JEFFERSON DAVIS AND REPUDIATION.
This article, published in our August issue, has awakened so wide an interest in the community, that the Editor of The Continental deems it expedient to place before its readers the additional matter contained in a later edition published in England, where it has circulated by thousands. We regret that this edition did not arrive in time to appear at large in our August number; but as it did not, we herewith offer the additional matter so arranged that our readers will have but little difficulty in fitting it in its appropriate place.
Addition 1st.—August Continental, page 219, after line 23 from the top, viz.: 'and the countrywomen of the Mother of the Lord,' read:
Mississippi was the first repudiating State; A.G. McNutt, the first repudiating Governor; and Jefferson Davis, the first repudiating Senator. As another evidence of the incredible extent to which the public sentiment of that day was debased, I quote the following passage from Governor McNutt's message of 1840, proposing to repeal the bank charters, and to legalize the forgery of their notes—'The issuing of paper money, in contravention of the repealing act, could be effectually checked by the abrogation of all laws making it penal to forge such paper.' (Sen. Jour. p. 53.) Surely, nothing, but the fell spirit of slavery, could have dictated such a sentiment.
Proceed as before.
Page 220 Continental, after line 45 from the top, viz.: 'is a constitutional act,' insert:
The supplemental act, we have seen, was not, in the language of the Constitution, a law 'to raise a loan of money on the credit of the State;' that act had already passed two successive Legislatures, and was unchanged by the supplemental, which merely modified some of the details of the bank charter; such was the fact, and such the decree of the inferior court, such was the unanimous decision of the highest judicial tribunal of the State, to which the final adjudication had been assigned, by a mandatory provision of the Constitution.
Surely this decision should have settled the question. But it did not. Jefferson Davis, notwithstanding his professed desire to submit this question to the final decree of the courts of the State, persisted, as we have seen, in 1849, in repudiating these bonds, at a period more than seven years after this decision of 1842, and still persevered, after the second similar adjudication of 1853.
Omitting 'Surely this decision should have settled the question. But it did not,' proceed as before.