Richmond Whig

A Suggestion.

It would be consistent with every principle of justice to make all obligations incurred with the opening of the present year, payable in the currency at its present value, where an offer of advance payment has been made and refused. These obligations have been fixed in conformity with the present depreciated standard of Government securities; and under the appreciation which our currency will undergo through the operation of the financial schemes now being matured, they will three or four months hence, assume a degree of disproportion to the value received, which will severely test the financial resources of those who incurred them. Men who have rented houses, hired slaves, borrowed money, or contracted any other pecuniary obligation, will be seriously inconvenienced, if not ruined, unless the right to discharge these obligations in our currency at its present standard, is legally recognized.

There is no reason why it should not be. The contract being negotiated with reference to the present depreciated value of our currency, justice would require that all the terms of its fulfilment should be made to conform to that standard. If a house heretofore renting at $1,000 a year, is now let at $5,000, it is because of a depreciation in our currency, and it would certainly be nothing more than strict justice to the party renting out at this high rate, to compel his acceptance of the $5,000 in the currency as it is now held, or its equivalent in the appreciated currency which may be afloat when the dates of payment mature. The stipulations being agreed upon in contemplation of a depreciated currency, compliance with their terms upon the same principle should be the extent of legal responsibility attaching to the second party to the contract. Any other rule of adjustment will cause serious loss and injustice to those incurring liabilities at this time. To exact three, six or twelve months hence, in appreciated currency, payment for obligations incurred at the worst crisis of financial depreciation, could be to give legal sanction to an outrage of which the poor and the homeless refugees would be the chief victims. It would, moreover, be administering to the greed of unprincipled speculators who have managed to secure a monopoly of the real estate of the country by prompt investment of their ill-gotten gains.

Without such a proviso in the finance bill, the poor man will be victimized, and the land speculator made rich. We have heard of an instance, in which the tender in advance, of a year's rent of a house was refused, from a conviction, no doubt, that at each recurring quarter the money would become more valuable under the operation of the funding scheme which Congress is understood to be maturing. The law which, under such circumstances, would compel payment in appreciated currency, of the whole amount of the liability incurred, would be unjust and tyrannical. The necessities of those contracting obligations compelled compliance with the usual terms of contracts in respect to intervals of payments, duration of occupancy and current rates of renting, hiring, &c; and while the terms were fixed in contemplation of the present low standard of our currency, the merciless property holder, as we find from the instance referred to above, kept eagerly in view the prospect of an enhancement of the currency and the realization thereby of a handsome addition to his already large accumulations.

Congress should, if there is yet time to do so, insert a proviso in their finance bill making treasury notes now in circulation, to represent their full stated value in discharge of liabilities incurred with the opening of the present year, in every instance where a tender of payment was made in advance, and not accepted. Indeed, we doubt the justice or propriety of qualifying this proviso by any condition of a tender of prepayment. It is enough that the contract was predicated, as all contracts made within the present year have been, upon the depreciated value of our currency, and so long as its terms are fulfilled in accordance with that predication, no room for complaint can exist.

If Congress have failed to furnish this security to its citizens, they are guilty of a great oversight, which they should lose no time to remedy, if remedy be possible. The grinding cupidity of speculators of the property holding class—and they are little less ruthless and exacting than those who speculate in the necessaries of life—will find in any scheme of finance, without a proviso of the character we have indicated, a legal shield for plunder, more hateful and obnoxious because of this sanction. Kindred acts of robbery perpetrated without any other justification than is involved in the dire necessities which war creates, and the concurrent influences of an isolated condition and a depreciated currency find sufficient sanction in public need, without the aid of abortive legislation. The inefficiency of moral suasion or conscientious scruples to counteract evils of this character have been too well proven to rely upon them as legal substitutes. The thief, burglar or murderer needs no more the restraint of legal power than does the base and unprincipled speculator, and no effort should be spared to force submission on his part to what is fair and just.

It needs the exercise of no little legislative talent and legal acumen to foil the purposes of this class.— Conscription being in conflict with their mercenary aims, they are leaving no device untried to escape service in the army. Even in this, their proverbial cunning serves them, for no sooner was the so-called "substitute law" introduced than they hurried to the contract bureau, in the Post Office Department, and sought there a subterfuge from conscription in mail contracts, negotiated for some nominal consideration, a cent or half a cent. They can well afford to pay a thousand or two thousand dollars a year for its fulfilment in view of the large profits which they will realize in the exercise of their old vocation, free from the annoying visits of the conscript officer. Congress should, by all means, shut the door against this subterfuge by providing that no mail contract shall be given to parties within conscript age, where there are applicants over age ready to comply with all the legal conditions. The same rule should be made to apply to all local organizations of whatever character. For it cannot be doubted that men beyond conscript age can as effectually perform services which are only required sometimes at long intervals, as men liable to conscription.

If Congress will fill up the interstices through which escape from legal responsibility in this matter is effected, they will relieve the community of the class most obnoxious to it, and most injurious to the public interests. If these resorts are left available, the net results looked for as a consequence of making principals amenable to service will fall far short of the estimates made out— If Congress would call for a return of the number and names of those who have taken mail contracts at nominal compensations, they would probably learn enough to satisfy them of the propriety of closing the door against this subterfuge. When the returns are obtained, they ought to be published for public edification.