Year: 1874

RESUMPTION.

 A friend sends us the following plan for the resumption of specie payments and conversion of our entire currency into greenbacks:

 ''The great question of getting back to q specie paying currency Is not settled yet. Everybody is flying around, like 8 swarm of bees; hardly any two are agreed on the same plan, but are waiting for the queen-bee or king-bee to light somewhere when all the rest will follow. Now, what Es want is kipaab6f tsRR RRriIRe" Ie tff6TgEE ffff5TgeEEa Some one has proposed plan something like this (which 1t seems to me is in the right direction) viz: Let Congress author ize the issue of notes, payable Gin gold) on demand, equal to the amount of green backs and bank notes ill circulation and exchange these notes for the greenbacks and bank notes, dollar for dollar, and an additional sum for the banks so as to give them an amount equal to the amount of bonds deposited with the Treasurer, which should be cancelled, saving the interest on about S4OO, ,0O0, 900 of bonds which should be added to a fund to redeem the notes. When greenbacks and bank notes can be exchanged for notes payable in gold it will bring them to par at once, and the exchange of notes would be gradual. The government notes should be received for all government dues, everybody would have confidence in them, they would not often bo presented for gold, and it would be the safest currency ''the sun eUer shone upon" We never have had, in reality, a specie paying currency. Under the old state bank system, when specie wasn't wanted, it could be had, but whenever there was financial crisis and panic, as there always IS at such times, the banks suspend. We must have paper of some sort as a medium of exchange, all admit that. Can anything be better than govern ment bills payable on demand? What is it that makes government bonds so much sought after? It is the belief in their ab- solute safety"

 There is this obvious advantage ill the proDosesl plan fhat :I -----I1 ernnonf the entire advantage of circulat- ing notes a5 currency without interest, now shared by the banks; but it strikes us that this very feature would render the business of resumption more difficult. We have now only some three hundred and eighty millions of greenbacks to redeem, whereas the assumption of the bank cur rency would nearly double that amount Moreover calling your greenback note payable in gold on demand does not make it so. Were the government to promise re- sumption once more, it would amount to nothing, for they have promised it too often already. It strikes us that resump- ton would be quickest reached by letting the banks see to their own issues (which are not legal tender) and fortifying the Treasury so that it could, if necessary, redeem its whole issue of greenbacks in specie. This could plainly be done by directing the Secretary of the Treasury to exchange if desired, five per cent bonds, at their market price in gold, for green backs, and authorizing the sale of bonds enough to raise the specie to pay such notes as were not exchanged. Were Con- gress to pass such law and fix the day for resumption, 1t may be doubted wheth- CT any large amount of gold would be re- quired. As long as the government sup ply of gold is less than the outstanding issue of greenbacks, and there is no sure way of getting more, the announcement of resumption would only result in Q run on the treasury which would soon exhaust its gold reserve; but if it were known that bonds enough would be sold to meet in specie tho full amount of the greenback issue, if necessary, there could hardly be any such run. It is the doubt whether the government can or will redeem its notes within any reasonable time in gold, that keeps up the premium on gold.

 The real difficulty, if we understand it, however, does not lie in the impossibility of devising feasible plans of resumption, but in persuading the people to pay for resumption what it will evidently cost. Debtors who received currency are not will

 ling to repay in coin. They forget that m the earlier years of imitation creditors who loaned coin, or coins value, were paid off m currency but little more than half the value of coin. As matters now are, the creditor who loaned currency is paid in currency, worth perhaps 90 cents on the dollar in coin. Were there to come a resumption of specie payments, he would have to pay 100 instead of 90 cents on the dollar. It is this fact which stands in the way of resumption. 1t is this fact which makes the debtor West and South urge a further expansion of the currency so that they can pay of the creditor East in cur rency not worth perhaps moro than 75 or 30 cents on the dollar in specie. In other words, the earlier years of expan- sion worked to the advantage of the West and the East bore it quietly, but when the progress of events begins to tend to- wards resumption, and against the selfish interests of the West, we arc put of with cheating theories of infationi

 Dr. Livingstone's body was identified on its arrival in England by the condition of the bone of the left arm which had

 been crushed by the jaws of lion many years since in South Africa and had heal