St. Johnsbury Caledonian. [volume] (St. Johnsbury, Vt.) 1867-1919, 1878-10-25
Beecher on Greenbacks.
HE DISPosEs OF THE GREAT DELUsION
IN A FEW SENTENCES,

IN FEW SENTENCES.
The Rev. Henry Ward Beecher open
ed the course of lectures and entertain
ments at the North Avenue Congrega-
tiOnal Church, Cambridge, last evening.
His subject was "The Reign of the
Common people," and the purpose was
to show the changes which the general
spread of intelligence has wrought in
human thought and in the relations of
men toward one another and toward
Governments. Speaking of the popular
delusions which are now engrossing the
public mind, he said that there was
none which would fade away sooner
than that which the Greenback repre-
sents. Continuing on the same subject,
he said:
The idea that Government can
create money by simply stamping pa
per or leather is theory which may
live for IL day or two or a season, but if
there ever was anything that would
cure itself, that will. l am not afraid
of its ultimate results. | know that the
people say boldly that it is the Gov
ernment that determines the currency.
What is the currency? =? 1t is the means
by which man can exchange one thing
for another. | cannot cut off the cor
ner of my barn and buy pound of
snuff. l cannot carry around anything
so bulky as an OK. | have got to have
something by which can exchange one
kind of property for another. What
should you select You don't need to
select anything at all you might as
well talk about selecting the kind of
atmosphere in which we shall live.
There is one thing about which the
nations agree, and | don't know that
they everagreedo on anything else. There
is one thing upon which they are singu-
larly united, upon which they stand to-
gether and have stood together for five
thousand years, and that is that gold
and silver shall be the medium by
which property shall be represented
and exchanged. 1t is not question
which has been determined by govern
ments at all. All the Governments on
earth might pass an edict that gold
shall not represent property and it will
not make the least difference or that
paper shall, and it would not make the
least difference. 1t is one of those
things which have been determined by
the successive experiences of nations.
have the actual record of the proper
tiOnal value between gold and silver,
varying a little with time but still
where. Five dollars in gold is the same
in his hand can go anywhere and ex-
change it for property.
Paper is nothing but a representative
of gold used for the sake of convenience,
as property is too bulky for exchange.
But paper is nothing but representa-
tive of gold and silver, and it is just as
good as they are when it can command
them and it is good for nothing when
it cannot. Cornelius Vanderbilt went
down to the bank one day with piece
of paper in his fingers, and he didn't
seem to make much of it. But it was
"A check for S3,000,O00, the largest that
had ever been passed there. If he had
tried to pay the same amount in gold
he would have found it pretty hard
job to carry it. Gold weighs ton and
a half to million dollars, so that he
would have had to carry nearly five
tons. When commerce is comparative
ly small, gold and silver can he trans
ported from place to place, and are con-
venient; but when commerce extends
it cannot be used conveniently. Sup
pose man in New York wants to pay
half Il million dollars to Il man in New
Orleans. don't want TO be suspicious,
but | think there are at least ten men
between New York and New Orleans
who would steal it if they got the
chance. Silver weighs thirteen tons to
a million dollars. They can be easily
handled in small transactions, but in
large ones we have paper as COM
mercial cOntrivance. But your paper
is, good for what you exchange it for.
If you can exchange it for a house or a
farm, it is good for that. If it cannot
be exchanged for property, or for gold
or for silver, what is it good for? All
gold and silver represent property, all
paper represents gold or silver, and ii
ought to represent them definitely. II
you print five dollar bill you must he
definite about what it represents, wheat
or cloth, or gold. But if it is merely
five dollars, and you offer it to man
and he says he will not pay gold or sill
yer for it, or you offer it to the Govern
ment and it says it will not pay gold OF
silver for it then its face value goes down
Why cannot the Government make pa
per money? Because it can do with Il
reality what it cannot do with a sham
Government only regulates existing
values, and i'll the case of paper it is
proposed not to regulate value, but tC
: give it value. There is no Govern
ment on Gods earth that can give value
to paper. They can say that paper
shall be equivalent to gold, and redeem
| nd in I ht1f al
can say that zero means something.
Now, my esteemed and revered friend
, Gen. Butler, says that we do not want
, anything that can be redeemed; that
we just want a currency that has the
Government authority on it. A most
extraordinary confusion of ideas, il
, would seem to me, if did not hold his
clear intelligence in such respect. But
it seems very strange TO me that thing
that is not to be redeemed at any time
is valuable. All currency is mere
convenience by which you can ex.
change things which are real. But my
esteemed and venerable friend says we
created such currency when we created
the greenback, and as that currency, he
says, had the power to carry this Gov.
ernment through the struggle of the
war, how much better should it be able
to carry us through after the war is al
over. An old farmer might say "Yor
may say what you like, but my wife
had bilious fever and l carried hel
through with calomel and quinine, ant
: If they were good enough for her then
she can live on them now" What was
it that carried the Government through
1t was recognized as deprecated cur.
rency, and how was it that it held OF
, to any valueq Because the people be-