Macon Beacon

Refunding the Cotton Tax.

The friends of the measure for refunding the cotton tax are moving in order to secure its consideration at the present session of congress. There is now, as there was at the last session, a strong conviction that this money was wrongfully and unconstitutionally extorted from the cotton states at a time when their prostrate condition dictated a wholly different policy.

The great difficulty in the way of securing payment in the last congress was the strength of the sectional prejudice still existing against those states for seceding from the Union; but this feeling would probably not have proved sufficient to defeat the claim, if the friends of the refunding measure had been able to agree among themselves about the payment of the money. The associations of cotton factors who had spent their time and money in pushing the claim in the courts at Washington, insisted that the money should be paid to the parties actually holding the receipts for the tax paid. Some of the planters were willing to let the matter take this course, but others urged that they had really paid the tax, as the factors had deducted its amount on paying them for their crops. At this time several schemes are pending. One offered by Cooke, of Georgia, proposes to give the money to the states in which it was collected, which would probably be a very agreeable solution of the question to the negroized legislatures of Mississippi, South Carolina and Louisiana. Another bill, offered the other day by Mr. McKee, corresponds with the old bill of last session, which proposed to pay the persons holding the receipts for taxes paid. In view of the impossibility of passing any measure unless its friends are all united, some of the most influential of the southern representatives have been preparing a compromise bill, designed to secure the rights of both the planters and the factors by promoting an equitable division of the sums to be refunded; and it is understood that such a bill will be proposed. It is certainly the only kind of a cotton tax bill which has a possibility of passing congress.

Louisville Courier-Journal.