The New York herald. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1840-1920, 1874-03-28
currency-we should be richer to-day by
thousand millions Of dollars.

currency-we should be richer to-day by q
thousand millions of dollars
That was q severe blow! No one win see
more clearly than the President its effect upon
our credit Furthermore, he knows well that
the only way to remedy those evils will be to
make manly, strenuous, united struggle for
solvency and specie payments. He will reason
promptly that the world would have pardoned
us for extreme legislation in time of war. He
will ask, Can the world pardon us or can we par
don ourselves for repeating deliberately in a
time OF peace the disastrous and humiliating
experiments of the war? He will see better
than most men how disastrous and humiliat-
ing they are, remembering especially what
befell his administration when it went to Lon
don to find market for its funded five per
cent loan. There was never a better bond.
The interest was larger than that paid by Eng
land-larger than We should pay for
our money. But our loan was re-
jected. We were compelled to withdraw
it, and yet about the same time Gambetta at
the head of his fugitive French Republic
raised one loan, and the Russian government
raised another. There was not q merchant
or banker in London who did not know that
the bonds of America rested upon o greater
material security than those of France or
Russia. But with all our wealth and pro-
digious prospects and opportunities we
had an i'll name. We had tempered with
our credit and it no longer served
us. This is what we have done now.
The passage of this imitation law is simply
proclamation to the foreign nations that we do
not regard the sacred and time-honored laws
the world and with one another that
instead of redeeming the paper we have
already issued and supplanting it with honest
money, we mean to add to the unsavory and
repelling burden from day to day, until we
have no more credit than Turkey or Spain.
Surely never was q record clearer than
this-clear in its folly and its shame. Is it
any less dishonest because there is Western
and Southern ''public opinion" sustaining it?
We had ''public opinion in Mississippi
once which resulted in reputation, and from
which we suffer to-day. Can the President
hesitate III Ills uuty! de Is ABOVE pas-
sion and bias. He can afford to make
sacrifice of temporary popularity in behalf of
national integrity, for if any man can be said
to be above the temptations of human ambi-
ton it is Ulysses S. Grant. The eliminating
supreme honors of the Republic have gathered
upon his head. But even greater honor re-
mains. 1t was o rare and noble deed to win
the peace of Apponattox, for there he saved
the unity of the Republic. Now let him save
its honor, and those who honored him
then will bless him now. Let him say en-
phatically that never shall the hand which
made the peace of the Republic write its
shame; that, having saved us from the conse-
quences Of successful rebellion, he will never
drive us into the Niagara tides of imitation and
bankruptcy. We are in the Niagara tides.
The President by his veto can say whether we
shall return while it is time or take the un-
certain, fearful and irreparable plunge.