The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1896-08-27

6AAi uAidU tAO ucW Oucb WILL JIG D6UU6T,
The silver orator who advocates the
payment of United States bonds in sill
yer. always starts in with an effort tc
prejudice his audience. He begins way
back in 1851, and tells of the difficulties
President Lincoln experienced in getting
New York bankers to come to the finau
cial support of the government. He tells
how low the original bonds sold and
what big interest they bofe, and then
lie turns round and says in effect ism
silver good enough money for such shy
were, some of them, mean and stingy
and demanding their pound of flesh, he
argues that it will only be a just retribu-
ton for as to pay our bonds in silver.
They took advantage of US. why should
we not take advantage of them. Since
the letter of the contract enables us to dc
so legallyP A fatal defect in this
arg ument is that the bankers who drove q
sharp bargain with the government IN
1S6l-65 are not the people who hold oul
bOAuS Uouoys ftAl tu'JSc UdukGFb duu
bondholders were paid long ago. None
of the bonds then issued are now out.
standing. They were long ago refunded
with bent bearing low rate of inter.
est, and none of these refunding bonds
ever sold below par. If therefore We
are going to pay these bonds In silver te
punish someone. the objection is that we
shall punish not the guilty parties, blu,
perfectly innocent ones.
Again the silver orator says that : oul
bonds have sold on silver basis. Al
proof of this he brings forward the fac,
that at the time the bonds were sold te
the Morgan syndicate, a higher spro
MUM was offered for distinotiyely colo
bonds. 1t is perfectly true that we could
have disposed of our bonds to better ad
vantage If the syndicate had been giver
legal assurance that those bonds would
be paid in nothing but gold, but it IL
not true that therefore they were disposed
of on the assumption that they were t.
be paid in silver. A bond that it wa.
probable would be paid in silver
could hardly have been sold to that syn
dictate at all or to any body else. Though
legal pledge to pay these bonds in golt
was absent there was the strongest kline
of morrl obligation to pay them in tina
coin, and on that the syndicate relied
The syndicate would have pait
something to have had that moral assur
ance strengthened by legal assurance
but it is not true that they purchased
the bonds except in the full belief thai
they would be pa Id in gold. They CAV,
gold for avery dollars worth of them
and they had every reason to believ,
that an honorable nation would return
the same kind of dollars that it got
They relied upon the good faith of the ma
tion. A year ago the government borrowe t
5000, GOO, 600 in gold from its own banl
people, giving them bonds as security
Technically these bonds, like those SOLE
to the syndicate, may be paid in silver
But is there any man of honor in tn,
country who will say it is right to bor
row money of certain purchasing pow
er and pay it in money of less purchas
ing power? This whole question of nay
ing the government bonns comes dow1
to question of good faith. We hay,
received gold for every one of them. W,
can fall back on the letter of the Law
and s"y that they are payable in silver
We can then go to work and coin 81
csnts worth of silver into a disk ant
stamp upon it one dollar, and then W
can declare this dollar legal tender TO
all debts public and private, and the,
force the holders of our bonds to tax
this dollar in extinguishment of a deb
for which we received o dollar of doubl
its value. But when we do 1T we re
pudiate half of our debt. We do ii b,
circumlocution that somewhat obscure
the iniquity of it, but the iniquity il
here all the same. No amount O
subtlety can ever make such "a transac
ton honorable or just or present it t.
the intelligent man in any other guis,
than Its proper one of a miserabl,
fraud, that would put an indelible stair
upon the honor and integrity of thi
great nation, and brand US as cheats an(
swindlers in the estimation of every en-
lightened nation on earth,