American citizen. [volume] (Butler, Butler County, Pa.) 1863-1872, 1864-03-16

strengthen the national credit to provide
a mode and means of selling the Govern
ment debts in considerable quantities, and
to prepare the way for resumption of spe-
Gle payments and the gradual displace-
ment of the legal tender. And the re-
sumption of specie payments, he believed,
would take place through the influence of
the national banking law without any of
| the disorders and commissions which always
heretofore have followed great financial
| changes.
He uttered his faith in the funded
American debt, and based the faith of
the people in the bonds of the United,
| States with economical truth rs well as
rhetorical beauty; the plowed fields and
the homesteads between the Atlantic and
the Missouri, on the public domain of a
thousand million of square milea vest of
the Missouri; on its inexhaustible miner
ais of coal, iron, copper, silver and gold
| on its Pacific Railroad to traverse and cut
through this bed of eternal wealth, and
to tap the commerce of the Pacific world;
on the enterprise and intelligence of the
free race that will build this road mine
that wealth, and draw off that Commerce.
" Sir" said the orator, ''the people be-
| lieve in this basis of their country's debt.
| Ibelieve in it. | know the great economic
al truth, that while from the year 1901 to
1861 the population of France increased
but 81 per cent, and that of Prussia in
creased but 70 per cent, and that of Eng
land l2l per cent know too, from the
statistics of the increase of the national
wealth of America for the last ten years,
| that in 1879 the middle Atlantic carrying
and manufacturing and the Western food
/ producing Sttes will surely have thirty
| five thousand millions of taxable property,
and in 1880 eighty thousand millions!
':Sir the four hundred millions of le-
gal tender divided equally among these
States, to be paid by them out of their in
creased wealth from 1850 to 1860 alone,
would have been extinguished in the first
six months of 1869 and the balance of
increase of wealth remaining on hand be
the enormous sum of 81 500, 900, 600
! Measured in connection with the nations
ability to pay this legal tender debt, sir, is
wholly unimportant. Have not twenty
]
paper, as well as all the debt of the United
:. States; and is not this endorsement guar
anteed by forty-two millions of Americans
thinking and laboring in 1870; and is not
their guaranty underwritten by the fly
six millions of Americans of the year
1870, backed up by their accumulated
wealth of sS2, 1000, G00,0O0?"
| e., Al,a 1,nf. h
House, the gold bill, he said, with log
ical impressiveness which was irresisti-
BILE:
'If this four hundred millions of cur
rency were secured to be paid to morrow
if the nation could see it begin to die and
disappear by the establishment of sink,
ingfund of 10 per cent, per annum, which
would absorb it all in ten years; if by the
legislative sanction the Secretary should
direct the burning of 100000 Of it
day, until the whole was destroyed, doyou
imagine you would hear anything more of
rises in gold ? Sir, those measures would
be the death Of the spectators on the
| seaboard, and the nation would rise above
their fears and anxieties, full of fresh
power and hope. The passage Of this bill
to authorize the Secretary of the Treasu-
ry to sell from time to time the surplus
gold in the Treasury would, in my pins
ion, have a corresponding effect, and tend
prodigiously y TO the reduction Of the ex-
penscs of the Government
Mr.. Stebbins then unveiled and attack
ed the articles by which the peoples mon
ey IS deprecated in the great cities. His
speech concluded as follows:
Suppose, sir, some vast theatre, crowd
ed with thousands Of human beings, alb
sorbed in a dramatic spectacle; and sup
pose, sir, in the midst of their happy alb
sorption two three, or more voices should
suddenly raise the appalling cry of fire,
and rush toward the narrow entrance for
the street? Does it needany prophecy to
foretell the fearful disaster that would en-
sue while this frenzied multitude dashed
at the contracted outlets, and through the
crowded corridors? Hundreds might be
crushed, limbs be broken, numbers sutfo-
Gated, while thousands might be robbed by
the brigands who had perpetrated the ca
lam ty for the purpose of plumber. Sir,
will any one undertake to say that the
building is really. on fire because of the
infuriated cry of fire? No, sir! And
sir, this is precisely the case of the people
of this country.
During the past three years disloyal
voices have kept crying fire against the
national finances, and there have been con-
vulsive movements to escape the fearful
calamities said to threaten the paper sys-
TEN, and which is finally to be entirely de-
moished. And while this cry continues,
and every imaginable auxiliary is used to
magnetic the nation into such belief, and
while the masses are rushing out of the
Federal building in mad disorder, a sys-
TEN of pillage has been going forward that
defes description, and human ingenuity is
taxed to its utmost to keep up the alarm,
that the spols of the villainy may aug
ment, and the opportunity for plunder be
protractd yet awhile longer. Sir, it is our
solemn duty to assist in correcting this
scandalous state of things. The first step
that we are bound to take is to relieve the
Government from the fearful position of