| From the Memphis Appeal |
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| January 11, 1861 |
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| Sale of Railroad Stock |
| Editors Appeal: In your issue of this
morning there is an article over the signature of "No Sale"
on the subject of the city's selling her $250,000 of stock in the
Mississippi & Tennessee railroad. The entire article of "No
Sale" appears to be based on the presumption that the city owes
no debts on which she is compelled or in duty bound to pay, but that
it is simply a matter of discretion with her whether she will sell the
stock now or wait till after completion of the road. He makes the
statement that the $250,000 of stock held by the city in said road
will, on the completion of the road, be worth $400,000. He gives no
authority whatever for this statement -- and no doubt for the best
reasons, that is, that he has no authority for it. He however
endeavors to institute a comparison between the stock in question and
the stock formerly held by the city in the Memphis & Charleston
railroad, and because the latter company, shortly after the completion
of its road, declared a dividend of sixty per cent. in stock,
therefore he assumes that the former will do the same. This is no
argument, but a mere blind presumption. As such it deserves no reply,
and we therefore leave it where Mr. "No Sale" has placed it
-- "before the public." In opposition to the apparent idea
of "No Sale" we contend that the selling of the stock held
by the city in the Mississippi & Tennessee railroad company is not
a mere question of pecuniary interest to the city or its people, but
one infinitely higher than any such low or miserly consideration. It
is the question of honesty and nothing else. It is, whether the
city of Memphis as a corporation will redeem her obligations in good
faith, and as she has contracted to do, or will she repudiate
her contracts made with parties acting in good faith with her, and
leave honest and innocent individuals who have been her friends
"through weal and through woe," who have indorsed her paper
and sustained her credit to pay her debts for her, while she does
nothing, and holds on to property held by her as her own under the
extraordinary and frivolous pretence that after a while her property
will be more valuable than it now is, and therefore that she would be
sacrificing her interest to sell her $250,000 of railroad stock at one
half its par value. |
| We have already been advised
of the institution of a suit in the Federal Court of Tennessee, as
well as in the State courts, against the individual indorsers for the
city, for more than twenty thousand dollars. The city has made no
effort, nor is making any, to relieve such indorsers. And she will
continue to make none, as long as she is governed by the counsels of
such advisors as "No Sale." What, we ask, is the sum of
$100,000 or $200,000 to a corporation like Memphis, when compared with
the high and solemn duty which she owes to herself to preserve her
reputation and credit from dishonor or suspicion, or the duty which
she owes those who have befriended her to hold them harmless and
prevent them from being annoyed or made to suffer on her account. |
| "No Sale" seems to
be so hostile to the sale of the stock aforesaid, and expresses in
words a willingness to "go as far in reason as any other person
to relieve" the city's indorsers; he yet makes no suggestion
whatever looking to their relief, nor does he seem to have any
conception of any measures necessary to effect that object. If the
city has any other property which she can dispose of and pay her debts
with, we have no disposition to press the sale of her stock in the
Mississippi & Tennessee railroad company, but it seems to be
admitted generally that she has no other property that will sell so
readily as her railroad stock, and therefore we contend that her duty
is to sell it and pay her debts with the proceeds as far as such
proceeds will enable her to do so; and then if she has any other
property which she can dispose of for money, or give in exchange for
her obligations to those who hold them, that she ought thus to dispose
of it till she has exhauster all of her available means, whether she
pays all of her indebtedness or not. She would thus show her creditors
and all others that if she did not pay the last dollar she owed it
would be for want of ability, and not the want or disposition. |
| Samuel T. Morgan |
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