Year: 1874

4 W
dents Message is q failure if judged by any
influence it is likely to exert on the legisla-
ton of this session. This results partly
from the impracticability of the most inn
portant of his recommendations and partly
from the tone he assumes toward the body TO
which the Message is addressed The evi-
dent attempt to cast upon Congress the re-
sponsibility for the shortcomings and failures
which have brought the administration into
discredit is not well received by The men,
bers Of that body, who came together IN no
very amiable temper toward the PRESIDENT


He reminds Congress that he invited their
action on the Louisiana case last winter and
that they treated his suggestions with total
neglect Had they acted and solved the
difficulty they would have relieved him from
an odious responsibility and might have
ended the Louisiana troubles instead of
leaving them to plague the President and
damage the party. But, if Congress were
disposed to retort. 1t might tell the President
that he got himself into the Louisiana scrape
by his own action, without their advice, and
that after he had created spurious govern
ment in that State on his own responsibility
he had no right to feel personally aggreved
that he was left to bear the consequences. If
he had not chosen to intermeddle the
McEnery government would have been peace
ably installed, and the State have escaped the
turmoil and the republican party the scandal
Of these two years.


The President seems also to charge Con-
gress with the failure of civil service reform,
and in this part of the Message he gives way
to sharpness of tone which does not quite
beft so grave document he threatens to
abandon the experiment. unless Congress
comes at last to his relief. Here, again,
Congress might retort upon him that he was
volunteer in this business; that, in adopting
the civil service rules, he acted on his own
mere discretion; that if law Of Con-
gress was necessary to make the rules
effective he should have foreseen that neces-
sity, have recommended suitable legislation at
the outset and not have begun the expert
it successful The President is put by his
rather in-tempered threat in this dilemma: -
If Q law of Congress was necessary he should
not have started without it /; If Executive dis
cretion was sufficient there is no excuse for
impetuously abandoning the reform Had it
succeeded he would have taken the sole credit,
and since it has failed Congress may reason
ably decline any part of the blame. Be this
as it may, the temper he exhibits toward Con-
gress is not calculated to secure its indulgent
judgment Of the Message.


It must be further borne in mind that the
Congress to which this Message is addressed
is the same Congress whose majority he con-
fronted and humiliated by his veto last
spring. They silently swallowed their indig-
nation and chagrin lest the party should
be weakened by an open breach with the
President. Many Of them are more free
spoken now, and as they feel sure of retaining
the compromise currency bill which the Presi-
dent concluded to sign there is nothing to be
lost by open censure. They are strengthenedin in
their opposition to the financial recommended
tions of the Message by the fact that they can
impugn them on grounds which the hard
money men indorse. Even those who approve
and commend the decided attitude of the
President on specie payments dissent from
his methods. Intelligent advocates ofresump-
ton think that q repeal Of the Legal Tender act
instead of the initial should be the final step,
or, as the Ecening Poet expresses it, ''the re-
peal Of the Legal Tender act should be the
crowning event in the restoration of specie
payments" The President has given an
advantage to the infationists by proposing .
H. - IL or
Iepudiate. Among other objections made BY
the hard money men is the formidable fact
that the repeal advocated by the Presi-
dent would compel the banks to suddenly
contract their business to the diminutive
scale of the specie in their vaults. Their
greenback reserves would have to be replaced
by gold reserves, and, as the banking law
requires their reserves TO be in q certain pro-
portion to their liabilities, they would be
forced to curtail their business and adjust it
to the amount of gold in their possession
The consequence would be ruinous stringency
in the money market and universal distress
To begin by repeating the Legal Tender act
would be as absurd as to attempt to split a log
by driving the wedge butt end foremost. 1t
is quite possible to restore and maintain the
specie standard without requiring the banks
to meet their obligations in gold. In Great
Britain the notes of the Bank of England are
a legal tender everywhere except at the bank
itself. All the other banks are permitted to
redeem their notes and pay their depositors in
Bank of England notes, which are also
legal tender for the discharge of private
debts. The advantage of this system
is that it economies the use Of gold
while maintaining it as the standard
of value. 1t would be wise for US, consider
ing the great dearth Of gold in the country, to
begin the specie experiment on similar
plan, giving legal tender notes the same flnc-