“I have no pecuniary interest in the repudiated bonds or obligations. I have no lot or part in any scheme or combination by or through which public attention is or has been called to this matter. My attitude is that of a private citizen who has as high a regard for the honor and good name of Georgia as any man within her borders. I never obtrude “the bond question” upon the public attention. But when my official action is attacked in that connection I shall never fail to assert and re-assert that the financial statement made by me to my successor in office was the exact truth and that its correctness never has and never will be successfully controverted. In that financial statement were many of the State obligations, which in a time of great public excitement and partisan zeal were ‘outlawed’ by the action of a political body, and up to this day and hour the holders of such obligations have been denied that cool, dispassionate hearing of their claims which our courts alone can give. My ‘attitude’ is that Georgia is too great, that she stands too prominent in this country and in the world at large to accept the position of being a semi-annual defaulter and refusing to the creditor a hearing in her own courts. It is idle for me to assert or for you to deny the validity of the defaulted securities. That is a question of law, and no Georgian can defend his State while she slams the door of our courts in the face of our creditors. I assert that it does make a vast difference to Georgia whether her new securities are listed at the Exchange in New York. Our own people or other people can, of course, buy and own them, and I know the interest and principal will surely be paid, but unless the bonds are ‘listed’ they are not, in mercantile parlance, a ‘good delivery,’ and will not stand abroad as they should, equal with the best State in the Union.” A State which once repudiates its obligations cannot be trusted not to do the same thing again. What guarantee can any investor have that the bonds which Georgia is now trying to put upon the market may not be outlawed by the next Legislature? The _Graphic_ has no interest in the matter beyond that of upholding public morals, the good name of the State and the rights of swindled creditors. The State which repudiates is as foolish as the imbecile who cut off his nose to spite his face.—_N. Y. Graphic_, June 6th, 1885. * * * * *