How "Cotton" might have been made a real "King."
--The constituent Assembly of France, the National Assembly, and the Convention — the first named of which had the honor of inaugurating, while the two last developed to its full extent the system of assignats — are justly entitled to the credit of having been the worst financiers that up to that period had ever embroiled the pecuniary affairs, or perilled the existence of a great nation. They issued, during the first six years of their existence, to the value of about ten thousand millions of dollars in irredeemable paper, the basis upon which the issue was made being the National domain, that is, the forfeited lands of the church and nobility, worth probably half the sum. At the end of the six years, France was declared to be in a state of bankruptcy, and the whole debt was wiped out to the utter ruin of half the property holders of the nation. There must have been stupendous imbecility somewhere. But we doubt very much whether the statesmen of France — if the men who then had the control of her destinies numbered any statesmen among them — would, had they possessed in prodigious quantities an article of merchandize more in demand than any other article whatever — an article which annually brought into the country $150,000,000 --an article the commercial value of which was so great that it was called "King" by its admirers, and was supposed to rule with despotic sway over the commerce of the world — an article which it alone could supply in the proper quantity and quality, and of which it therefore possessed almost the monopoly — an article which it was only necessary to send abroad to draw into the country a perfect deluge of the precious metals — we say, we doubt whether, had the wretched financiers of the Assembly or the Convention been in possession of such an inexhaustible resource as this, they would ever have thought of issuing ten thousand millions in irredeemable paper, based upon real estate, when experience had already shown in other countries that such security was perfectly illusory, and that nothing could sustain the credit of paper but convertibility into cash upon demand. No! The financiers of the Gironde and the Mountain were stupid enough in this respect, but they never would have been guilty of a folly so preposterous, so enormous, and so entirely without the shadow of apology or explanation.We have always deeply regretted that Mr. Stephens was selected to fill an office which there are many others who can fill just as well, instead of being made Secretary of the Treasury, where his great attainments in statesmanship, and rare sagacity in matters appertaining to finance, would have enabled him to render inestimable services to his country. He is said, and we doubt it not, to have seen at the first glance the whole truth with regard to our position, and to have earnestly recommended the instant purchase and conveyance to Europe of one million of bales of cotton. It could have been done at that time with perfect facility, for it was during the last term of Buchanan, while the Government was still at Montgomery, and the ports had not yet been blockaded. He estimated that the sale of this cotton would bring at least $100,000,000, of which a part was to be expended in the equipment of one hundred iron-clad sea- going steamers, and the rest placed to our credit in Europe. Everybody can now see what would have been the consequence of such a policy; but it is the fate of genius always to find its far reaching foresight derided or neglected by ordinary minds.--Had he been Secretary of the Treasury from the commencement, the very necessities of his position would have induced him to enlarge his views, so as to embrace the whole crop of cotton, at that time amounting to five millions of bales. For one year after the war commenced the blockade was so slight that the whole of this might have been shipped to Europe, and there sold at two shillings sterling a pound, giving the Government, purchasing at twenty cents, a clear profit of $600,000,000. Or supposing the enemy to have captured one-fifth, (an enormous allowance,) we should still have had in Europe a balance of $480,000,000. What might not have been done with this sum? We might, had we been so disposed, have drained every bank in Europe of its specie. We might have taught the skeptics of the Old World and the New that the pretensions of "Cotton" were no idle gasconade — that he was bona fide a king, and "every inch a king"--that he had the nations in the hollow of his hand — and that kings and potentates had no choice but to obey his dictates or embrace certain ruin as the alternative. Or we might have left this great sum in proper hands in Europe and drawn for it as we needed it. Our Treasury notes would then have been equal to gold or sterling bills, which are as good as gold; and although the exigencies of the times would have required a suspension of specie payment, confidence would have been unshaken and universal.
But this simple solution of a great, but perfectly explicable, dilemma, did not suit the Secretary of the Treasury or the Congress. The majority of the latter, and the Secretary himself, firmly persuaded that "Cotton" was already a crowned king, would take no measures to make him so in fact. They thought his throne lay in this hemisphere, and that all the nations of the East must bring their tributes to his footstool, instead of his going in search of them.--To supply the Treasury, the manufacture of assignats, based upon nothing but the public confidence in the stability of the Government, was commenced — slowly at first, but with increased velocity as the operation progresses. At this particular juncture Mr. Memminger reminds us of nothing so much as a boy holding to a cow's tail while she is running at full speed down a hill. He would let go if he could, but he finds it impossible without falling. The "Infernal Machine" is everlastingly at work, striking off assignats by the bale, and neutralizing all the good effects which the tax and the sale of the cotton bonds might otherwise be expected to produce. There seems to enter into the mind of the Secretary, whenever hard pushed, no other resource but the printing press, and we never see a new assignat that we are not reminded of Chancellor Oxenstierna's injunction to his son, "Go, my son, and see with how little wisdom the world is governed."
