Knoxville Weekly Chronicle

REPUDIATION

Some men affect to believe that repudiation is not thought of by any respectable number of persons in Tennessee, but in this they are certainly mistaken. The Memphis Appeal, in point of influence, is second to no journal in the State. It has a large circulation, perhaps the largest of any paper in the State, and is conducted with an energy and ability worthy of a better cause. That journal denies favoring repudiation, but its policy and reasoning leads directly to that result. In its issue of Saturday last, appears a lengthy communication on the subject, which appears on the editorial page, showing that the editors regard it as highly important. We beg leave to call the attention of our readers, and all those who are skeptical as to the existence of a repudiation party in Tennessee, to a few extracts from the communication in question:

Public credit abroad is ever a dangerous merit. In the South it is peculiarly suicidal to possess it. One person in a hundred thousand has talent; one in thirty can decently manage his own private business; eight men out of ten are not only ignorant, but poor, and also essentially dishonest. The officeholder is but the representative of those who give him place and power. Universal suffrage means that fools and knaves shall rule. Southern legislators and legislation has been since the war a curiosity unparalleled in history.

Thus it will be seen that this correspondent of this able and influential journal, boldly asserts the startling doctrine that "public credit abroad is ever a dangerous merit," and that "in the South it is peculiarly suicidal to possess it." Therefore, as "public credit" is ever dangerous, and it being "suicidal to possess it," our policy is to show ourselves unworthy of such credit by repudiating our honest obligations. Our people will very naturally reason against such a monstrous proposition by saying that if we have no public credit abroad, we will be likely to forfeit the confidence and respect of our friends at home also.

This correspondent, further on in his article, reasons in favor of the State going into bankruptcy, as follows:

"Congress permits private individuals to take the bankrupt act, and repudiate their debts; why should not Tennessee be declared, as she is in fact, bankrupt? Let her estimate the present value of the State capitol, and what little other property she possesses, levy a direct tax to that amount, pay it out proportionately to her bondholders, and then repudiate the remainder of her debt. Congress, at the point of the bayonet, compelled us to repudiate the Confederate and State debt contracted during the war. Congress seized the cotton which our government had pledged to Liverpool for moneys already received by our fiscal agents. Now, the Federal authorities refuse to listen to the clamor these capitalists have raised, and decline to pay them the value of their property."

He adds:

"During the war about seven thousand millions of dollars of Southern property was either stolen, destroyed or annihilated as such, and we were left in positive distress. Nearly all the tax-payers were disfranchised, and few, save the mob, were allowed to go through even the farce of electing our rulers. During this period the most utterly Godless set of carpet-baggers that God ever permitted to curse the earth, were foisted upon us as legislators. In all sorts of ways and for all sorts of rascally purposes, they robbed us, and then this irresponsible horde heaped up a public debt which it is utterly impossible to pay. Borne down by a taxation so fiendish as to despoil us of profit on our labor, and which leaves us poorer every year, we can never pay it. It is madness to try to do so. Such being the true state of the case, why not repudiate it now? Why groan a year or two longer? The merchant daily risking his capital without profit, must ultimately lose it. The professions are but decently existing. The farmers unable to pay wages, or to buy fertilizers, have to submit to negro co-partnership, and see their fences and houses rot, their lands wear out, without one ray of hope except in repudiation and less taxation."

This correspondent closes his article with the following appeal, the frankness of which we commend to those laboring in the cause of repudiation, but who, unlike this writer, are wanting in frankness to admit it:

Men do not energetically deprecate that which they do not fear. All the blatherskite about the payment of public indebtedness, which is a rallying party cry amongst the Radicals, and also with the bondholders and their political creatures, is kept up because they fear repudiation. Well may they fear it; for their reign is well nigh over in Tennessee. Let us preserve the little remnant left of our property, add more to it and save our wives and children from poverty or starvation. Why continue poor when we can honestly be rich? Why be slaves when we are righteously entitled to be masters? Awake from the nightmare of taxation to pay a rascally debt! Cut loose from the putrid corpse!

Now, honest tax-payers of Tennessee—Democrats, Republicans, all—you have the issue here plainly presented. All this clamor about taxation is but the reflection of the doctrine laid down by this frank correspondent. The great question to be decided by our present Legislature is, will we ascertain what rate of taxes is necessary to maintain our public credit at home and abroad, unimpaired, or will we favor a rate which a school boy, who knows nothing of mathematics beyond the fundamental rules of arithmetic, can demonstrate to mean an evasion of our obligations, if not their direct and immediate repudiation?