The Cecil Whig

THE DEMOCRATS PROPOSE TO PAY REBEL CLAIMS.

One of the most insidious and dangerous and probable modes of destroying the National credit under Democratic rule would be the payment or attempted payment from the National Treasury of all Southern claimants for losses inflicted by the war. This is not an inference—for it is boldly avowed by leading Democrats in both branches of Congress. In April last, during the pendency of a bill in the Senate introduced by Mr. Howe, of Wisconsin, to pay "loyal citizens for quartermaster and commissary stores taken during the rebellion," a Democratic Senator, Mr. McCreery moved to strike out the word "loyal," and supported his motion by an earnest speech. On the 21st of May, Mr. Knott, of Kentucky, an able, frank, and fearless gentleman, one of the leaders on the Democratic side of the house, speaking on this question, used the following language:

"But, sir; this is not all, nor half. I have been speaking of only so much of our debt as we have given our notes for.— Besides this we owe, at the very lowest calculation, $3,000,000,000; not to the bloated bond holder, of whom we have heard so much, but to a class of our people to whom of all others we are under the most sacred obligation to pay. We owe it to the poor, whose horses and cattle and sheep and hogs and corn and wheat, and everything else, were taken from them to sustain your armies in the field."

If the Union army had the right to make war for the maintenance of the Government, it had the right to "forage on the enemy;" but the Democratic proposition now is, that every rebel in the South shall be paid for what he lost during the war, and we have a leading Democrat's authority for saying that the amount required will be three thousand millions of dollars!!