* * * * * The exemption from taxation was a part of the original obligation, having, of course, a positive value, which entered into the price of the bond at the time of subscription. This additional price was taken from the pocket of the subscriber and transferred to the National Treasury, where it has been used for the public advantage. It is so much property to the credit of the bond-holder, which it is gravely proposed to confiscate. Rebel property you will not confiscate; but you are considering how to confiscate that of the loyal citizen. Taxation of the bonds is confiscation. The whole case can be stated with perfect simplicity. To tax the bonds is to break the contract _because you have the power_. It is an imitation of the Roman governor, a lieutenant of Cæsar, who, after an agreement by the people of Gaul to pay a certain subsidy monthly, arbitrarily changed the number of months to fourteen. The subtraction from the interest by taxation is kindred in dishonesty to the increase of the Gaulish subsidy by adding to the months. Of course, in private contracts between merchant and merchant no such thing could be done. But there can be no rule of good faith binding on private individuals which is not binding on the Nation, while there are exceptional reasons for extraordinary scrupulousness on the part of the Nation. As the transaction is vast, and especially as the Nation is conspicuous, what is done becomes an example to the world which history cannot forget. A Nation cannot afford to do a mean thing. There is another reason, founded on the helpless condition of the creditor, who has no power to enforce his claim, whether of principal or interest. It was Charles James Fox who once exclaimed against a proposition kindred to that now made: “Oh, no, no! His claims are doubly binding who trusts to the rectitude of another.” This is only according to an admitted principle in the Laws of War, constraining the stronger power to the best of faith in dealing with a weaker power, because the latter is without the capacity to redress a wrong. This benign principle, borrowed from the Laws of War, cannot be out of place in the Laws of Peace; and I invoke it now as a sufficient protection against taxation of the bonds, even if common sense in its plainest lessons, and the rule of right in its most imperious precepts, did not forbid this thing.