The Portland daily press., 1878-03-12

u'spaIcn to got suom pdianced before the re-
coil began, must have shown splendid profits
But when the notes they had taken fell due
they had an opportunity to realize that they
would have been great deal better off if they
had done very much less business. Some of
them have been obliged to follow the example
OF their delinquent debtors and seek the disa-
greeable refuge of bankruptcy. The greater
portion are having leisure now to rumiuate on
the mutabiiity of human affairs, and are con-
sidering how they can reduce expeuditures
sufficiently to enable them to make both ends
meet, until there comes genuine revival of
business.
All these things of course form part of the
risks of the tradesmsn's occupation. They con-
stitute the process of levelling by which nature
provides that the dealer 10 merchandise shall
not in the long run fare better than the farmer,
mechanic or any assduous follower of any 9th.
or legitimate and useful pursuit. This opera
tion OF equalizing the results Of effort, happens
for the time being to fall with excessive severi-
ty upon every urban population, and New York
comes in for the heaviest share. That is reason
enough why our people do not and cannot
take cheerful view of the situation. Now
and then there is man who is philosophical
enough to look beyond personal interests and
local boundaries and to comprehend and ac-
Knowledge the fact that the country at large
may prosper, when those who depend upon
buying and selling for their means of
subsistence are enduring severe misfor.
tunes. Whoever looks at matters with this
breadth of observation cannot fail to dis
Germ that the people as a whole are gaining all
the while in wealth. In fact the evidences that
this is SO lie SO near the surface that anybody
who gives the subject serious thought will! be
obliged TO concsde the correctness of the propo
sition. The balance of trade is greatly in favor
of the United States; our exports continually
and largely exceed our imports; the national
debt is undergoing a slow bat gradual reduc-
tion. To crown all the paper money of the
government, in site of legislative expedients
which have been so strongly calculated to bring
it into dscredit, is within one per cent. of par
in gold. We are on the very verge of specie
payments, and if Congress contents itself with
the single folly-of financial kind-t has
committed thus far it is BY no means certain
that the problem of resumption will not work
itself out before the eventful 1st of January
next, that is either to see this Republic lifted
out Of all fear of reproach by unf.ltering adher-
en;e to its plighted word or covered with shame
because of its default.
There are some pallating circum stances to
be urged in defense of the passage of the silver
bill. The argument that silver was legal
tender when the debt was contracted is spe.
cious and will not bear examination, but it has
Its weight with people who W ant to find iustifi
cation for doing something they think will re-
dound to their advantage. The decentralization
act of 1873 is even more binding upon the pub
lie in honor than it would be if the value of
silver were the same now as then. At any
rate after silver bad been deprived of its legal
teHder quality it was no longer within the
province of the government to substitute it for
gold in payment of the public creditor. But
people are not always over nice in their calcu-
lations about such matters, and there are q
great many of them whom it does not seem
possible to impress with the idea that it 10 the
height of wisdom as well as of justice to fulfil
every pecuniary liability with an exactitude
aud completeness that can leave nothing to ba
cavilled about. That is the way sensible men
preserve their individual credit. The nation
that does not maintain the same position is not
5 deserving OF the allegiance and 10y atty of its
citizens.
However it is not the question now whether
past errors shall be repaired, but whether fresh
ones shall be committed. The repeal of the
resumption act is the folly that it especially de.
wolves upon patriotism and craftsmanship to
prevent. The tide must be stayed first; the
turDing of it will be the work of future and
more healthful era. The forces of Dature are
working tolerably well in furtherance Of COT
rect views. The silver scheme has developed
no disastrous effects as yet. Customarily the
consequences of empirical measures are fora
seen and discounted. In this case there has
been no disposition manifested to make prepa-
ration for events that at the worst are in the
far future, and may in the improbable con.
tiDgency of restoration of common sense to q
majority of the members of Congress be
averted entirely. There will have to be great
deal of silver coined before its addition to the
circulating medium will be appreciably felt
The chances are that the banks will absorb
considerable of it at first. 1t will answer their
purposes for a reserve fund precisely as we'll as
legal tender notes, until their vaults get SO full
of the unwieldy metal that they cannot give it
storage room. The banking rooms on Wall
street and Broadway are rather expensive
places to be used for repositories of anything so
cuubrous' but as far as they have space in their
cellars they can utilize it in this way. There
will be enough of it no doubt in general use to
give people realizing sense of its unwieldliness
and inconvenience. 1t will not require much
to accomplish that object.
But if in addition to the legalization of the
alloyed coin authorized by the recent act we
were to encounter so grave a misfortune as
the repeal of the resumption law, we should
have great many steps backward to tread
That would throw the whole country into chaos
so far as the absence of legal guidance could
produce that effect Then we should be obliged
to depend upon the currents as to whittier we
shonld drift Il is not unlikely if that were to
happen that natural causes would impel an
early resumption. 1t does not take an intelli-
gent community long to find out that if they
wish to hold any intercourse with the rest of
the world it is decidedly for their interest to
establish and preserve parity of relations. But
really if we are going to support an expensive
government and submit to onerous taxation,
for the sake of perpetuating its existence the
least we are entitled to demand is that 1t shall
not be disgrace to us. If the question came
between the extinction of the Union or the re-
Dudiation in part or in whole of the national
debt 1 should decide unhesitatingly that the
former was the least of two evils. An author
ity that commands obedience without inspiring
respect is an intolerable tyranny and ought to
be ovsrthrown. 1t seems to me nothing could
SO effectually weaken the sentiment of love of
country in every manly American heart, as the
avowal on the part of the dynasty bearing sway
in affairs of the deliberate design of violating
the pledge to resume specie payments on the
first of January 1879.
1t is ''devoutly to be wished that we may be
spared this humiliation. Our native land
ought to be dear to every one of its citizens
1 am not quite sure that it ever has been to all
Of them at the same time, but for fifteen years
it deserved fealty and homage from every free
man in the universe. How proudly it bore the
conflict of opinion and of arms in the terrible
warfare slavery waged against it. Our feelings
of pride in the glories or of modification at
the faults of the Republic are susceptible of
alterations as things 90 we'll or ill with IT,