CHAPTER XVIII.

PUBLIC FAITH.

It is remarkable at this time, when financial questions are so much discussed, and when the Democrats are charged with bad faith to the public creditors, that certain facts of history have been overlooked. When Government has agreed to pay in gold, the Democratic party has demanded payment in gold. When bonds are payable in legal tender paper, popularly called "greenbacks," they demand they shall be paid in legal tender notes, and they declare that the true interpretation of the contract is that when it does not provide that bonds shall be paid in coin, they ought, in justice, to be paid in lawful money of the United States. Many of the leading Republicans hold this to be the true construction. Their Convention passed an equivocal resolution on the subject, and their candidates can not be made to say what their views are. On the Democratic side there is frankness, on the Republican side there are evasions. The Republicans mean to cheat either the bondholder or the tax-payer. Yet a clamor is raised that the Democrats are repudiators, while the only cases of direct, open violation of contracts to pay in coin are those made by Republican action, or by virtue of Republican laws. It is admitted that the legal

tenders which will be given in payment of the bonds are worth much more than the money given to the Government for these bonds when they were sold. When the bonds of New York, which were to be paid in gold, and for which the creditor had given gold, were due, the Republicans refused to pay even the interest in any thing but "greenbacks," which were then worth only forty cents on the dollar. Yet the specie borrowed of the creditors of the State was used to build canals which are paying great revenues to the treasury of New York. In vain Governor Seymour appealed to a Republican Legislature not to break the contract. Every Democrat voted to keep faith with the men who had loaned specie funds. Every Republican Senator voted in favor of repudiation. We give an extract from Governor Seymour's appeal:

"Principle and policy unite to urge the action I recommend to you. It is the only way in which the State can in truth fulfill its contracts. It is the only way in which the State can keep itself in a position to go into the market hereafter decently as a borrower. The State is even now in the market for money to pay its bounties and volunteers. The whole amount of the appropriation I urge upon you will be more than repaid in the first negotiation the State may make, by the enhanced price of its securities. Not only our future credit, but our immediate gain will be served by adhering now to the strictest letter of our contracts. The saving proposed by not paying in coin is small and temporary, while the dishonor is lasting, and the pecuniary loss consequent upon this dishonor will be in the end enormous.

"Bad faith on the part of New York, the leading member of our confederacy, must inevitably weaken very greatly, if it do not destroy, the credit of our Government securities in foreign markets. Compared with the importance of this State's action in its effects upon the credit of the Government, the cost of paying our interest in coin is insignificant.

"Aside from all considerations of interest or policy, our duty, in

my judgment, is plain; it is to pay the debts of the State; to pay them in precisely the mode in which they were promised to be paid; to keep the honor of the State unsullied; and to this plain duty we should be true, cost what it may.

"HORATIO SEYMOUR."

The refusal of the Republican members of the Legislature to respond to these appeals was the heaviest blow given during the war to the credit of our country. In the end it cost both the State and nation a hundredfold more than the expense which would have been caused by the payment of the interest in specie.

This act, which so dishonored New York, and sunk the credit of the country, is one of the chief causes of the vast sum of our national indebtedness. It is due to the Democratic members of the Legislature to state, that to a man they voted to uphold the policy urged by the Governor. So anxious was he to save the hitherto unstained honor of New York, that he made an appeal to the banks and to the capitalists of the State to step forward and furnish the specie, relying upon a returning sense of good faith to repay them for such advances. Some of these were willing to do their share; but it is a sad proof of the selfishness and shortsightedness of the banks and capitalists of the commercial emporium, that they turned a deaf ear to the appeals of Governor Seymour, and refused to uphold him in his efforts to check repudiation at the outset.

We can now see why it was that at one period of the war our bonds sold for forty cents on the dollar,

and had less credit in the markets of the world than those put forth by the Confederate States.

There is not a Democrat in the United States who will not say that this was an indecent, dishonest act of repudiation, but it was never rebuked by a Republican paper or preacher. Again, if a man borrows coin of his neighbors to any amount, say $1,000, and gives the solemn promise to repay it in coin, a Republican Congress steps in and by its laws advises the debtor to cheat his creditor. It tells him he may force his creditor to take $1,000 in greenbacks, and thus give him $250 less in value than the debtor borrowed. How is it, in the face of such facts, and the fact that the Republican party has sunk the national credit below that of the Turk, that it is claimed that the national honor is only safe in their hands? One year of an honest, economical, Democratic administration would do more to build up the national credit and honor, than can ever be done by those who take the money collected to pay the public creditor, and use it for partisan purposes and corrupt schemes.

CHAPTER XIX.

GOVERNOR SEYMOUR AND THE WESTERN STATES.

Ar an early day Governor Seymour became impressed with the importance of cherishing the commercial relationship between New York and the great West. As Chairman of the Canal Committee in the Legislature, as early as 1844, he made a report urging the importance of building up the prosperity of the new States in the valley of the Mississippi. He at all times protested against that narrow policy that looked at the returns which our canals should give in the form of tolls, rather than at their influence in giving life to the commerce of our country, growth to our cities, markets for our mechanics, and activity to the internal carrying trade of the State. In his message to the Legislature in 1863, he called public attention to the fact that the estimated tonnage on our canals. for the year 1862, was nearly five millions of tons, and that about eighty per cent. of the value of the canal freights moved from West to East. He added:

"These facts should induce us to give every possible facility to the vast and growing commerce of the Western States, mainly dependent upon them as we are for the immense through traffic which constitutes so large a share of our carrying trade, and forms a most important source of our commercial greatness, affording at the same time one of the many reasons for cultivating the most enduring relationship with that section."