Weekly Standard

For the Standard.

MR. EDITOR: I begin to think with you that the fate of the Southern Confederacy is trembling in the scales. And I hesitate not to say if we fail in securing our independence, the failure will have to be attributed to our Legislatures, and not to the want of valor, patience or endurance on the part of the people. The idea of funding hundreds of millions to commence bearing 7 and 8 per cent. interest immediately, and levying and collecting an enormous tax both in the States and Confederacy, to meet this usurious interest, and to absorb the redundancy in the currency is not only fallacious but wicked in the extreme. And I predict that future events will prove the accuracy of this statement. There are thousands of our people who never made less than they have in the last two years, while there are thousands of others now living from hand to mouth, and who would rejoice to know that they could or would procure bread and water for themselves and little ones for the next twelve months—meat now being out of the question. And these persons have contributed, in proportion to their means, more perhaps than any others to carry on the present bloody war. And now, after all their patriotism and sufferings, they will have to pay such taxes as they nor none of their predecessors have ever had to pay before; and after the last cent has been wrung from multitudes of them, what will be the result? Will the revenue thus collected do more than pay the salaries of all the officers of the Confederacy, and the 8 per cent. interest on the $200,000,000 worth of bonds that it is said will soon be funded? It does seem to me that a more suicidal policy could not have been pursued, than to make our public debt an interest bearing debt, immediately—especially at the high rate of interest Congress has allowed. This programme may suit the wealthy capitalists and speculators of the land, but to all those who have all the time been contributing of their substance to carry on the war, and have patriotically refrained from engaging in speculating, they cannot, and I think ought not to be required to give up all they possess for the especial benefit of a few of the more prominent, but certainly not more patriotic and deserving of their fellow-citizens. What could have induced Congress to proceed in the way they have, I am at a loss to determine. Human nature can not endure much greater burdens than they seem disposed to lay upon their constituents.

ECHO.