Charles Sumner

While seeming to save interest, you will lose capital.

A forced reduction of interest will be like a forced loan.

Any reduction of interest without the consent of the holders will reduce your capacity to borrow.

You must continue to borrow on a large scale; but who will lend to the repudiator, unless at a destructive discount?

It will be nothing less than Repudiation, with a certain loss of credit, which no saving of interest can repay.

It is by making the Public Faith so manifest that the holders will be induced to come into the change for the sake of the longer term.

If this large portion of the national debt, with its six per cent. interest in coin, can be funded at a less interest, there will be a corresponding relief to the country.

The obligations of the Government are fixed clearly and unchangeably beyond the assaults of politicians.

There can be no other reason for this higher price than the superior credit enjoyed by Massachusetts; and thus again is Public Faith exalted.

With the national credit above suspicion, our debt must stand as well, and, as our multiplying resources become known, even better still.

I know no substantial reason for this enormous difference, except in the superior credit established by England.

But we must confess our humiliation, as we find that our debt, with its large interest in coin, secured by mortgage on the immeasurable future of the Nation, is less regarded abroad than the English debt, with its smaller interest and its…

This difference must not be forgotten in the estimate of our capacity to deal with a debt larger than that of any European power except England.

With us each decade is a leap forward; with them it marks a gradation sometimes scarcely appreciable.

Here is a notable difference between the United States and other countries, where population and resources have arrived at such a point that future advance is very gradual.

Therefore to the future we may tranquilly leave the final settlement of the national debt, meanwhile discharging our own incidental duty, so that the Public Faith shall be preserved.

First, by the strict performance of all existing engagements, so that the Public Faith shall be our inseparable ally; and, secondly, by funding the existing debt in such ways as to provide a reduced rate of interest.

A proper tax on two articles, whiskey and tobacco, with proper securities for its collection, would go far to support the Government.

In Europe taxation has become a science, according to which the largest possible amounts are obtained at the smallest possible inconvenience.

Another help will be found in the simplification of our system of taxation, so that it shall be less complex and shall apply to fewer objects.

Beyond this great saving there should be a constant watchfulness against those schemes of public plunder, great and small, from which the Nation has latterly suffered so much.

Every dollar, as it leaves the National Treasury, must be able to exhibit its passport.

Extravagance and recklessness, so natural during a period of war, must give way to moderation and thrift.

It will not seem trivial, if I insist on systematic economy in the administration of the Government.

Of course, in this work, the Public Faith, if kept sacred, will be a constant and omnipresent agency, powerful in itself, and powerful also in its reinforcement of all other agencies.