replete with eagles and dimes; it was so flush, that,
in the joy of his heart, he ordered the debts of the
United States to be redeemed at a premium of sixteen
per cent.; and he and his followers were disposed
to jubilate over the singular spectacle, that, while
all other institutions were failing, the Treasury
of the United States was firm and resplendent in its
large possession of gold. It was deemed a rare
wisdom and success, indeed, which could utter a note
of triumph in the midst of so universal a cry of despair;
it was deemed a rare piece of liberality, that the
government should come to the aid of society in an
hour of such dark distress. The stocks of the
United States, which had been originally sold at a
small advance, were bought back on a very large advance;
the usurers and the stock-jobbers received sixteen
per cent. for what they had bought at a premium
of but two or three
per cent.; and an unparalleled
glory shone around the easy vomitories of the Treasury.
The foresight and the sagacity of the proceeding were
marvellous! In less than a quarter by the moon,
the coffers of the government were empty,—the
very clerks in its employ went about the streets borrowing
money to pay their board-bills,—and the
grand-master of the vaults, Mr. Cobb, counting his
fingers in despair over the vacant prospect, was compelled,
in the extremity of his distress, to fill his limp
sacks with paper. Of the nineteen millions of
gold which in September distended the public purse,
little or nothing remained in December, while in its
place were paper bills,—founded, not upon
a basis of one-third specie, but upon a basis of—
We
promise to pay! It was a sad application
of the high-sounding doctrines of the Message,—a
dreadful descent for a pure hard-money government,—and
a lamentable conversion of the pompous swagger of
October into the shivering collapse of January!
It may be said, that, by this pre-purchase of its
own stocks, running at an interest of six per cent.,
the government has saved the amount of interest which
would else have accrued between the time of the purchase
and the time of ultimate redemption. And this
is true to some extent,—and it would show
an admirable economy, if the Treasury had had no other
use for its money. A government, like an individual,
having a large balance of superfluous cash on hand,
can do no better with it than to pay off its debts;
but to do this, when there was every prospect of a
Mormon war to raise the expenditure, little prospect
of retrenchment in any branch of service, and a daily
diminishing revenue at all points,—it was
purely a piece of folly, a want of ordinary forecast,
to get rid of the cash in hand. Mr. Buchanan
and Mr. Cobb were guilty of this folly, and, for the
sake of the poor eclat of coming to the relief
of the money-market, (which was no great relief, after
all,) they sacrificed the hard-money pretensions of
the government, and sunk its character to the level
of that of the needy “kiteflier” in Wall
Street. Their true course, in the existing condition
and aspect of affairs, was to retain their capital,
and to institute a most rigid economy, a most searching
reduction, in every branch of the public service.
We have, however, yet to learn whether any such economy
and reduction have been effected.