ARE there any signs of peace? Are there signs of humanity and reason breaking through the black clouds that hang over our country? Yes, there are signs of peace, but not of humanity and reason. The authors and managers of the war were lost to those virtues long before the war began. Peace, when it comes, will come in spite of them. They will fight against it, plot against it, and abandon the field of blood only when forced by inexorable necessity. As long as it is possible for the war to last, the party in power will hold on to it, from motives of momentary self-defense, as well as of avarice and revenge. The day of peace ends the theatre of their malice and plunder. Peace is to them what war is to their country-ruin; what the day of judgment is to the sinner, a final settlement of the whole course of crime. Like the cornered highwayman, they will give up only through exhaustion. That point cannot be far off. They cannot get on much further without an amount of money which it will be impossible to raise by the system of fraud and deception, which appears to be the only means compre

hended by the Administration. In the sums required for the prolonged prosecution of the war, real money does not exist, within the possible reach of the United States; and printed, or counterfeit money, is rapidly approaching a crisis where it must burst like a bubble, leaving nothing but its own froth behind it. Already the wily Secretary trembles for its fate. His printing presses are not worn out. It is easy enough to strike off a hundred thousand millions of printed money— but the entangled Secretary begins, at last, to comprehend that the faster he prints, the swifter he hurries on the inevitable hour when a ship-load of these printed promises to pay will not be worth the price of a single soldier's uniform. He begins to understand that his paper balloon is in danger of collapsing at any moment. To-day the debt is beyond the reach of real money. Even the New York Tribune, of a late issue, was forced to confess that the people begin to fear that repudiation is only a question of time. The New York Times, moved by a spirit of intelligence and candor quite unaccountable, warned the Administration that

it must not hope to mortgage the property of the people to the Government, without final repudiation of the whole debt. Even these blind partisan organs can see that the popular confidence begins to falter. It staggers it must fall, unless the swelling tide of debt is immediately checked. If, with all the unlimited resources which the banks, the capitalists, and the people, so blindly committed to the use of the Administration, it is still unable to meet its obligations, what must be its fate when these props give way-as they are sure to do, either from exhaustion or lack of confidence? Incompetency and dishonesty in the management of the public funds have run the ship of State almost ashore. An army of plunderers has assailed the Treasury, ten times more to be dreaded than all the armed hosts of secession. The wives and daughters of Government officials and contractors are bespangled with diamonds, while the wives and daughters of our soldiers are freezing or starving in unpitied, in hopeless neglect. It is said. that the defalcations and thefts of the Republican officials amount to over a thousand millions annually! While this is going on, the Secretary of the Treasury, poor wretch, sits there, plunged up to his chin in a sea of Treasury warrants. Whichever way he turns, is a boundless prairie of unpaid demands. To all, he says, in the language of the poor man in the Testament, "silver and gold have I none." The clatter of his printing presses reminds him that every hour he will have less. Like a man in the maelstrom, he finds himself swept on by the devouring eddies, until he is beyond the reach of help, or the hope of mercy. He

struggles! He cries for help! He throws up his hands in agony! In vain! Nothing can save him from the mighty gulf of waters. Under the direction of such captains as Lincoln and Chase, the ship of State is whirling round in the outer current of a financial maelstrom. Nothing can save it. You may cry "traitor" at every man who tells the truth about the matter, but such cries will not check the speed at which the Administration drives on into bankruptcy. Let it drive on, since its deluded supporters will not be satisfied until the crash comes. And when it comes, the war must end-end disastrously, disgracefully, to those who have conducted it; but happily to the nation, since we can have peace on no lighter terms. As it is certain that there can be no step taken to save or reconstruct the Union, until there is an end of fighting, the people will welcome any ordeal, however severe, that brings about that beneficent result. Reckless and shallow men will rave at the very mention of the word repudiation. But their profanity does not mend the matter-does not close the door of even their stolid intellect against the conviction that it is inevitable. The sum is a simple one. The interest on the present debt is $1,400,000,000, fourteen hundred millions of dollars, every ten years. The annual export agricultural productions of the North, for the ten years ending 1863, amounted to only $63,817,379. Hereafter the surplus wealth of the North will fall, for a great many years, far below the above figures, because a million of men who have been producers of wealth, have been drawn off into the army, where they have not only ceased to be prcducers, but have

become non-producing consumers, and destroyers of wealth already accumulated. If all the surplus productions of the North and West are hereafter given up to the Government, they will pay only a fraction of the bare interest on the war debt. That is, if all the farmers, producers, and laborers, give up to the Government every dollar of their earnings, except what barely supports life, they can only succeed in paying a fraction of the interest on the Republican debt. What must become of the principal, where the payment of the interest is beyond the possible reach of the people? Is there any escape, except through the door by which our continental debt was rolled off from the shoulders of the people?

Repudiation, therefore, is not a question of right or wrong, but of necessity. All must agree that repudiation is a very bad thing, but this general condemnation does not remove its inevita bility. Death is an unwelcome visitor to all, but all must, nevertheless, submit to it. The wretch who should advise men, in their lives, to ignore the fact that they must die, has a mate in the fool who would prevent men from discussing this question, so vital to a nation's life.

Moran, in his, in most respects, excellent work on money, says: Government paper money cannot, successfully, for any length of time, perform the functions of money, because it is invariably issued as a financial resource, in moments of emergency, generally when war is ruthlessly destroying both life and property. Government paper money, instead of representing existing results of labor, ready to redeem the paper money on

demand of the holders, only represents property and lives already consumed or destroyed, and labor unproductively employed. How can such paper issues long perform the functions of money, when metallic money cannot perform them unless constantly redeemed with usual results of labor and with useful services? Money cannot be redeemed with useful results of labor, unless these have been produced, economized, and thus exist for those who desire them in exchange for money.".

The history of paper money fully justifies these remarks. The French Government, in 1718, first issued pa per money on the credit of the Government, by running Mr. Law's celebrated Bank into a national institution. Within one year of the date of the establishment of this Royal Bank of France, its paper promises to pay showed evident signs of depreciation. The Government flew to the rescue of its currency by an edict, uttered in December, 1719, that, thereafter, its paper money should pass at five per cent. above specie. The same edict forbid specie to be used at all in sums under 100 livres, and gold under 300 livres. Still Government paper continued to go down. The people hoarded jewelry and precious stones, in order to lay by something that possessed intrinsic value. A discovery of this device of the people drove the Government to issue an edict forbidding them to have pearls, diamonds, or other precious stones. Still the Government paper money went down. Then came an edict from the Government forbidding the transportation of specie, also forbidding all persons from holding more than 500 livres in specie, under penalty of confiscation, and fine of

10,000 ivres. Still Government paper money declined. And finally, on the 11th of March, 1720, an edict came forbidding any payment to be made in specie. Still the paper fabric crumbled; and, in a few months, a citizen of France might have a hundred millions of Government money in his pocket, and yet starve to death for the want of means to buy a meal of victuals. When this grand bubble of Government paper currency burst, its circulation was nearly two billions and a-half of livres, while there were only three hundred millions of specie in the Government vaults. So the Government had this severe and unwelcome truth worked into its obtuse brains at last, that its mere paper issues of promises to pay were not money, and could not be made equal to money, nor be long kept going as money, not even with all the tremendous power of the Government to uphold it. But even this terrible lesson of inevitable repudiation and ruin did not last France more than seventy years, when she again launched a paper balloon, which went up as brilliantly, and came down, if possible, still more disastrously than this one of 1718. On the 1st of April, 1790, (well started on the 1st of April,) the National Assembly issued four hundred millions of francs of paper, on the credit of the Government. Wise men in France shook their heads, and warned the National Assembly that they would bring financial ruin both upon the Government and the people. But they were silenced by the cry, "What is not the Government's money good?" To doubt it was to incur the charge of being a foe to the Government. Soon other large issues became necessary, and as a consequence,

the assignats began to decline. "Ah, ha!" said the wise men, we told you so!" But the Government came up resolutely, though not wisely, to the rescue of its darling currency. It resorted to the most despotic measures to keep it at par. It prohibited the use of metallic coin. And finally, in 1796, just six years after its first paper issue, it uttered a decree of death against all who should refuse to take it at par. But, even under this terrible law, its paper soon fell to one-half of one per cent. And finally it took 10,000 of Government paper franes to buy a pair of boots. In those good times, for the silly people who had a little while before split their throats in bawling, "What! is not the Government money good?" it took 700 francs of that excellent Government money to buy a Frenchman a pound of butter. Those who had confidingly hoarded this excellent Government money, could then bring it out and treat their children to a stick of barley candy for 30 francs.

It is interesting to see how the rate of depreciation of Government paper kept pace with the increase of its isThus :

sue.

1st issue, 400 millions of francs. 2nd issue, 120 millions; discount 10 per cent.

3rd issue, 2,700 millions; discount 37 per cent.

4th issue, 5,000 millions; discount 55 per cent

When the whole issue amounted to 8,000 millions of francs, the discount was 78 per cent. And finally, in 1795, only five years after the first issue, when the whole amount was twenty millions of francs, the discount was 99 per cent. Soon after this the Govern

ment paper fell to zero, and was abandoned as valueless.

The experience of Russia with Government paper, if less disastrous, is none the less instructive in teaching the great lesson that it is not within the power of any Government to make its mere paper issue of promise to pay pass as money for any length of time.

Our own Continental paper money, based upon the credit of the Government of the United States, is a luminous example of the fate of such money. We have only to cast our eyes backwards 80 years to get a vision of the path we are traveling now. As the Continental Congress increased its paper issues, the price of everything went up, or, more properly speaking, the value of the Government paper went down. At first, this result was foolishly charged to speculators in silver and gold, just as similar foolish people charge now. All such were denounced as enemies of their country. In some cases the stores of merchants were broken open, and their goods sold at limited prices, by committees appointed by the people. As early as 1776, Congress resolved that "whoever should refuse to receive in payment Continental bills, should be declared an enemy of his country." That is, all who did not succeed in making the Government's mere promise to pay equal to gold and silver, were to be outlawed. The penalties inflicted, at different times, to keep up the credit of Government paper, were most disgraceful to all concerned in themruining many thousands of innocent people, while they could bring no relief to the pressing necessities of the Government. Never was cause more just than our Revolution. Never was

a debt more honestly contracted. But it had to be repudiated, because it was beyond the reach of all real money at the command of the country, and it is not in the power of man to make the mere paper promise of Government long pass for money. It was inevita ble that the Continental money should sink in value in proportion to the increase of its issue. The first issue was made in 1775. The depreciation began in three years afterwards, and went on, as follows:

March, 1778, $1 in coin was worth $1 75 in paper.

Sept., 1778, $1 in coin was worth $4 in paper.

March, 1778, $1 in coin was worth $16 in paper.

Sept., 1779, $1 in coin was worth $18 in paper.

March, 1780, $1 in coin was worth $40 in paper.

Dec., 1780, $1 in coin was worth $100 in paper.

May, 1781, $1 in coin was worth $500 in paper.

Not long after these days, the holder of Government money paid $20,000 for a ham, and $10,000 for half a pound of tea.

Nobody could complain that the debt was not fairly contracted. But failure and repudiation were none the less inevitable. But who, let us ask, when the people come to their senses, will respect the debt which this Administration will leave upon the country? To be sure, they will be told that the debt must be honestly paid. But who can promise that the people will not take it into their heads to ask if it was honestly contracted? If one-half is due to partisan official plunder, and the other half to expenditures recklessly