Year: 1876

MR. CHAIRMAN:-The honor of the National Gov
ernment and the prosperity of the American people
are alike menaced by those who demand the per-
petuation of an irredeemable paper currency. For
more tn an two years the country has been suffering
from prostraon in business; confidence returns but
slowly; trade revives only partially, and to-day,
with capital unproductve and labor unemployed, we


find ourselves in the midst of an agitation respecting
the medium with which business transactions shall be
carried on. Until this question is definitely adjusted
it is idle to expect that full measure of pros
perity to which the energies of people
and the resources of the land entitle In
the way of that adjustment, one great section
of the Democratic party, possibly its controll-
ing power, stubbornly stands to-day. The Re-
publicans, always true to the primal duty OF sup
porting the nations credit, have now cast behind
them all minor differences and dissensions on the
financial question, and have gradually consolidated
their strength against imitation. The currency there
FORE becomes Of necessity prominent political issue,
and those Democrats who in favor of honest deal
ing by the government and honest money for the peo
pie, may be compelled to act they did in that still
grayer exigency, when the existence Of the govern
ment itself was at stake.


While this question should be approached in no
spirit of partisan bitterness, it has yet become





cussion of it be had without giving its political
history-andif that history bears severely on the
Democratic party, its defenders must answer the
facts and not quarrel with their presentation. Firm
ly attached to one political party myself firmly be-
lieving that parties in free government are as
healthful as they inevitable, still think there
are questions about which parties should agree
never to disagTeeand Of these is the essential ma
ture and value of the circulating medium. And it
is fact of especial weight and significance that up
to the paper money era, which precpitated upon
during the Rebellion, as of wars inexorable
necessities there political party in this
country that believed in any other than the specie
standard for our currency If there was any one
principle that was rooted and grounded in the minds
of our earlier statesmen, it was the evil of paper
money, and no candid man of any party can read
the constitution of the United States and not be con-
vinced that its trainers intended to protect and de-
fend our people from the manifold perils of ire
deemable currency. Nathaniel Macon, one of the
purest and best of American statesmen, himself
soldier OF the Revolution, and member of Congress
continuously during the administrations of first
six Presidents, embracing in all period of nearly
forty years. expressed the whole truth when he de-
clared in the Senate that ''this was hard-money
government, founded by hard-money men, who had
themselves seen and felt the evil of paper money,
and meant to save their posterity from it."


To this uniform adherence to the specie standard,
the crisis of the Rebellion forced an exception. In
January 1862, with more than half million of men
In arms, with daily expenditure of nearly two mil
lions of dollars, the Government sud denly found it
self without money Customs yielded but little, in
ternal taxes had not yet been Levied public credit
was feeble if not paralyzed, our armies had
met with one signal reverse and nowhere
with marked success, and mems minds were
filled with gloom and apprehension The one
supreme need of tn nour was money and mon-
ey the government did not have. What, then.
should be done-rather, what could be done? The
ordinary treasury note had been tried and failed and
those already issued were discredited and be-
low the value of the bills of country banks. The
government in this great and perious need promptly
called to its aid power before exercised. 1t
authorized the issue of one hundred and fifty mill


lions Of notes. and declared them to be legal tender
for all debts, public and private, with two excep-
tions.


The ablest lawyers who sustained this measure
did not find warrant for it in the text of the Consti
tuition, but, like the late Senator Fessenden of my
own State, placed it the ground of 'absolute,
erwhemiDg necessity and that illustrious Sena-
tor declared that the necessity existing, he had
hesitation Indeed sir, to hesitate was to be lost,
for the danger that if Congress prolonged the
debate points of constitutional construction, its
deliberations might be interrupted by the sound of
rebel artillery on the opposite shore of the Potomac.
The Republican senators and representatives there
fore, dismissng all doubts and casuistry stood to-
gether for the country, and if taunted they
by the Democracy and disloyalty of that day, with
violating the Constitution, they pointed to that law
which IS older than constitutions. Adopting the
sentiment, as they might have quoted the imputed
language of John Milton, they believed that 'there
is the law of selfpreservation written by God him
self on our hearts there is the primal compact and
bond OF society," not craven on stone, nor sealed with
wax nor put down on parchment, nor set forth in
any express form of words by men when of old they
came together but implied in the very act that they
SO came together pre-supposed in all subsequent
law not to be repealed by any authority, not nval-
dated by being omitted in any code, inasmuch as
from thence are all codes and all authority"


But the promptings of patriotism the pressure Of
necessity, the 'despotism of duty" which thus de-
cided the course of the Republicans failed to infu-
ence the Democrats in Congress. Marshalled and
led by Mr. Pendleton, since become the great advo-
cate OF imitation, the Democratic representatives
Voted In solid column against the legal tender bill.
Bankruptcy to the treasury was impending, eighty
millions of unpaid acquisitions lay the Secretary's
desk, large part of the army had not received dol
lar for six months, supplies were failing, recruiting
halted, the spirits of the people dropped, while the
executive department, charged with the conduct OF
the war. urged that critical campaigns, then in pro-
gress would necessarily end in disaster unless relief
could be afforded in this way. But Democratic con-
sciences were too tender, and Democratic scruples
too intense at that time to permit such fearful in
fraction of the constitution the passage OF legal
tender bill, even to save the Union of our Fathers
and thus preserve the constitution itself.


The necessities of the government were so great
and expenditures so enormous, that another hun
dred and fifty millions of legal tender notes were
speedily called for and granted by congress-the
Democrats again voting under Mr.. Pendleton's lead
against the measure, With varying fortunes the
last year of the was reached with three hundred
millions of legal tender in circulation. With the
strain Of our public credit and the doubts and vcis
situdes of the struggle these notes had fallen far be-
low par in gold, and it became apparent to every
clear-headed observer that the continued issue Of