‘The assurance in this statement that the Planters’ Bank, or non-repudiated bonds, are receivable for State lands, requires this addition, which Mr. Jefferson Davis has omitted, that they are only so receivable upon land being taken at three times its current value.  The affirmation afterward, that no one has a right to assume that these bonds will not be fully provided for before the date at which the principal falls due, is simply to be met by the fact, that portions of them fell due in 1841 and 1846, and that on these, as well as on all the rest, both principal and interest remain wholly unpaid.’

Mr. Davis’s ‘palliation and excuse’ for the non-payment of these bonds was:  1st.  That the principal was not due.  If this were true, it would be no excuse for the non-payment of the semi-annual interest.  But the statement of Jefferson Davis as to the principal was not true, as shown by the Times, and as is clear upon the face of the law.  Then, as to the lands.  The bonds, principal aid interest, were payable in money, and it was a clear case of repudiation to substitute lands.  But when, as stated by the Times, this land was only receivable ’at three times its current value,’ Mr. Davis’s defence of the repudiation of the Planters’ Bank bonds by Mississippi, is exposed in all its deformity.  When, however, we reflect, as heretofore shown, that the law authorizing the purchase of these lands by these bonds was repealed, and the bondholders left without any relief, and the proposition for taxation to pay the bonds definitively rejected, it is difficult to imagine a case more atrocious than this.

The whole debt, principal and interest, now due by the State of Mississippi, including the Planters’ and Union Bank bonds, exceeds $11,250,000 (L2,250,000).  Not a dollar of principal or interest has been paid by the State for more than a fourth of a century on any of these bonds.  The repudiation is complete and final, so long as slavery exists in Mississippi.  Now, would it not seem reasonable that, before Mississippi and the other Confederate States, including Florida and Arkansas, ask another loan from Europe, they should first make some provision for debts now due, or, at least, manifest a disposition to make some arrangement for it at some future period.  If a debtor fails to meet his engagements, especially if he repudiates them on false and fraudulent pretexts, he can borrow no more money, and the same rule surely should apply to states or nations.  Nor can any pledge of property not in possession of such a borrower, or, if so, not placed in the hands of the lender, change the position.  It is (even if the power to pay exists) still a question of good faith, and where that has been so often violated, all subsequent pledges or promises should be regarded as utterly worthless.

The Times, in reference to the repudiation of its Union Bank bonds by Mississippi, and the justification of that act by Jefferson Davis, says: