violation of the Constitution of the United States, those bonds should be repudiated; so also if they were sold below par, or if there be any other technical objection. Nor will it avail that the bonds may have passed into the hands of _bona fide_ holders, for, Mr. Jefferson Davis says, in his letter of the 29th August, 1849, 'If the bonds have passed into the hands of innocent holders, the fact does not vary the legal question, as the purchaser could not acquire more than the seller had to dispose of.' And again, he says, referring to the alleged inability of the first purchaser to buy the bonds, 'The claim of foreign holders is as good, but no better, than that of the first purchaser.' It is difficult to say which is most astounding, the law or the morals of this position. At all events, 'the foreign holders' of Confederate bonds are informed by Jefferson Davis, that this is the law. Indeed it is a singular coincidence, that one of the objections made to the payment of the Union Bank bonds by the Governor, was, as he alleged, 'the monstrous assumption of power on the part of the bank, in seeking to monopolize the _cotton crop_ of the State, and becoming a _factor_ and _shipper_ of our great staple.' (Senate Journals, 29.) Why, this is what is being attempted by these Confederate cotton bonds, although the State-rights strict constructionists of slavedom would in vain look for any clause in their so-called constitution, authorizing any such transactions in cotton. And here, let me say, that the objection of a Senator from Mississippi to the payment of her bonds, that, in issuing them, her Governor and Legislature had violated _their own Constitution_, proposes to cure one fraud, by committing another far more stupendous. The bonds were issued by the highest legislative and executive functionaries of the State, the broad seal of the State attached, the bonds sold, and the money received. In such a case, there is a legal, as well as a moral estoppel, forbidding such a plea, for, by the English, as well as by the American doctrine, an estoppel excludes the truth, whenever such proof would enable the party, who obtained money on false pretences, to commit a fraud on third persons, by disproving his own averment. This is not a mere technical rule, but one which is based upon experience, and sustained by the most exalted morality.