ortion of the
debt due to foreigners, it was accepted without demur. There could be no
doubt that there the ostensible creditor was the real creditor, who
should be paid in full. The report assumed that this was equally true of
the domestic debt. A citizen holding a certificate of the indebtedness
of the government, no matter how he came by it, nor at what price, was
entitled to payment at its face value. But here the question was raised,
Was this ostensible creditor the sole creditor? Was he, whose
necessities had compelled him to part with the government's note of hand
at a large discount when full payment was impossible, to receive
nothing now when at last government was able to pay in full? Was it
equity to let all the loss fall upon the original creditor, and all the
gain go to him who had lost nothing originally, and had only assumed at
small cost the risk of a profitable speculation? Moreover it was
charged, and not denied, that in some of these speculations there had
been no risk whatever; and that, so soon as the tenor of the report was
known, fast-sailing vessels were dispatched from New York to the
Carolinas and Georgia to buy up public securities held by persons
ignorant of their recent rapid rise in value. As hitherto they had been
worth only about fifteen cents on the dollar; as upon the publication of
the secretary's report they had risen to fifty cents on the dollar; and
as, if the secretary's advice should be taken, they would rise to a
hundred cents on the dollar,--it would be securing what in the slang of
the modern stock exchange is called "a good thing" to send agents into
the rural districts in advance of the news to buy up government paper.
"My soul rises indignant," exclaimed a member, "at the avaricious and
moral turpitude which so vile a conduct displays." Nor on that point did
anybody venture then to disagree with him openly.

But, besides the question as to who were in reality the public
creditors, a doubt was also raised whether the debt ought to be paid in
full to anybody. Every dollar of the foreign debt was for an actual
dollar borrowed. But the domestic debt was not incurred to any large
amount for money borrowed, but in payment for services, or for
provisions and goods purchased, for which double, or more than double,
prices had been exacted by those who exchanged them for government
paper. If the exigencies of war had compelled the government to promise
to pay for fifty bushels of whea