they are bound in honor to
pay it or the interest on it. Perhaps even in
every hundred who is now ready to declare
himself in favor Of regulating the National
debt or those of States counties and cities.
But the mass of public debt is not going to
be paid by the generation who made it The
interest may be kept up, but if any portion Of
the principal is paid, it will be more than
balanced by new debts contracted. A genera
ton of men must in future era be called
upon to take from their earnings more than a
thousand millions Of dollars every year to pay
the interest on debts contracted by their
fathers and their grandfathers. How
will this obligation seem to the men of the
future? How will the voters, whom we now
class as posterity, look upon the load
which their esteemed ancestors of 1875
imposed upon their farms, their shops, their
mines. their ships, their forests and their
mills? Before the coming century is twenty
years old the voting and ruling in the Ameri-
can Republic will pass into other hands.
The action of the politicians and law
makers of this era will undergo very search
ing review and criticism. TIE right of the
legislators of this period to saddle their off
spring with the burdens of slaves will be
brought in question. The evidences of debt
then unpaid will be most risidly serutinized.
Forty years hence, nay, in much less time,
when the Eastern millionaire presents his
bonds and demands principal or interest,
there vii! stand upon the Threshold of
the treasury an armed patriot who will
ask him, Chow came you by this evil
dence of debt? What did you give to
the government for it Where is the equiv
alent received ? Your ancestors were the
Promises and our ancestors were the prom
issors, but they had no equivalent for their
bonds, and they have left no sufficient assets
with which to meet their obligations Our
labor is our own, nor will we suffer i. to be
had no right to bind US. We were born free,
nor will we consent to be enslaved by virtue
OF the trades, bargains and speculations of a
past oge, in which we had no voice and from
which we have derived no profit
Il sometimes happens that father, through
misfortune, dies insolvent, and that wise
and honorable son, out of reverence for the
memory Of an unlucky parent, pays all his
Obligations, principal and interest. to the
utmost dime. This generation of Americans
is passing away in bankruptcy leaving a
legacy of public debt which they neither can
nor will pay. Will their sons and grandsons
be so moved by reverence and affection for
their bankrupt sires that they will gladly pay
the debts which they contracted and for
which they leave no equivalent?
1t so happens that even now the States of
the Republic are divided into two classes
those where the public bonds, the shares and
stocks, and vast proportion of funded CAPT
tai are owned, and the agricultural or produc-
ing States GU. of whose products and labor
must come the interest on all these bonds
the dividends on all these shares, and the in
terest paid on all this funded capital. The
Eastern creditor States have their plethoric
who do nothing but clip their
and receive their dividends, while
in the Western and Southern debtor States an
army of tillers of the soil are busy in pro-
viding the products for exploration so that
the imports received in exchange may raise
the money to pay the interest due to Eastern
debtors who are the holders of government
bonds.
Let the present generation Of Western and
Southern farmers pass away leaving to their
sons the legacy of debt due to the children of
he present Eastern bondholders who will
nave grown enormously wealthy out Of their
interest, dividends and rents, and what rea-
,on will there be to suppose that the sons Of
oil will carry their load contentedly? Will |
hey not then, or long before, begin sharp
md searching inquiry as to the right Of one
generation to enslave its successor Will
hey recognize the right of the monetary
Caesars to levy tribute money on their farms,
heir cattle, their cotton, their tobacco and
their grain ?
Thirty years is not a notable period in the