TAXATION AND DEBT. 649 



The sequel is briefly stated in the language of the Financial Investigating 

 Committee of the negro Legislature of 1871-2 : " We find ourselves 

 facing a total debt of $28,977,008. This sum represents the present 

 actual and contingent liabilities of the State as the committee find 

 them." The credit of the State was entirely destroyed. " It was with 

 the greatest difficulty that the officers of the State Lunatic Asylum could 

 purchase four thousand dollars worth of provisions on credit, although 

 appropriations had been made to be payable out of the revenues which 

 were then about to become due " (Statistics Public Indebtedness, 10th U. 

 S. Census). The appalling spectacle was presented of a State struggling 

 in the slough of debt, with Labor resting on her rusted implements, Com- 

 merce folding her wings. Trade in prison garments, and the Genius of 

 Liberty weeping over her people, prostrate, bankrupt and disgraced. 



Extreme measures were of urgent necessity. A constitutional amend- 

 ment w^as ratified forbidding the General Assembly to create an}?^ further 

 debt without first submitting the question to the people at a general 

 State election, and unless two-thirds of the qualified voters cast their 

 votes in favor of it. The negro Legislature, by act of the 22d December, 

 1873, declared as absolutely null and void bonds recently issued to the 

 amount of $5,965,000. By the same act, known as the " Consolidation 

 Act," the State Treasurer was authorized and required to receive from 

 their holders certain specified certificates of stock and bonds, and to give 

 in exchange therefor, other certificates of stock or bonds equal in amount 

 to fifty per centum of the face value of the bonds and certificates of stock 

 surrendered. Interest was no longer to be paid on the old bonds and 

 stocks unless exchanged, and then at the rate of six per cent, per annum. 

 The bonds and stocks thus specified were : 



Bonds and Stocks issued by the State from the year 1794 to 



the year 1861, amounting to $2,837,460 



Bonds and Stocks issued during the war, from 1861 to 1866, 



amounting to 124,865 



Bonds and Stocks issued after the war, before the Reconstruc- 

 tion Convention of 1868, amounting to 1,021,218 



Bonds and Stocks issued by the negroes from 1868 to 1870, 



amounting to 5,835,100 



Total $9,818,643 



This sum was to be paid at fifty per cent, discount, in consolidation 

 bonds. It would have amounted to $4,904,321, to which the past due in- 

 terest was to be added. 

 42 



