Daily Kennebec journal. [microfilm reel] (Augusta, Me.) 1870-1975, 1879-02-07

loans. They. unequal TO the task and hay-
ing removed their own foundations by
banishing specie with profuse paper issues,
sank under the double load of national
and local wants and stopped specie payments
all except those of New England, which
section of the Union was unfavorable to the
war. Treasury notes were then the resort OF
the Federal Government. They were issued
in great quantities, and. not being convertible
into coin at the will of the holder, soon began
to dcprcciate. In the second year of the wal
the depreciation had already become enor-
nous, especially towards the Canada frontier,
where the war ragged and where money was
most wanted. An officer setting out from
Washington with a supply of these notes
found them sunk one-third by the time he ar
rived Mt the northern frontier. his every So
counting but 50. After all, the Treasury
notes could not be used as a currency, neither
legally or in fact; they could only be used to
obtain local bank paper, itself greatly depre-
Ciated. All Government securities were under
par, even for deprecated bank notes. Loans
were obtained with great difficulty-at large
discount-almost on the lenders own terms,
and still attainable only in deprecated local
bank notes. In less than three years the
Government. paralyzed by the state of
the finances, was forced TO seek peace and to
make it without securing by any treaty stipu-
lation the object for which war had been de-
Clared. \ return to the currency
of the Constitution, to the hard-money Gov
eminent which our fathers gave us, no con-
nection with banks. no bank paper for Federal
uses. the establishment of an independent
Treasury for the Federal Governmcnt-this
was the financial lesson which the war taught.
The new generation into whose hands the
working of the Government fell during the
I'LL al. oil
of that lesson with what effect the state of
the country since, unprecedently prosperous :;
the state of the currency never dcranged; of
the Federal Treasury, never polluted with
unavailable funds and constantly crammcd
to rcplction with solid gold; the issue of the
Mexican war. carried on triumphantly with
out national bank and with the public sccu-
rites constantly above par-sutiiclen,iy pro-
claim No other tongue but these results is
necessary to show the value of that financial
lesson taught us by the war of 1872
Since Colonel Benton wrote this, certain
secrets of the State Department respecting
the diplomacy which closed the war of 1912
have escaped from their prison-house. The
late Mr.. Gushing gave them to the world
but a few years before his death, and they
have at this moment a pertinent interest for
Maine. The treaty of Client, as is well
known, did not refer in satisfactory terms
to impressment, or to our commerce or to
the fisheries the last of which has recently
cost the United States five millions of dol
lars, and a protest against the payment of
that sum after the payment had been made by
us BY reason of that haf-silencc of the
treaty the British government wrongfully in
sisted that whatever fishery rights we had I'M
der the treaty of Independence in l19i-which
was partition of the British Empire in Amer
ica-wcre abrogatod by the declaration of the
war of 1912 and not restored by the treaty of
peace. If our Eastern contemporary would
learn why the treatry of Client was thus
equivocal, our contemporary must measure
the effect upon q nation at war of bad money
like that which the ''idea of Ohio" now advo-
Gates, and which France, the greatest and
most successful nation in finance of modern
times, hates and breads as an emanation of
the Evil One. Mr.. Cushing was, we think,
the first to make public the fact that the adj
ministration of Mr.. Madison authorized the
American Commissioners at Client "to con-
clude such treaty as their own judgment
should approve, under existing circumstances,
prorided only they sored the rights Of the
United States as an independent nation.
Bad fnanciering, the absence of hard money,
lots of wildcat banks and the attempt to make
money out Of government debt, added to
British sympathies actively displayed in New
England, contributed to drive the administra-
ton to these humliating instructions which
it gave to the American Commissioners. How
different might the results of the negotiation
have been. nevertheless, could our negotia-
tors have procrastinated for a fortnight on one
plea or another till the news reached them of
Jackson's glorious victory at New Orleans
If delay could have been had till the next
March the escape of Napoleon from Elba, his
landing at Frejus and the renewal of the war
in Europe might have enabled our commits
sioners to save us from that payment, more
than sixty years afterwards, of the five mil
lions which we have just made in circum-
stances far from creditable to our agent at
Halifax or to our diplomacy anywhere!