Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1880-08-28
NATIONAL PARTIES AND TIE CURRENCY.

the present UT "a there have been two op-
posing Influences at work in connection
with t.ne currency and national finance
the one seeking to maintain the faith,
honor and prosperity of the people by
strict and loyal adherence to contracts,
and by speedy Abandonment of unsafe
expedients; the other endeavoring by
thousand subtle and crafty shifts to I'M
derInine the public credit, to break faith
with the public creditors, to substitute
bad money for good, to force a policy of
chicane and dishonesty upon the country.
And while it is undoubtedly the fact that
there have been differences of opinion upon
currency and financial questions, between
individuals and even sections of both the
great parties, it IS equally true that there
mas been throughout sufficiently clear
and unmistakable diversion of tendency
and responsibility between them on all
these issues. The Republican party from
its inception has been identified with the
advocacy and enactment of every one of
the measures w.lich have operated to lift
the country out OF the slough OF depre.
ciated currency, to restore specie pay
ments, to maintain the public credit, to
refund the debt, and by these successive
steps to bring the nation to condition OF
great prosperity. The Democratic party,
on the other hand, is identified with every
effort which has been made to retard and
Illustrate the benefcent measures referred
to above. This Identification is both direct
and indirect. The Democracy in 1868
demanded, in national Convention, that the
bonded debt should be paid in de-
| preciated and irredeemable paper. In
1872 its platform denounced the Resump-
ton programme, and demanded its aban-
donment. At this moment the platform of
the party avowedly favors honest money,
but all through the country we find the
| Democrats allying themselves with the
Greenbackers, all OF whose propositions are
hostile to the solvency of the country, the
stability of the currency, and the mainte-
nance of good faith with the peoples cred
itors. These Greenbackers, moreover, are
themselves the direct progeny of Demo-
cratic financial policies. Their expressed
antipathy TO the bondholders is neither
more nor less than the revival of that
deadly Copperhead aversion to the men
who had strengthened the Federal Treasury
in its hour of mortal peril, which charac-
terized the Democratic attitude during and
long after the rebellion. This bitter senti-
ment against the bondholders was the nat
ural issue of rampant treason and disloy-
atty. It's most prominent representatives,
were to be found originally in such
| journals as the La Crosse Democrat, and
such journalists as its editor, Brick "
Pomeroy. These hated and vilifed the
bondholders because but for them the war
never could have been prosecuted success
fully. 1t was the consciousness of this
which barbed the Copperhead shafts, and
urged them to employ every weapon the
I
most malignant and venomous demagogism
could invent, to strike down the protection
Of the public creditors by instilling into
the public mind the idea that they were
grasplng ' Shylocks and usurers. Every
argument and every epithet used against
the bondholders in this connection
is taken from the armory of the Copper
heads. They were the first to stignatize
those who came to the support of the ma
ton in its deadly crisis their rank dis
loyalty and detestation of the friends
of the Union inspired every bitter and
extravagant term that has ever been used
in the discussion of this subject. And the
same origin can be traced for the attacks
ON the National Banks. That hostility
first appeared in the South. True to its
interests the Northern Democracy swiftly
adopted the policy of its allies beyond
Mason and Dixon's line, and at the West
some simple folks were deluded into the
| belief that somehow the best banking sys-
! TEN the country has ever had was wrong
and mischievOus. The pretense of the OPP
ponents of the banks was that the Govern
ment could save expense by issuing all the
currency. There was some shrewdness in
this device, for it appealed to the affection
for the greenbaeks which had grown out
Of their connection with the war in igno-
rant minds. But the purpose OF the
Southern assault upon the National Banks,
and that which shrewd supporters of that
attack at the West also entertained, was
really the repeal Of the clause in the
United States Statutes which prohibits
the erection Of State Banks Of issue. In
a word, the main motive of the attack
was to pave the way for the revival of the
old State Bank system.