The proposition had been charged with robbing one set of men to pay another. If there were robbery in the case, it had been committed on the original creditors. But, to speak more accurately, as well as more moderately, the proposition would do no more than withhold a part from each of two creditors, where both were not to be paid the whole.
A member from New York has asked whether an original creditor, who had assigned his certificate, could, in conscience, accept a reimbursement in the manner proposed? He would not deny that assignments might have been made with such explanations, or under such circumstances, as would have that effect; but, in general, the assignments have been made with reference merely to the market value, and the uncertainty of the steps that might be taken by the Government. The bulk of the creditors had assigned under circumstances from which no scruples could arise. In all cases where a scruple existed, the benefit of the provision might be renounced. He would, in turn, ask the gentleman, whether there was not more room to apprehend that the present holder, who had got his certificate of a distressed and meritorious fellow-citizen for one-eighth or one-tenth its ultimate value, might not feel some remorse in retaining so unconscionable an advantage?
Similar propositions, it was said, had been made and rejected in the State Legislatures. This was not a fact. The propositions made in the State Legislatures were not intended to do justice to the injured, but to seize a profit to the public.
But no petitions for redress had come from the sufferers. Was merit, then, to be the less regarded, because it was modest? Perhaps, however, another explanation ought to be given. Many of the sufferers were poor and uninformed. Those of another description were so dispersed, that their interests and efforts could not be brought forward. The case of the purchasing holders was very different.
The constitutionality of the proposition had been drawn into question. He asked whether words could be devised that would place the new Government more precisely in the same relation to the real creditors with the old? The power was the same; the obligation was the same. The means only were varied.
An objection had been drawn from the article prohibiting ex post facto laws. But as ex post facto laws relate to criminal, not civil cases, the constitution itself requires this definition, by adding to a like restriction on the States an express one against retrospective laws of a civil nature.
It had been said, that foreigners had been led to purchase, by their faith in the article of the constitution relating to the public debts. He would answer this objection by a single fact: Foreigners had shown, by the market price in Europe, that they trusted the nature of foreign debt more under the old Government, than the nature of the domestic debt under the new Government.
Objections to the measure had been drawn from its supposed tendency to impede public credit. He thought it, on the contrary, perfectly consistent with the establishment of public credit. It was in vain to say, that Government ought never to revise measures once decided. Great caution on this head ought, no doubt, to be observed; but there were situations in which, without some legislative interposition, the first principles of justice, and the very ends of civil society, would be frustrated. The gentlemen themselves had been compelled to make exceptions to the general doctrine; they would probably make more before the business was at an end.
It had been urged, that if Government should interpose in the present case, as interposition would be authorized in any case whatever where the stock might fluctuate, the principle would apply as well to a fall of sixty or seventy per cent. as to a fall of six hundred or seven hundred per cent. He could not admit this inference. A distinction was essential between an extreme case, and a case short of it. The line was difficult to be drawn; but it was no more incumbent on him than on his opponents to draw it. They themselves could not deny that a certain extremity of the evil would have justified the interposition. Suppose that the distress of the alienating creditors had been ten times as great as it was; that instead of two, three, and four shillings in the pound, they had received a farthing only in the pound; and that the certificates lay now in the hands of the purchasers in that state, or even at a less value, was there a member who would rise up and say, that the purchasers ought to be paid the entire nominal sum, and the original sufferer be entitled to no indemnification whatever?
Gentlemen had triumphed in the want of a precedent to the measure. No government, it was said, had interposed to redress fluctuations in its public paper. But where was the government that had funded its debts under the circumstances of the American debt? If no government had done so, there could be no precedent either for or against the measure, because the occasion itself was unprecedented. And if no similar occasion had before existed in any country, the precedent to be set would at least be harmless, because no similar occasion would be likely to happen in this.